“I want to immediately become French in everything – in the way I live, the way I make love, the way I sleep and dress.” This is what Vienna-born Romy Schneider exclaims in the youth of her 20s.
The world says she is the best thing Austria has given since the waltz. And in Germany, she is compared to movie idols Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. If she were alive today, on September 23, Rosemarie Magdalena Albach-Retti, as her birth name is, would be 85 years old.
When Romy was born in 1938, Austria was already part of the Nazi Reich after the Anschluss and her family became German subjects. But her mother Magda Schneider is German from Bavaria. Romi is a hereditary actress – both her father and mother are actors, and so is her grandmother, whose name she bears. So from a young age she knew that her destiny was to become an actress. But she loves folklore, is interested in history and draws very well. However, her parents are constantly on the set, and soon the family divorces. She is only 4 years old and together with her brother Wolf grows up with her grandmother in a Bavarian village. The world was experiencing World War II, and her mother strongly sympathized with the Nazis and the Führer. Years later, in 1976, in an interview published after her death, Alice Schwarzer Romy told the publisher of Emma magazine that Magda Schneider was Hitler’s lover and how she suffered between her and the dictator: My mother slept with Hitler, I will never forgive her.”
After the war, her mother married the Cologne restaurateur Hans Herbert, and Romy was sent to a Catholic boarding school at Goldenstein Castle, near Salzburg, and left to be raised by nuns.
At the age of 14, she dreams of studying at the art school in Cologne, but falls into the harsh atmosphere of her stepfather and domineering mother. Magda wants to command her daughter’s life, she has ambitions for her to become an actress like her, and subjects her to a strict regime – nutritional and physically exhausting. 16-year-old Romy weighs only 43 kg. She always felt her father’s lack of protection through her mother’s dictatorial nature. Tender and sensitive, dreams and strives for warmth and love.
The first roles in films such as “When White Lilacs Bloom” she played together with her mother, even taking her artistic surname Schneider. Romi’s Northern Aryan beauty had already impressed the director Marishka, and he made her famous with the big-budget trilogy about Empress Sisi, where she entrusts the main role.
Moviegoers are delighted and captivated by the role that will mark her professional path. But Romy dreams of freedom, of personal expression beyond the fame of his parents. And when she is offered to shoot in Paris for the movie “Christine”, she immediately leaves. She runs away from family dictates and guardianship and from the stepfather who tries to rape her. “I loved my mother very much and her advice was valuable to me, but then for a long time I was haunted by nightmares in which she stood behind me’.
At Orly Airport, she is greeted by her future film partner – a young man with sparkling blue eyes, who clumsily hands her a bouquet of red roses. This is Alain Delon. He, a novice actor, until recently only an extra, steps in front of the already famous Romy and does not know what can he say – she doesn’t speak French and he doesn’t speak German. Both are unimpressed. “Everything seemed tasteless to me and the boy himself uninteresting.” She is 20, already a star. Her fee is 75 million francs (old), and Alain only 300 thousand.
He sees “some puffed-up, sweet-stupid girl from Vienna – complete boredom”. Arguments begin, angry musings on the set. However, Jean-Claude Briali is the first to note that they obviously complement each other and are for each other. And after the end of filming Romy breaks the chains that bind her to home and stays in Paris. Wild days with Alain begin – racing around France in Delon’s open cabriolet, nights in Parisian bars, introduction to world bohemia and romantic evenings in her hotel room. There she cooks them and her mother Magda. She is furious, she doesn’t take Alain seriously, who is leading her daughter to failure. And she almost forcefully insists that they get officially engaged.
6 years of engagement followed, during which she endured the difficult character of Alain Delon – she was ready to endure anything – rudeness, infidelity, even physical violence. But she loves him madly, he is her world. The intimate and secular life of the Romy – Delon couple fills the tabloid and world press. They are known as the most famous lovers. And this is true for Romy, but not for the rising star Delon. In 1963, the beautiful fairy tale ended. Romi is in Hollywood for the movie “The Process”, she and Alain talk for hours on the phone. But when she returns, she finds their shared apartment empty. And just a note: “I’m giving you back your freedom and I’m keeping your heart for myself.” He is married to another – Natalie, and is expecting a child.
Romi is killed, humiliated, shocked. He’s 25 and he wants to die. “There is nothing colder than dead love,” she wrote and attempted suicide. True love ended. In the following years, a relationship with the German playwright Harry Mayen followed, among others, and her marriage to Mayen, from which her son David was born , who brings her back to life.
And also her participation in a number of famous films – over 50 – “The Cardinal”, “What’s New”, “The Things of Life”, “The Assassination of Trotsky”, “The Old Rifle”… She is the muse of directors such as Carlo Ponti, Orson Welles, Luchino Visconti… She is friends with the great Coco Chanel, with the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna… Received a César Award in 1976 for Best Actress for “It’s Important to Love” and in 1979 for “An Ordinary Story” “. But in 1969, Delon reappeared in her life, when the two partnered in “The Pool”.
Journalists and paparazzi are waiting, watching them, hoping that after the passionate scenes, the old feelings of love will return. Apparently Romy still has strong feelings, but Delon says that’s the script. Nothing followed except the request for divorce from the offended husband. Romi is the loser again.
Two years later Mayen was found hanged, and Romy blamed himself for the rest of his days. Despite everything, Schneider remains very productive, even shooting several films at the same time. It’s like he’s racing against time.
In 1975, she married a second time to her much younger secretary, Daniel Biazzini, who was in love with her, and in 1977 their daughter Sarah was born. However, Romi’s halo of a world star does not make her happy. It seems to be designed to have highs and lows. Misfortunes overtake her one after the other. She was diagnosed with a tumor in her kidney, and divorced her second husband. But the death blow overtook her in 1981, when her only beloved son, David, died in an accident. She is desperate and broken. Depression is killing her slowly, she tries to quench it with anti-depressants and alcohol. She is 43, and she is completely mentally degraded. Until that May 29, 1982, when her heart burst – either from the combination of drugs + alcohol, or from grief…
Romy is buried in Boissy-Saint-Avoire, 50 km from Paris. After her death, Pedro Almodovar made the film “All about my mother”. In 2020, unknown persons desecrated the grave of the actress. They moved the tombstone and opened the tomb, probably for robbery, thinking that there was something valuable there.
2023-09-25 06:44:06
#mother #lover #Hitler #Alain #Delon
