From Wikipedia
Lya De Putti (January 10, 1897 – November 27, 1931) was a
Hungarian film actress of the silent era, noted for her portrayal of vamp
characters.
She began her stage career on the Hungarian Vaudeville
circuit. She soon progressed to Berlin, where after performing in the ballet,
she made her screen debut in 1918. She became the premiere danseuse at the
Berlin Winter Garden in 1924.
Around that time German film director Jol Mai noticed her
and cast her in her first important film, The Mistress of the World. She
followed this success with noteworthy performances in Manon Lescaut and Varieté
(1925). The latter featured her opposite Emil Jannings and directed by E. A.
Dupont. Both films are UFA productions. While in Germany, De Putti starred with
such actors as Conrad Veidt, Alfred Abel, Werner Krauss, Grete Mosheim, and Lil
Dagover and was filmed by directors F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang.
The actress came to America in February 1926. At the time
she told reporters she was twenty-two years old. Her ocean liner's records list
her as having been twenty-six. De Putti was generally cast as a vamp character,
and often wore her dark hair short, in a style similar to that of Louise Brooks
or Colleen Moore. De Putti starred in D. W. Griffith's The Sorrows of Satan
(1926).
Despite working with such distinguished actors as Adolphe
Menjou and Zasu Pitts, she failed to make it big, and left the screen by 1929
to attempt to restart her career on Broadway.
Her Hollywood efforts were inhibited by her foreign accent.
Later she went to England to make silent movies and studied the English
language. Soon she returned to America to attempt talkies.
She died in 1931, aged 34, in the Harbor Sanitorium.
