Synchronicitously, I learned about Renate Müller (1906-1937) from two trusted sources within days of each other a few months back. One was Eve Golden, who wrote terrific articles about the Weimar/Nazi Era German movie star here and here for the L.A. Daily Mirror. The other was my wife, who was watching Müller’s best known film, the original version of Viktor und Viktoria (1933) on the Criterion channel. Like Golden, I have never been impressed with Blake Edwards’ middle-brow and timidly mainstream 1982 remake, and now that I know Müller’s story, even less so. (The original version naturally has period charm and a subversive flavor that Edwards was tone deaf to. But there’s more.)
Born in Munich, Müller was the daughter of a successful newspaper editor. She studied at the Harzer Bergtheater under G.W. Pabst and others, making her stage debut in a 1925 production of Sommernachtstraum. (That translates as “Summer Night’s Dream” — presumably an adaptation of Shakespeare). She began her career in silent pictures in 1929, and became an international star, making films in Berlin, Paris, and London. The Office Girl (1931) made her a star. Sunshine Susie, made the same year was her first English film. Most of her films were musical comedies in the Lubitsch mold, and this insulated her career somewhat from encroaching Nazi disruption for a time following their ascension in 1933. The non-political and light nature of most of the films meant that it could be “business as usual”. Unlike her contemporary Marlene Dietrich, who very sensibly fled the country, or Leni Riefenstahl, who took the mercenary route by cooperating with the Nazis, Müller chose the risky path of remaining in the country while trying to remain true to herself.
But this precarious situation couldn’t exist forever. Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine saw the blonde and blue-eyed Müller as the embodiment of the Aryan ideal, and began to pressure her to do films that were overtly more approving of the changes that were taking place in Germany. By Togger (1937), the choice would seem to have been made for her. And we know that she wasn’t happy about that, because apparently she wound up in a hospital, where she died (suspiciously) not long after. The public cause of death at the time was given as “epilepsy”, with the implication that she had died during a fit. But the official recorded cause, unreleased at the time, was suicide. She had plunged out a window to her death. Fog and rumor abound about what really happened, but our common sense tells us plenty. Some say she was at the hospital to detox from alcohol or morphine addiction. Others say she was there for knee surgery. Some say Gestapo officers were seen entering the hospital just before she died. Some say she drunkenly fell out the window. Others, not illogically, theorize that she was thrown out the window for refusing to cooperate. It’s just as likely that she driven to throw herself out after being tormented by her oppressors, both politically and sexually. Sounds about right, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s the Nazi M.O. Nothing about it sounds far-fetched.
Müller was only 31 at the time of her death. One wishes she had managed to flee the country like so many of her contemporaries had. With eight more years of Nazi rule on the horizon at the time of her death, it’s pretty unlikely that a non-cooperating artist like herself could stand strong and survive for the duration.
(Travalanche) 
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