Rose Stradner (1913-1958)

 
The Last Gangster (1937), which airs today on TCM, is one of only three films made in America by Rose Stradner. The Austrian actress, born Rosa Stradner, had a high strung presence and refined beauty in her role as hoodlum Edward G. Robinson's naive wife. The vulnerability she played in her portrayal of a woman who unwittingly marries a criminal seemed a bit more credible thanks to the steeliness she gave the character after discovering the true nature of her husband and her tenderness toward her son by him. Stradner caught my eye as quite a distinctive actress when I first saw her in this MGM film and I was puzzled that the studio did not use her in more movies.

A bit of research revealed that this beautiful, statuesque blonde had been among the more gifted stars of Max Reinhardt's theater in Vienna in the '30s. Among those who were influenced by her there were Peter Lorre, whom she encouraged to play Hamlet if he longed to, despite his physical limitations. In the audience, a  boyish Oskar Werner also knew her work and formed an adolescent crush on her that he later reported (in bluntest terms) to her younger son. Leaving her successful life behind, Rosa Stradner lost her father, who was killed by the Nazis and her brother, who became an SS officer who was executed by the Allies at the end of the war. The contrast between the tragedies of both a personal and continental scale must have seemed even more painful in contrast to the sumptuous, high-wire life she embarked on in America.

Above: Rose Stradner with James Stewart in The Last Gangster (1937).

After a blandly written role in the psychological drama Blind Alley (1939) as Ralph Bellamy's wife, Stradner's other, better known American film was The Keys of the Kingdom, (1944) in which she played an aristocratic nun languishing in China and taking a long time to learn a lesson in humility from noble priest, Gregory Peck. Frankly, I always found her portrayal of an educated, rather neurotic nun, quite realistic when compared to most Hollywood sisters, based on my own experiences with nuns who were trying to educate me and drub some piety into my pagan soul over the course of a 12 year stint in Catholic schools. In any case, Stradner created an interesting portrait of a highly disciplined figure who struggled to keep her soul in turmoil well hidden. The intelligence of the actress and her characterization of a person who refused to be simple or likable as she went about doing what she saw as her duty helped to give this story some dramatic depth.

Escaping from Europe just before the Anschluss might have made leaving impossible, the star of the Viennese stage and several German language movies had signed a contract with MGM to the delight of Louis B. Mayer. Working there, she also caught the eye of producer-writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who married the lady in 1939, with the couple becoming parents of Christopher and Thomas Mankiewicz eventually. Both of their sons enjoyed long careers in the entertainment industry as writers, producers and occasional actors.

Sadly, as eloquently described in the late Tom Mankiewicz's memoir, "My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider's Journey Through Hollywood" (University Press of Kentucky), her life as the spouse of one of the most talented individuals who ever made a movie was long on artistic frustration, guilt over her children, pain, illness and tragedy in the end. Rose Stradner, suffering from what now appears to have been a form of schizophrenia, killed herself in 1958.

Above: Tom Mankiewicz (center), age 11, with his mother, father and brother Christopher in 1953, the year his father, Joe (right), filmed 'The Barefoot Contessa.' Collection of Tom Mankiewicz

According to Tom Mankiewicz,  despite her problems, she did love her sons, and "Mother was an extremely intelligent woman and capable of great warmth. She had a unique ear for languages and spoke English and later Italian fluently, without a trace of accent. She was a tremendous help to Dad as an in-house critic of his screenplays. He routinely solicityed her opinion and acted on it." Given his father's drive to succeed and to conquer every aspect of Hollywood, her increasing illness in the '40s & '50s must have made life difficult for the family, despite occasional periods of relative peace and stability.

Finally, Tom Mankiewicz concluded, the "most lasting and life-altering effect [his mother] had on me, however, was putting me in an endless quest to find her again somewhere and cure her. I developed a strange form of radar that could immediately recognize a troubled woman (almost always an actress) and elicit an instant, receptive, silent reaction from her signifying that she recognized me too."

Another Hollywood tragedy or a victim of history and the slowness of medicine to help the mentally ill? Perhaps, but I can't help wishing things had been different for her.

A DVD-r from the Warner Archive of The Last Gangster (1937) is readily available for those who are interested in this movie. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) DVD is available from 20th Century Fox.

Sources:
Mankiewicz, Tom, My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider's Journey Through Hollywood, University Press of Kentucky, 2012.
Youngkin, Stephen, The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre, The University Press of Kentucky, 2011.