Tilly Losch : ' Schlagobers' Sweet Fragments From Her Life

Tilly Losch ‘Schlagobers’ Sweet Fragments From Her Life By William Cross, FSA Scot Ottilie Ethel Leopoldine Losch : Vienna c 1910 According to Dante, dancing is the real occupation of the inmates of Heaven. It was a dancing sort of morning that May day in Vienna, Austria, in 1910. On the cold, cobbled streets an ancient organ grinder with his hurdy-gurdy was playing a tune. Young Tilly Losch felt like dancing, so she danced, even although she was out in the street…. Tilly just loved dancing, especially pirouetting. Years later she told a reporter “ ( I ) did my first dance steps to a hurdy-gurdy playing outside my Vienna birthplace.” The little street dancer ( later described by Jean Cocteau as “ the greatest performing artist since Eleonora Duse” ) was (it is said) observed by Saharet, an American dancer, who was touring Europe. Saharet went to Tilly’s home with her and persuaded her mother, Eugenie Losch, to give her daughter dancing lessons. Her father Otto Emil Losch, did not know anything about it, and they were afraid to tell him. Tilly’s career was well under way before Herr Losch knew his daughter was on the highway to dancing fame. But sadly, he never lived long enough to see her greater glory and success. One chronicle records: “ In those years [ 1911-1919] [ Tilly’s] father was killed in an automobile accident, the War for Democracy was fought, the empire of Franz Josef was thrown to the wolves at Versailles, money in Vienna became useful and inexpensive for papering walls , Austria had a revolution… and Tilly Losch became one of the greatest dancers in the world.” Whether the above record and time frame are a faithful or true account or not, this was Tilly’s own memory of how she first came to be a dancer. She regaled the same tale in several interviews. However in one interview Tilly attributed more substance to her mother’s spark in her reasons for taking up dancing. “ My mother admired the Royal Opera House [ Vienna] very much…and she thought it would be a fine thing to see her daughter perform there some day. So she sent me to take lessons at the Imperial Ballet School. It is very difficult to get into this school. It requires very much ‘protection’ as we say. I do not know what that would be in English.” The reporter suggested glibly ‘Pull?’. Tilly vigorously agreed, remarking “ I think so, yes…. “ Dance histories record that Tilly was a player in a children’s ballet given at the Royal Opera House, Vienna. Alas, so great was her enthusiasm that at one performance she missed her footing on the stage and fell into the prompter’s corner. Tilly recalled this ghastly event years later “ I was dancing with a balloon in my hand…and between watching the balloon and gazing at the audience out there in the big opera house I didn’t look to see where I was going. So the first thing I knew I fell right down into the prompter’s box. “ After the accident, and, rescued from her stage fall, albeit in grief and tears, Tilly was ( by command) carried up to a box in the theatre occupied by an Austrian archduke and his duchess who patted the whimpering child and presented her with a box of chocolates from which they had been nibbling during the performance. Far from being overwhelmed at the royal favour Tilly examined the sweet box and when she found that some of the bonbons were missing, politely but firmly handed them back. The archduke’s party burst into roars of laughter and predicted a successful career for the businesslike little dancer who would take nothing second hand. Moreover Tilly had an uncompromising streak of ambition and a desire to make money. She admitted she broke away from the Vienna Royal Ballet because she wanted more money and because she wanted a chance to do her own choreography. She made her ambitions clear by once saying “ There are certain people who must find their own way..For instance, I have to go on groping in the dark to find my own little light even if no one else liked that light.” Another time Tilly remarked “ One’s eyes must be always open..and then one finds inspiration in all one sees.” Always self- disciplined, her training was intense from her very first ballet steps “I have danced since I was 7, and all these years have been drill- drill for ballet, drill for recitals. When I dance I am playing a part. I am the person I dance. ” FOR MORE INFORMATION CLICK/ VISIT HERE http://tilly-losch-schlagobers.yolasite.com/

Tilly Losch Dancer Actress Artist

Extract from William Cross’s latest book  “ Catherine and Tilly: Porchey Carnarvon’s Two Duped Wives”, published 18 November 2013.

Porchey’s Marriage to Tilly Losch

In 1939, to the surprise of many, the forty-one-year-old Porchey Carnarvon began an infatuation with, and married, Ottilie Ethel Leopoldine Losch (known as ‘Tilly’), “a very pretty Jewess”.[i]   Almost certainly an Austrian by birth, she was a very successful ballet dancer in Europe but later changed her dancing style to attract a wider following, starring on the popular stage and in film. She was closely associated with the Austrian director Max Reinhardt[ii] and the British impresario Charles B Cochran[iii]   in England and America. She was a divorcee, having been was married for a couple of years to the eccentric artist Edward James[iv] who greatly preferred men and boys to women. Tilly was famous for her hand ballets and twirling fingers;[v] she also painted and was the star of stage shows written by Noel Coward.  She “took London by storm in the 1928 revue This Year of Grace, dancing to all unexpected things as a figurine from a stained-glass window to ‘Air on a G String’ by Bach.” [vi]   

In London in the late 1920s and early 1930s and in Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s Tilly oozed glamour, climbing the rankings with her considerable dancing charm and gaining exposure on the silver screen with a variety of bizarre characterisations for  directors Sidney Franklin,  Herbert Wilcox and King Vidor.[vii] Through Tilly’s stage and movieland contacts Porchey cunningly romped his way through a chorus line of actresses in Britain and America, trying his luck with leading ladies of the era including Jessie Matthews, Deana Durbin and Rita Hayworth. Tilly was also Porchey’s meal ticket for many years in Hollywood, where he appeared at parties, sat on film sets, and was even tested once or twice for the movies. He also boasted of playing golf with Bing Crosby and on being first name terms with film legends such as Humphrey Bogart.

Tilly (described as “pretty as a kitten, with a shrewd eye for this world’s goods”[viii]) hesitated over marrying Porchey in England in 1939. She didn’t love him but he offered money, a safe home base and a title. However, even this did not answer her growing concern about her possible fate; as the Nazi jackboot began to stomp around Europe her Jewish blood would certainly have put her in grave danger were Germany to invade England.  In the end she opted for her portly aristocratic Lothario and a civil wedding took place at Caxton Hall, London, a few hours before war was declared. Porchey’s mother Almina and his sister Lady Evelyn Beauchamp stood in as witnesses.

The arrangement of Porchey conquering Austria was short lived.  Tilly put up with his attentions but when he was with a woman the Earl’s own pleasure always came first. This was the price she had to pay for the title but since she had an ageing mother living in America (whom she doted on and genuinely missed) and a film career at the point where she was still being offered parts in Hollywood, Porchey could not be allowed to stand in her way.

Thus after only ten weeks at Highclere (which had been converted to accommodate evacuee children from war-torn London) Tilly escaped to America. In July 1940 there was a brief reunion centred on Porchey feigning a near-death plea; he was only ill with a minor ailment but Tilly heard the sound of the cash register and travelled to Genoa where Porchey met her ship. A year after marrying they finally enjoyed a honeymoon at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo and spent time together in Paris (only weeks before the Germans entered the city) and finally in London before Tilly hightailed it back to America; whether to avoid further advances from the Germans or from Porchey one can never be sure. 

The rest of Porchey’s brief and tangled second marriage was interrupted by the events of the Second World War, as he went back into uniform in a dull, but safe administrative post.  Porchey wanted as always to have his cake and eat it, quickly installing one of his mistresses, the actress Jeanne Stuart, [ix] at Highclere almost as soon as Tilly landed in the USA on board the Empress of Britain.[x] Jeanne, briefly married to the businessman Sir Bernard Docker, [xi]was one of Porchey’s persistent old flames.  The complete matrimonial farce, with countless secrets and lies on both  sides of the Atlantic, was finally ended by a divorce in 1947 which had been preceded by a failed Court action by Porchey a few years earlier on the grounds that Tilly had in effect deserted him in July 1940.  

Later Tilly found a role for herself in America, whilst travelling backwards and forwards to a little flat she rented in London. Unlike Catherine she clung to her title of “Countess of Carnarvon”, despite famously declaring:    

“My role of ballerina comes first. Second is my work as a choreographer. My acting comes third, my painting fourth, I rate my role as Lady Carnarvon fifth in importance simply because I can’t think of anything interesting to put after painting….” [xii]

Catherine died in Switzerland in 1977, Tilly died in America on Christmas Eve of 1975. 

Porchey outlived both wives. After the divorces he still tried to charm them and deceive them; he was neither easy to live with as their husband nor to fob off as an ex- husband.

Porchey's attitude to women was like Toad of Toad Hall’s attitude to cars in The Wind in the Willows: if he saw one he had to have it, Poop! Poop! Both of Porchey’s wives, though worldly wise, were shocked by his serial infidelities. As this book will show, Porchey’s demons came from a childhood largely devoid of affection.  However a Freudian explanation for behaviour that meant notches were added to the bedpost of his four poster, whether he was nominally married at the time or not, may be a little simplistic. It is certainly true that all this extra-marital activity at times left both wives humiliated. They were, however, as hinted at, not complete paragons of virtue themselves. 

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[i] Charlie, Mortimer.  Dear Lupin: Letters to a Wayward Son. (2012). Constable & Robinson Ltd.

[ii] Max Reinhardt (1873-1943). Austrian born American stage and film actor and director.

[iii] Sir Charles Blake Cochran (1872-1951). Theatre  manager in London in the 1920s onwards.

[iv] Edward William Frank James (1907-1984). Wealthy English artist and poet.

[v] George Jackson, the American dance critic writes “There is film of how Tilly Losch danced, not from her initial career in Vienna but from the 1930s and ‘40s. The earliest footage is her Hand Dance (1930 – 1933?). This solo for the hands, arms and upper body was originally co-choreographed with her Vienna colleague Hedy (Hedwig) Pfundmayr. Both rehearsal and performance takes of it are on the Internet [You Tube], the former showing more of her entire body in motion. Tilly’s hands in it are expressive but not fussy.”

[vi] Cartland, Barbara. I search for rainbows. Arrow Books. (1973).

[vii] Sidney Franklin directed Tilly in “The Good Earth” (1937); Herbert Wilcox directed Tilly in “Limelight” and King Vidor directed Tilly in “Duel in the Sun (1947).   

[viii] Cartland, Barbara. I search for rainbows. Arrow Books. ( 1973).

[ix] Jeanne Stuart (1908-2003). British actress, born Ivy Sweet. After the Second World War she moved the USA and in 1952 married Baron Eugene de Rothschild.

[x] There seems to be some conflict over whether the ship was heading for America or Canada or both. The romantic novelist Barbara Cartland says in her “Book of Celebrities” Quartet Books (1982) , which has a few pages devoted to Tilly, that  they “travelled to Canada together during the war. There were submarines stalking us, the ship was overrun with children, there weren’t enough lifeboats or lifebelts, it was very rough. Tilly lay in bed looking lovely, composed, mysterious and ate caviar.”

[xi] Sir Bernard Docker (1896-1978). Leading industrialist associated with the Daimler Car Company.

[xii] Wyndham, Horace. Chorus to Coronet. British Technical and General Press. London. (1951).

The Dancing Countess of Carnarvon : Tilly Losch & Her Husbands

“ The Dancing Countess of Carnarvon :  Tilly Losch & Her Husbands”

By William Cross, FSA Scot

“ My role of ballerina comes first. Second is my work as a choreographer. My acting comes third, my painting fourth, I rate my role as Lady Carnarvon fifth in importance simply because I can’t think of anything interesting to put after painting….”

William Cross, FSA Scot, the author of “ The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon : A Candid biography of Almina, 5^th Countess of Carnarvon of Tutankhamun Fame” the only full length biography of Lady Almina,  is researching for a new book, a biography of the dancer and actress Tilly Losch, who was the second 6^th Countess of Carnarvon.

The new book, a limited edition,  will be published in January 2013.

Tilly was born Ottilie Ethel Leopoldine  Losch, in 1903, the daughter of an Austrian banker. From the age of ten she danced her way right to the very top of show business. In the mid 1930s she was a woman of means,  “earning ten-thousand a year”.  

As a young girl she held the high position of premier ballerina. Later she was dubbed  the  “ very paradigm” of the late 1920s and early 1930s Society”.    After a series of stage and  film roles,  marriages, exhibitions of her paintings  and lashings of high brow living  Tilly  died in New York City on Christmas Eve of  1975. A handful of people attended her memorial service in London. Some years later her last remains were buried in Austria. 

Tilly Losch bedded many; she spat out two husbands and had several notable lovers.  She is best remembered as a fine dancer  and a modest stage and film actress with impressive  roles in Reinhardt’s play The Miracle and on film alongside Paul Muni in This Good Earth. Legendry impresario C B Cochran famed for his dazzling review shows saw her performing in her native Vienna and brought her to London.  He made her a star attraction. She appeared in the same era and on the same bills as Jessie Matthews and Lady Diana Manners.  With her “natural beauty and huge, round pale blue eyes she attracted men like a moth to a light.”  Tilly was seduced by and in turn she became the seducer of  several male personalities of her era. She married two men, both of noble breed, first in  February 1931, in New York,  the enigmatic artist –poet Edward Frank Willis James ( 1907-1984) ( a godson of King Edward VII)  and second, in September 1939, in London, Henry George Albert Marius, Victor Francis Herbert, ( 1898-1987)  the 6^th Earl of Carnarvon.  Both marriages ended in highly contentious divorce proceedings.

The James divorce was the most controversial marital expose of its time.  As a foreign incomer to the tight knit British gentry sect Tilly had to be taught what her stark limitations were off the musical stage. She was humiliated in her divorce action with James. The upper classes were in no mood for this brassy continental’s attempt to bring down the godson of a King of England. 

Tilly had committed adultery with a Russian aristocrat, Prince Serge Obolensky, in New York between August and October 1931, being her first year of marriage. Her defence crumbled and it cost her dearly. 

As well as appraising the life and times of Edward James, William Cross is also undertaking a special study of Serge Obolensky’s life and career from various sources, including surviving legal papers and Tilly’s own correspondence. He probes whether there was an establishment conspiracy, which, if true, implicates several highly, placed figures behind Tilly’s fall from grace and favour.

Tilly eventually recovered her fame .  Her later maital conquest was  of Henry, the “randy, rakish Porchey ” 6^th Earl of Carnarvon, of Highclere Castle. Theirs was a marriage made in hell if ever there was one, and its bizarre passage listed and lingered from 1939-1947 with Tilly in the USA for practically all of World War Two, and the 6^th Earl stranded in England.    

In her later years Tilly was a lively transatlantic partygoer, socialite and hostess. She painted a good deal and exhibited some of her scores of paintings. She also made several cameo appearances on film and in TV and remained one of the enduring Hollywood film sect and photographic icons surviving in picture and on screen in several cult movies.

“ The Dancing Countess of Carnarvon :  Tilly Losch & Her Husbands” promises to be as explosive a tale of High Life scandal as “ The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon”.

William Cross welcomes any snippets, written material, letters, photographs, stories anecdotes, or any knowledge of anyone concerning Tilly Losch and the key players in Tilly’s life, in particular Edward James, Serge Obolensky,  and Porchey 6^th Earl of Carnarvon. He is also keen to know  more about Tilly’s close friendship with the London publicist, the late Billy Hamilton, of Billy Hamilton Associates, and the whereabouts of Hamilton’s correspondence and papers, he once lived at Cookham, in Berkshire.   Please contact him by e-mail williecross@aol.com