Wednesday - November 24, 2010

SOME DON’T KNOW AND OTHER MIGHT HAVE FORGOTTEN.  INGRID PITT … RIP

I don’t recall her in The Wicker Man so the part may have indeed been small.  But I recall her (of course I would) from the other movies mentioned. I remember the very pretty face and figure more then the part to be honest.  Kinda scary in a way. Always is when people pass away and they’re either your age or worse, younger.

This is how she’s remembered by the folks who saw those vampire movies.

Queen of Hammer horror Ingrid Pitt dies aged 73

By Daily Mail Reporter

* Imprisoned in Nazi concentration camp aged five
* Fled Communist East Germany on night of stage debut
* Married U.S. officer who dragged her out of River Spree

Actress Ingrid Pitt, who survived a Nazi concentration camp and fled Communist police to become one of Britain’s best-known horror stars, has died at the age of 73.

The Polish-born star collapsed in London last week while on her way to an birthday dinner hosted by members of her fan club.

The cause of death wasn’t known, although her daughter Steffanie Pitt said her mother had recently been in poor health.

Pitt was best known as a seductive screen siren in a string of British horror films, including The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula.

She also had a minor part in the 1973 cult classic The Wicker Man.

Born to a mother of Jewish descent, Pitt was held in a Nazi concentration camp at the age of five.

She survived the war, but was forced to flee Communist Berlin on the night of her planned stage debut, plunging into the River Spree which flows through the city in a bid to escape East German authorities.

In a dramatic twist, she was rescued by an American soldier who would go on to become her husband.

Her movie career was jump-started by her role in the 1968 action-adventure movie, ‘Where Eagles Dare’.

The World War II drama would eventually lead to her being taken on by Britain’s Hammer Films - home to Christopher Lee’s Dracula. She would play alongside the horror legend in 1971’s The House That Dripped Blood and The Wicker Man.

Robin Hardy, the director of The Wicker Man, said he had ‘very good memories’ of Pitt.

He said: ‘She was a very attractive person in every sense. She was a perfectly good actress but a very decent person as well, not that those two things don’t often go together.

‘I’m very sorry to hear she’s gone.’

Steffanie Pitt said her mother was a determined woman and that ‘acting was in her blood from the word “go“‘.

It seems her mother would have agreed, writing in her autobiography, Life’s A Scream, that she had a ‘strong sense of the dramatic even before I was born’.

Indeed, Ingrid’s birth interrupted her parents’ attempts to flee Nazi Germany via Poland in 1937, delaying their attempt to escape to Britain.

Caught by the Germans, Pitt and her mother were interned at the Stutthof concentration camp. She survived the war and joined the Berliner Ensemble, where she worked under actress Helene Weigel, the widow of German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

But the political climate in East Germany didn’t suit her, and her outspoken criticism of the Communist officials didn’t suit the government there either.

She left Berlin on the night of her planned stage debut, diving into (and nearly drowning in) the Spree, which runs through the German capital. Pitt was rescued by a handsome U.S. lieutenant, who she would later marry.

She then moved to America, and - following the breakup of her marriage - to Spain, where she starred in her first movies despite a limited command of the language.

Discovered while watching a bullfight, a career in Hollywood and British horror would follow.

Although Pitt had a series of other roles in film and on television, it was her 1970s vampire films which drew a cult following, with fans crowning her ‘England’s first lady of horror’.

Pitt embraced it, writing occasional columns for websites such as ‘Den of Geek’ and making frequent visits to conventions and festivals.

‘It’s great meeting the fans,’ wrote on her fansite, Pitt of Horror.

‘They tell me that I am more beautiful now than when I was making films a quarter of a century ago. All lies, of course, but sweet.’

Pitt is survived by her second husband, her daughter Steffanie, and a granddaughter.

MORE PHOTOS HERE

Posted by peiper     on 11/24/2010 at 02:11 PM   
Filed Under: • OBITITUARIES •  
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