It is considered the most contagious laugh in German film history: Swiss actress Liselotte Pulver has captivated audiences with her deep throat chuckles since the 1950s. In the 80s she enchanted children with her infectious humor on “Sesame Street”. Today, October 11th, she turns 95 years old.
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“Many people say I have such a thunderous laugh,” she said mischievously in a television interview when she was young. “But I can’t help it!” For decades, powder was considered the personification of good mood. In her early days she had completely different plans: “I wanted to be a tragedian. “I wanted to play very serious roles and make people cry,” she said in another interview.
Classics of film history
How good for the audience that she took a different path. Pulver showed her versatility in numerous films in the 50s and 60s. For example, she appeared in front of the camera as a lovely Hungarian woman in “I often think of Piroschka” (1955) or as a disguised craftsman Felix in “The Wirtshaus im Spessart” (1958).
And then came Billy Wilder’s “One, Two, Three” (1961), for many people the best Lilo Pulver film, in which the Bernese woman as “Miss Ingeborg” dances provocatively on the table in a Marilyn Monroe style in a polka dot dress . The Berlin comedy was overshadowed by the construction of the Wall when no one felt like laughing, and initially flopped. It wasn’t until the film was released again 25 years later that it gained cult status.
Pulver showed her serious side in literary films. She was seen as Zaza in “The Confessions of the Imposter Felix Krull” in 1957, in “Buddenbrooks” (1959) she played daughter Antonie, and in the French Diderot film adaptation “The Nun” (1966) she was an unhappy monastery resident, who flees and fails.
Life in the retirement home
Pulver has lived in seclusion in a retirement home in Bern for many years. She was last seen on television in Switzerland in 2021, when – as in 2012 – she was honored at the film awards ceremony. The broadcaster SRF visited them in Bern. Of course she was happy, she said at the time, laughing, of course. “This is proof that I’m still here.”
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A tabloid magazine that fills its columns with all sorts of stories about celebrities and aristocrats recently wrote that Pulver was happy and content, wanted to live to be over 100 and even dreamed of a new partner: “He would have to be beautiful, rich and funny,” she is quoted as saying. That would suit her.
Films with the biggest in the industry
Pulver appeared in front of the camera with film greats such as Hans Albers, Gustaf Gründgens, Heinz Rühmann, Curd Jürgens, OW Fischer and Hardy Krüger, and in French productions with Jean Gabin, among others.
Pulver dreamed of a global career and also filmed in Hollywood at the end of the 1950s. But in order to remain true to her German-speaking audience, she turned down roles alongside Charlton Heston in “Ben Hur” or in “El Cid” because filming had already been agreed. The films became global successes.
Pulver later described canceling the film “El Cid” – then cast with Sophia Loren – as her biggest mistake, but it brought her happiness privately. Instead, she shot the film “Gustav Adolfs Page” (1960) in Germany, where she met her future husband, the German actor and director Helmut Schmid. She also filmed “Kohlhiesel’s Daughters” with him in 1962. In it she can be seen in the dual role of twin sisters, one simple and mostly angry, the other devastatingly charming.
Private happiness and tragedy
Pulver was married to Schmid for more than 30 years, her greatest happiness, as she always emphasized. Son Marc-Tell (62) still lives with his family in the family home on Lake Geneva. Daughter Mélisande committed suicide in 1989. Schmid died in 1992. How did she cope with the blows of fate? “You have no other choice,” she told Swiss television. “You just have to keep living and make the best of it.” “Laughed in the face of life” was the name of one of her books that came onto the market in 2016.
When the German film industry became more socially critical than entertaining, it became difficult for Pulver. «Difficult times began for me. “I was not the first choice of the makers of the New German Film,” she wrote bluntly in a 2019 book in which she published photos and letters from her private archive. Her last film was “The Superwoman” in 1996 with Veronica Ferres.
It is considered the most contagious laugh in German film history: Swiss actress Liselotte Pulver has captivated audiences with her deep throat chuckles since the 1950s. In the 80s she enchanted children with her infectious humor on “Sesame Street”. Today, October 11th, she turns 95 years old.
“Many people say I have such a thunderous laugh,” she said mischievously in a television interview when she was young. “But I can’t help it!” For decades, powder was considered the personification of good mood. In her early days she had completely different plans: “I wanted to be a tragedian. “I wanted to play very serious roles and make people cry,” she said in another interview.
