Ruth Leuwerik
Ruth Leuwerik ( born April 23, 1924 in Essen) is a German actress. She was one of the great stars of German cinema of the 1950s, and together with Dieter Borsche a known on-screen couple of the movies of that time.
Life and work
Ruth Leuwerik, maiden name Leeuwerik, visited in Essen and Münster Lyceum, worked as a stenographer and later took private acting lessons.
Your first exposure it received on the Westphalian State Theatre Paderborn and Münster Municipal Theatre. From 1947 to 1949 she played at the Theater Bremen and Lübeck in the theater, from 1949 to 1953 at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. In the season 1950/51 she performed in the play Intermezzo from Jean Giraudoux also at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin. Your last stage role was in 1955 as Eurydice in the eponymous play by Jean Anouilh at the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus.
Your screen debut was in 1950 in the comedy film Thirteen, in one place, where she played alongside Volker von Collande and Inge estate equal to one of the lead roles. She was standing in for a sick colleague. 1951 synchronized Ruth Leuwerik Maureen O'Hara in reef pirates. Through the mediation of a friend she was introduced to Dieter Borsche of her in 1952 for her first major role as his co-star in the comedy Father needs a woman helped. Due to the success at the box office both actors turned after the movie The great temptation, which was based on a popular serial novel of a German magazine. Thanks to the success of both films were Leuwerik Ruth and Dieter Borsche that later in HRH Queen Louise and together in front of the camera stood beside Sonja Ziemann / Rudolf Prack and Maria Schell / O. W. Fischer to a screen couples of the 1950s.
Had her breakthrough Leuwerik 1953, when it was present in four productions in cinema. In addition to the melodrama A Heart wrong plays in which she appeared for the first time next OW Fischer, she played the lead role in the comedy Must we divorce the same?, The literary adaptation Royal Highness based on the novel by Thomas Mann and the family saga Beloved life which describes the development of a woman over several decades of time. For her dramatic performance in Life, Above it was in 1954 awarded the film strip in silver for Best Actress. The actress had to this point in their careers so often in costume dramas such as Life, Above and Ludwig II with OW Fischer, that her performances in crinoline and hoop skirt soon became a sort of trademark of her. Often, they also stood for adaptations of literary materials such as Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest, which was filmed under the title roses in autumn with Leuwerik in the lead role, as well as in the title role of Dorothea Angermann after the eponymous play by Gerhart Hauptmann front of the camera.
Ruth Leuweriks career that had lost the mid-1950s some momentum, received The Trapp Family and The Trapp Family in America by Wolfgang Liebeneiner to the Baroness Maria Augusta von Trapp new impetus thanks to the highly popular movies. Also under the direction Liebeneiner was the POW drama Taiga, in which she plays a courageous woman doctor in a POW camp in Siberia. Part of their popularity even among female moviegoers was probably also due to the fact that Leuwerik often independent, professionally successful women with their own ideas and concepts represented by life, as in the comedy The ideal woman of the year 1959.
By the early 1960s, but their popularity slowly began to wane: Add favorite of the gods over the life of the UFA film stars Renate Müller Leuwerik knew indeed to convince the acting, the ambitious biopic, however, remained, as far as the box office results, below expectations. The Käutner adaptation The Red from 1962 based on the novel by Alfred Andersch however, could neither critics nor audiences to inspire. After the remake of The House in Montevideo on the side of Heinz Riihmann to Leuwerik In 1963 he moved for several years from the canvas back. However, it appeared occasionally in television productions, such as Franz Peter Wirth television miniseries The Buddenbrooks, in which she portrayed Betsy Consul Buddenbrooks. In 1978, she was honored for her many years of excellent work in German cinema with the film strip in gold.
On the occasion of his 80th birthday Ruth Leuweriks their dedicated the Filmmuseum Berlin 2004 a major exhibition entitled The ideal woman - Ruth Leuwerik and the cinema of the fifties. In this context, her work was honored as follows:
" In her film roles, she knew how to embody against old stereotypes a modern self-understanding - contrary to what the widespread prejudice about " Grandpa's cinema " wants the Adenauer era. "
1949 Ruth Leuwerik short time married to actor Herbert Fleischmann and 1965-1967 with the singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Today, she lives quietly with her third husband, the ophthalmologist Heinz Purper, in Munich.