Lucy Millowitsch

Lucy Millowitsch (8 November 1905 – 21 June 1990) was a German stage-actress, screen star, stage director/producer, theatre co-owner/manager and dramatist. Later she teamed up with her brother to run the Cologne Millowitsch Theatre, which became known at the time as a venue for "popular, low-brow comedies". Life Lucy Millowitsch was born in Chemnitz. She was born into a long-established theatrical dynasty. Michael Millowitsch, her great-great-great grandfather, had created a successful puppet theatre in Cologne as far back as the late eighteenth century. Her father was the stage actor and theatre impresario Peter Wilhelm Millowitsch (1880–1945). Her mother, born Käthe Planck, came originally from Vienna. Her father's younger sister was the stage and screen performer Cordy Millowitsch. Lucy and her younger brother Willy Millowitsch were appearing on the stage with their father from an early age. In 1936, as the German economy recovered, and after several years without a permanent home for the family theatre company, their father opened a new theatre at the "Colonia House" building, a one-time dance hall, in Cologne's Aachener Straße, where the family theater company enjoyed great public success over the next few years. Brother and sister formed an effective on-stage partnership. During the later 1930s Lucy Millowitsch started to accept film roles. In 1939 she appeared alongside her aunt Cordy Millowitsch in Kornblumenblau ("Corn-flower Blue"). Other films in which she appeared included Trenck, der Pandur (Tremck, the Squaddie, 1940), Komödianten ("Comedians"), 1941), Mein Leben für Irland ("My Life for Ireland", 1941) and Das große Spiel ("The Big Game", 1942). However, as the war dragged on she withdrew from her film work to concentrate on the family theatre. Her father died on 14 January 1945.