I've never been a fan of horror movies, and I don't think I'd ever heard the name of Ingrid Pitt, who died last week at the age of 73. But according to her obituary in the Telegraph, she really had quite a life.
She was born Ingoushka Petrov on November 21 1937 in Poland, interrupting attempts by her father, a Prussian engineer, and Polish-Jewish mother to escape from Nazi Germany to Britain. Her parents were on a train to leave the country when Ingrid Pitt's mother went into labour, forcing them to get off and seek medical help. Unable to escape afterwards, they were eventually rounded up by the Germans in 1943, when Ingrid and her mother were separated from her father and interned at the Stutthof concentration camp.
In 1945, with the Red Army closing in, the Nazis marched survivors towards Germany; but when Allied aircraft strafed the roads, Ingrid and her mother managed to escape into a snowbound forest. By the time they were found by the American Red Cross, the war had been over for several weeks without their realising it.
Diagnosed with tuberculosis, Ingrid spent three months in hospital and was not expected to recover. But she survived to be reunited with her elderly father in Berlin. ...
In the early 1960s Ingrid Pitt joined the Berliner Ensemble,... But the political climate in East Germany was not to her liking; neither did her outspoken criticism of communist officials impress the government there.
Her dissent brought her to the attention of the Volkspolizei and she determined to flee Berlin on the night of her planned stage debut, diving into (and nearly drowning in) the river Spree, which runs through the city. In a romantic twist, she was rescued by Laud Pitt, a handsome lieutenant in the US Army, whom she later married.
(photo taken from the Manchester Morgue)
She does look familiar, and I think that's from her role in the Clint Eastwood film, Where Eagles Dare. But apparently, I missed something:
Considered Britain's "Queen of Horror", chiefly on account of her impressive fangs and equally formidable embonpoint, Ingrid Pitt loomed large in a bold and brazen era of erotically-charged vampire pictures in the 1970s....
Her screen career had taken off after she played a supporting role in the Second World War action adventure Where Eagles Dare (1968). Her good looks and eastern European accent commended her to Hammer studio executives, who cast her as the seductive vampire Carmilla in the The Vampire Lovers (1970).
The film called for nude scenes, earning Ingrid Pitt the accolade of "the most beautiful ghoul in the world". Its blend of horror and sex did well at the box office and Ingrid Pitt was quickly cast as another buxom bloodsucker, opposite Christopher Lee in The House That Dripped Blood (1970).
Later, she became a writer, and even wrote her autobiography in 1999. Here's one brief excerpt (there are others, too, at her official website):
The guards gave their dogs a bit of slack to help the lazy 'Yids' to get a move on. Huge black shapes jostled and pushed at me. I was too terrified even to whimper. My hand was welded to my mother's but it didn't seem to help. I wanted to run away somewhere, anywhere. For a moment I was out of the crowding figures and in the glaring light - and that was even worse. The shouting and crying was horrendous. Everyone was running, stumbling. A number of times I would have fallen and been ground into mincemeat underfoot if it hadn't been for my mother's strong hand. I was crying now and, in my fear, trying to sit down. My mother knew something I didn't and wasn't allowing me to give way to my terror. And I wasn't her only concern. My father's head was bleeding again and in spite of his determination to keep on his feet it was touch and go whether he would make it to wherever we were headed. A couple of times we found ourselves on the outside of the bustling crowd. Even I knew it wasn't a good place to be. There were men in daunting black uniforms with sticks and dogs with sharp teeth.
She had a remarkable life, wouldn't you agree?
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