A solid majority wants to know the name of our mystery woman. She is Toni Gerry. Above, a 1958 publicity photo from "Broken Arrow."
Update: Gerry in a publicity photo for "Boots Malone" with William Holden.
Here's another photo of our mystery woman. Please congratulate Lee Ann Bailey for correctly identifying her!
Update: Dorothy Ames, Gerry and Liberace in 1955. Gerry is wearing $1 million worth of jewelry as a publicity stunt for the premiere of the famous 1950s TV show "The Millionaire." Here's to John Beresford Tipton!
Here's our mystery guest with some mystery companions.
Update: Gerry in a 1956 episode of George Sanders Mystery Theatre titled "The Call."
By MIKE WYMA, Mike Wyma is a frequent contributor to Valley View.
Toni Gerry; Veteran Actress Appeared in 150 TV Shows
August 1, 1991
Toni Gerry, an actress who once said "my credits read like a TV
Guide for the 1950s," has died after a long struggle with bone cancer.
Her husband, Hal Stiller, said this week that Miss Gerry was 65 when she died July 25 in a Los Angeles hospital.
Born
in Utah where she became stage-struck after playing "Snow White" in a
high school play, she began her professional career when agent Paul
Kohner discovered her in 1949 at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Her
first credits came in the infancy of TV in such landmark series as
"Hallmark Hall of Fame" and "Lux Video Theatre." In all she played
leads or supporting parts in more than 150 shows, among them "The
Millionaire," "The Loretta Young Show," "Schlitz Playhouse of Stars,"
"Wanted Dead or Alive," "National Velvet," "Mr. and Mrs. North," "Sea
Hunt" and more.
Her dozen feature films include "Lust for Life" (as Johanna), "Boots Malone" and "Bullet for Joey."
Most
recently she had been on stage locally in "Hanna Speaks," a one-woman
show she also wrote based on the true story of two Jewish lovers
separated by World War II.
Besides her husband, she is survived by her daughter, Lisa, and a sister.
|
When
it comes to stories of love and heartbreak–and, miraculously, love
once more–it's hard to match Hanna Kohner's. "I have been very lucky,"
she marvels. And yet, few people have endured so much misfortune.
Her
story–separated from her first love by the rumblings of World War II,
widowed from the second by the Holocaust, and nearly dying herself,
only to be reunited with her first love–is told in "Hanna Speaks," a
play running Sunday afternoons through May 29 at the Chamber Theatre in
Studio City.
It is a one-woman show starring actress Toni Gerry,
who also wrote the script. The director is Mike Road, who said the
play's structure is unusual yet simple.
Gerry talks to the
audience, Road explained, "but it's not an audience she's talking to,
it's relatives and friends. Someone says, 'What happened to you in
Europe 40 or 50 years ago?' so she tells them."
Hanna Bloch was
15 and Walter Kohner 20 when they met while ice skating in their native
Czechoslovakia. The year was 1935, and the two gradually fell in love.
By 1938 they were engaged, but as Jews they saw trouble ahead.
Anti-Semitism was spreading throughout Europe.
Tried to Follow
Walter
had a brother in the United States who would sponsor his immigration,
and he left to start a new life. Hanna tried to follow, but she was
stopped by Hitler's invasion of her homeland and, later, his invasion
of Holland, where she had fled.
Separated from her family,
sinking into poverty, Hanna kept up a correspondence with Walter. But
by 1942, their letters grew less frequent. Occupied Amsterdam was rife
with talk of deportation of Jews to concentration camps. In this
climate of desperation Hanna fell in love with Carl Benjamin, a young
German Jew, and married him.
They were together two years, much
of it in detention camps, before being sent separately to Auschwitz,
where Benjamin was killed. Hanna survived, in part because friends
performed an abortion on her. They knew that as part of the "final
solution," the Nazis gave the extermination of pregnant Jews a high
priority.
Walter, meanwhile, was a U.S. soldier stationed in
Luxembourg. He still yearned for Hanna and, through a combination of
persistence and luck, found her in 1945. They married, moved to Los
Angeles and had a daughter. Today the couple lives in Bel-Air. Hanna is
68, Walter is 73. They attended a recent performance of "Hanna Speaks."
Feelings Return
Hanna said that watching the play brought back all the feelings of the war years.
"The
time that's passed doesn't make any difference," she said. "It's always
been my life and it always will be. I remember it very well."
Director
Road said the play differs from other one-person shows, such as Hal
Holbrook's portrayal of Mark Twain, James Whitmore's Harry Truman or
Henry Fonda's Clarence Darrow.
"This is a narrative," Road said.
"This is a memory piece. To take something that's memory and present it
as drama is a very different kind of form."
Both Road and Gerry
acted on television in the 1950s and early '60s. After appearing in "77
Sunset Strip," "The Roaring '20s," and other shows, Road branched into
voice-over work in cartoons and commercials.
"I was directing all the time in theater," he said, adding that the stage is his first love.
Gerry,
who said her credits "read like a TV Guide for the '50s," appeared in
"Schlitz Playhouse of Stars," "Wanted Dead or Alive," "Perry Mason" and
others.
"When my daughter was born in 1962, I decided to become
a full-time mother," Gerry said. "Then when she was old enough, I
wanted to act again. But at my age good parts are hard to come by. I
was looking for a project, and I thought of Hanna's story."
The
common thread in the lives of Toni Gerry and Hanna Kohner was Hanna's
brother-in-law, Paul Kohner, one of Hollywood's most successful agents.
Over the years his Kohner Agency represented Ingmar Bergman, Max Von
Sydow, Charles Bronson, Debra Winger, Liv Ullmann and others.
Paul
Kohner came to Los Angeles from Czechoslovakia in 1921 to work for Carl
Laemmle, then president of Universal Pictures. The two had met at a
Czech health spa, where Laemmle was a guest and Kohner a cub reporter
for a Czech entertainment newspaper.
Kohner provided the
sponsorship affidavit needed by his brother Walter in 1938 to immigrate
to the United States. He also was Gerry's first agent, signing her
after seeing her perform at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1949. Paul Kohner
died this year at 85.
'Hanna and Walter'
A third
Kohner brother, Frederick, author of the books that led to the "Gidget"
movies, also figures in the story. Before his death in 1986, Frederick
helped Hanna and Walter write an account of their turbulent war years.
It was that book, "Hanna and Walter," published by 1984 and translated
into a half-dozen European languages, that Gerry thought of when she
needed an acting project.
"I adapted it to the stage," she said. "A lot of it is sections of Hanna talking that I took straight from the book."
"Hanna
Speaks" runs 53 minutes, not including the intermission. A production
of the Meridian Theatre and Academy, the play opened in the 37-seat
Chamber Theatre on April 3. Audience response, said Gerry, has been
emotionally charged.
"We emphasize the love story, but it's
still a Holocaust story. Some of it–like when Hanna is sitting alone
in an attic in Holland, wearing the sealskin coat her mother gave her
and wondering how all this separation came to pass–it's really quite
powerful."
Labor Camps
Hanna said that in addition
to her first husband, family members killed at Auschwitz included her
mother, father and several aunts and uncles. Hanna spent only one month
in the infamous death camp but was imprisoned at other sites, called
transit or labor camps, for much of the war.
She said she might
have avoided the ordeal if she and Walter had married in 1938, when he
had the papers necessary to leave Czechoslovakia and she did not.
"We
talked about it, of course, but for him to go to America with a new
wife and no job and not a penny to his name, it seemed too much. At
that time he was an actor. What prospects does an actor have? We
thought I could get out later. We all were blind to a certain extent.
By the time we realized it, it was too late."
Jews desperate to
leave Europe before and during World War II faced two
obstacles–immigration quotas imposed by nations such as the United
States, and the frequent refusal of German occupying forces to grant
exit permits. There was a randomness, a "craziness," said Hanna, to the
fate of people like herself.
A stroke forced Walter Kohner to
retire last year from his job as an agent at his brother's business.
Although the stroke did not impair him physically, it affected his
ability to put thoughts into words. He said he does speech therapy
exercises daily and is improving.
While the play is about Hanna,
and much of the suffering was hers, Walter is responsible for the
storybook ending. Although Hanna had given up any thought that they
would be together, Walter had not. When he found her in Amsterdam in
April, 1945, after the Germans had withdrawn, seven years had passed.
Asked why he hadn't married someone else in the meantime, Walter shrugged.
"I dated other girls," he said, "but it just wasn't the same."
ladailymirror.com 
Olivia de Havilland?
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Noel Neill?
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Donna Reed
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Evelyn Keyes?
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JANE WYMAN
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Carolyn Jones
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How about Donna Reed from FAR HORIZONS. Mike Hawks
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So good to meet you, Larry. Had fun.
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Susan Cabot
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Phyllis Kirk? Went to Phillipes, looked around, inquired with gal in snack bar (nary a clue), walked around for 15 mins and left at 12:05. Didn’t I say wear something distinctive?
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June Lockhart
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Joan Taylor? (I had no idea and had to ask Mel again . . .)
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Mary Martin
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Yvonne De Carlo
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Ruth Roman?
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Sasheen Littlefeather
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Nina Foch
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It’s Sacheen Littlefeather (née Marie Cruz), the girl who pinch-hit for Marlon Brando at the 1973 Oscars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacheen_Littlefeather
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Jessica Walker
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Olivia de Havilland? If so, this is the best shot I’ve seen and can’t quite believe it.
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Beverly Garland.
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Barbara Rush
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Andrea Leeds?
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Suzan Ball?
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June Foray
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Linda Marsh
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Yvette Dugay
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Vivian Vance?
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Barbara Steele
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Barbara Barrie
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Joan Taylor
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Cara Williams
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The incomparable Keely Smith. Still going strong, even without a Prima.
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Teshena Conlon
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Giselle McKenzie
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I think this is a pre-Carmen Dorothy Dandridge.
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Is this Marisa Pavan, Pier Angeli’s twin sister? And is the first still from APACHE?
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Jessica Walter
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Jan Clayton
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Jan Clayton
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Gisele MacKenzie
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debra paget
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Joanne Rio with Liberace
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Giselle Mackenzie, Liberace
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Liberace is the man. I’m still working on our mystery person.
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One “mystery guest” is Liberace and could the Mystery Movie Photo be Jane Wyman?
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Joanne Rio?
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the guy on the right looks like Liberace…
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or Lawrence Welk
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Joanne Rio
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Joanne Dru?
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Joanne Rio?
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Is this Phyllis Coates?
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Joanna Rio.
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Joanne Rio
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Claudette Colbert
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Joanne Rio?
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Cut to the chase already! We don’t need to see umpteen more pictures to realize that no one (except for one person) has any idea who she is. And something tells me when you *do* ID her, there will be a huge chorus of “Who???”
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Giselle McKenzie?
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Joanne Rio
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I’l like to know who she is. Without photos that give a precise date or event or something, it doesn’t seem that any others of us will identify her. I’ve been looking through my books like Pictorial History of the Talkies and books on Indians in the movies, and not finding anything.
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Larry, you’re killing us! Yes, I vote for you to identify her. Regarding the many pictures, perhaps a niece of one of the newpaper’s employees! Carmen
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More pictures. I loving seeing the Times Archival photos.
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is it Joanne Rio?
The man in the picture with her is Liberace.
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WHO IS SHE?
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See more pix, please.
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Joanne Rio?
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Is it Joanne Rio ~ one time ‘fiancee’ of Liberace?
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Although I am dying to know who this woman is, she, at first glance, looks like so many women, would you post more pictures, as many as you can?
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Joanne Rio?
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Joanne Rio
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I’d rather see the answer. This isn’t much fun when the people are so obscure as to only have one person identify the person.
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Here’s an idea! Post more pictures AND her ID. That way everyone will be happy.
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name her already for bleep’s sake! gotta agree with the earlier poster who said when you do identify her we’ll all say who
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more pics! 🙂
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