Tala Birell

Tala Birell, born Natalie Bierle on 10 September 1907, was a Romanian-born stage and film actress who performed on Broadway between 1934 and 1940. Her father, Karl Bierle, was a Bavarian businessman, and her mother, Stefanie von Schaydakowska, came from Austro-Hungarian Galicia. Birell died on 17 February 1958 and is interred in a family tomb in the Bavarian village of Marquartstein.

Birell built her early career in Vienna, accumulating stage and screen experience before gaining wider recognition in Berlin, where The Oakland Tribune noted she made her debut in a hit production of Madame Pompadour. During her time in German-language cinema, she served as a double for Marlene Dietrich. In 1930 she traveled to England to appear in E. A. Dupont's Menschen im Käfig, the German-language version of Cape Forlorn, and subsequently came to America to take part in the German version of The Boudoir Diplomat.

Having established herself as a stage star in Europe, Birell went on to build a presence in American films, among them a role in the 1938 comedy Bringing Up Baby. In 1953, she appeared on the US anthology television series Orient Express in an episode titled The Red Sash, one of her final on-camera performances.

Her Broadway career spanned both ends of the 1930s. She appeared in Order Please in 1934, and in 1940 she starred in My Dear Children at the Belasco Theatre in New York City.