In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Danish actress Lilian Ellis (1907-1951) had a short but glittering career in German cinema. She was also a ballet dancer, a stage actress and a radio and television performer.
Lilian Ellis was born as Ellis Stampe Bendix in Denmark in 1907. She started ballet training with Asta Mollerup and Jenny Møller, after which she danced as a ballet dancer with groundbreaking Russian choreographer and dancer Michel Fokine in Paris. At the age of 16, she joined the company of Ellen Tels after which she raised her own dance company. She started to perform abroad in ballet and revue and joined Max Reinhardt’s Deutsche Theater in Berlin for a while.
In 1927, Ellis debuted in film with a small role in the French silent classic Casanova (1927), and the following year she already had a big part in Heut'spielt der Strauss (1928), scripted by Robert Wiene and starring Alfred Abel as Johan Strauss senior. The film portrays the relationship between the father and son Austrian composers Johann Strauss I and Johann Strauss II.
During the years 1928-1931, Ellis was a leading lady of the German cinema, playing many big parts in late silent and early sound films, including Der Leutnant Ihrer Majestät (1929) with Iván Petrovich, Im Prater blüh'n wieder die Bäume (1929), Liebeskleeblatt (1930), and the German-Austrain-Czech production Wiener Herzen (1930) with Werner Fuetterer.
Quite easily, Ellis made the passage to sound film with Georg Jacoby’s film Tausend Worte Deutsch (1930), the first sound film of Pat & Patachon (Fy och Bi). Then followed the films Der Bergführer von Zakopane (1931), Die lustige Weiber von Wien (1931) with Willi Forst, Die Frau von der man spricht (1931) with Mady Christians, Der Raub der Mona Lisa (1931) with again Forst, Kyritz-Pyritz (1931), and finally Schön ist die Manöverzeit (1931) with Ida Wüst. After that Ellis returned to Denmark.
From 1933 on Lilian Ellis toured from Paris to Warsaw. In 1934 Ellis was offered a Hollywood–contract but she remained in Europe and acted with Det Ny Teater and from 1935 on at the National Scala. The next year she acted in London and Paris revues. She collaborated with the revue ‘Tomands-fronten’ (1941) at the Apolloteatret with Hans W. Petersen.
When the Second World War broke out, she returned to the set for the Danish operetta-like show film Alle går rundt og forelsker sig (1941). Ellis played an operetta girl who bets with the other girls she can bring three men on their knees, but one is not so easily conquered. The film was such a success in Sweden that Ellis was offered a contract there. She played in the Swedish romantic comedy En melodi om våren (1943), in which she played a nightclub singer. It was her last leading role.
That same year, Ellis married editor Mogens Lind in Stockholm, so Ellis stopped making films in Sweden. After that she only had a major part in the Danish film Elly Petersen (1944) and a small part in De kloge og vi gale (1945), plus some stage performances.
Ellis gave her voice to the radio of Sweden, Norway and the British Forces Network, thanks to her eloquence and diction. In 1948 she did her first radio and television performance in New York and Washington. Together with Mogens Lind, she translated a series of British and American plays, such as Fallen Angel and the musical Annie. She also contributed to the popular Danish radio show Han, Hun og Musikken.
In 1951, Lilian Ellis was hospitalized at the Bispebjerg Hospital and operated for a serious kidney disease. A blood congestion became fatal. Lilian Ellis died at the age of 43 in 1951.
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