Maria Schell

Maria Schell, born Maria Margarethe Anna Schell on 15 January 1926 in Vienna, Austria, was an Austrian-Swiss actress who became one of the foremost stars of German-language cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. She died on 26 April 2005 in Preitenegg, Carinthia, Austria, at the age of 79. Her father, Hermann Ferdinand Schell, was a Swiss poet, novelist, playwright, and pharmacist; her mother, Margarethe, née Noé von Nordberg, was an actress who operated her own acting school. Both parents were Roman Catholics. Schell was the eldest of four siblings, the others being actor Maximilian Schell and actors Carl Schell and Immaculata "Immy" Schell.

Following the Anschluss in 1938, the family relocated from Vienna to Zürich, Switzerland. Schell initially pursued commercial training before entering the film industry through her acquaintance with Swiss actor and director Sigfrit Steiner. She made her screen debut alongside Swiss actor Heinrich Gretler in Steiner's 1942 film Steibruch, subsequently taking acting lessons to support engagements in theatre. After World War II, director Karl Hartl cast her in her first leading film role in the 1948 production The Angel with the Trumpet. Early screen credits also included The Magic Box, Dr. Holl (1951), So Little Time (1952), and The Heart of the Matter (1953). Her colleague Oskar Werner gave her the nickname Seelchen, meaning "little soul," in recognition of her emotionally expressive performances.

Schell's international recognition grew substantially in the mid-1950s. In 1954, she received the Best Actress Award at the Cannes International Film Festival for her work in Helmut Käutner's war drama The Last Bridge. Two years later, she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her performance in René Clément's Gervaise, a film that was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. While working in Hollywood, she met Yul Brynner, who advocated for her casting as Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov (1958). She subsequently appeared opposite Gary Cooper in The Hanging Tree (1959) and alongside Glenn Ford in Cimarron (1960). Additional notable film roles came in Le notti bianche (1957), Rose Bernd (1957), and Superman (1978), as well as the role of Mother Maria in Christmas Lilies of the Field, the sequel to Lilies of the Field.

Schell's stage work included an appearance in the 1976 Broadway production of Poor Murderer, a play by Pavel Kohout, as well as the leading role in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit with the Schauspielhaus Zürich ensemble. Her television credits included a 1976 episode of Kojak, three guest appearances in the German series Der Kommissar, and two episodes of Derrick — "Yellow He" (1977) and "Klavierkonzert" (1978). In 1959, she appeared as the mystery guest on What's My Line?, and in 1970 she starred opposite Christopher Lee in The Bloody Judge, directed by Jesús Franco.

Schell was married twice. Her first marriage was to film director Horst Hächler, which ended in divorce in 1965. Her second marriage, to director Veit Relin, ended in divorce in 1986. Her daughter from the second marriage, actress Marie Theres Relin, was born in 1966. Schell also acknowledged a love affair with Glenn Ford during the 1960 filming of Cimarron, a relationship Ford's son Peter later confirmed in his 2011 biography Glenn Ford: A Life.

Among her many honors, Schell received the Bambi Award on multiple occasions between 1951 and 2002, the Merit Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1974, the German Film Awards Gold Award in 1977, the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1980, the Golden Camera in 1983, and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class, in 2002. Her final public appearance was at the 2002 premiere of her brother Maximilian's documentary My Sister Maria, at which both siblings received the Bambi Award. She spent her final years in the remote village of Preitenegg in the Austrian Alps, and died there of pneumonia on 26 April 2005.