Lil Dagover profile
Actor profile

Lil Dagover

29th September 1887 Madioen, Madioen, Dutch East Indies [now Madiun, East Java, Indonesia] Acting

A prominent German film actress born on 30 September 1887 at Madiven, Java, the daughter of a forest ranger in the service of the Dutch authorities. Sent at the age of ten to Baden-Baden to study, she later entered the cinema thanks to her marriage in 1917 to the actor Fritz Dagover who was 25 years her senior. They divorced in 1919 but not before he had introduced her to director Robert Wiene and other notables of German cinema. She made her screen debut in Fritz Lang's Harakiri (1919). Immediately after she appeared in Wiene's classic expressionist film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)). Apart from three trips -- one to Sweden in 1927, another to France in 1928-9 and one to Hollywood in 1931 -- most of Lil Dagover's career and fate was linked to that of the German cinema, where her role was usually that of the frail, menaced heroine. She continued to star in a great number of films during the Nazi era. Among her best performances were her roles in Congress Dances (1931), in Gerhard Lamprecht's The Higher Command (1935) and in Veit Harlan's The Kreutzer Sonata (1937). She also acted in the Deutsches Theatre Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, at forces shows and at war theaters. At one time, she was reported to have been a close friend of Adolf Hitler. In 1944, she received the War Merits Cross. Dagover continued her career in post-war Germany, playing many supporting parts until the late 1970s.

121 Movies 7 TV Shows 128 Credits
Filmography

Movies & TV Shows

Kolibri poster
Kolibri 9th July 1971 as Anna Maria Hansen
Triad poster
Triad 23rd May 1938 as Cornelia Contarini
Fridericus poster
Fridericus 8th February 1937 as Marquise de Pompadour
Boycott poster
Boycott 14th December 1930 as Frau von Generaldirektor Haller
Old Song poster
Old Song 15th October 1930 as Baronin Eggedy
Va Banque poster
Va Banque 18th September 1930 as Harriet Williams
Monte Cristo poster
Monte Cristo 30th April 1929 as Mercédès / Comtesse de Morcerf
Tartuffe poster
Tartuffe 25th January 1926 as Frau Elmire / Elmire, Orgon's wife
Phantom poster
Phantom 13th November 1922 as Marie Starke
Destiny poster
Destiny 6th October 1921 as Young Woman / Zobeide / Mona Fiametta / Tiao Tsien
Bambi poster
Bambi 1st January 1948 as Self