Irene von Meyendorff

Baroness Irene von Meyendorff (6 June 1916 – 28 September 2001) was a Russian-born German-British actress. Biography Baroness Irene von Meyendorff was of Baltic German origin, born in 1916 in Tallinn (then Reval, Russian Empire), Estonia as the eldest child of a German-Baltic aristocrat. Her birth name and title was Baroness Irene Isabella Margarete Pauline Caecila von Meyendorff. In the early 1930s she moved to Berlin to work as a cutter in the UFA film studios of Babelsberg. Her beauty soon landed her first film roles and the attention of Joseph Goebbels. Being purported to represent the purest ideal of Aryan beauty, the actress portrayed mostly noble patricians. The sale of her promotional postcards shows that she was the number one pin-up girl among the German Army during World War II. She was cast by propaganda director Veit Harlan twice: in 1944 in Opfergang and in 1945 in Kolberg. The production of these elaborately produced colour films was strictly supervised by Goebbels; Kolberg was the most expensive film ever produced in Germany (with the budget of 8.5 million Reichsmarks), intended to celebrate the 12th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's ascent to power, opening on 30 January 1945. In 1960, she met British actor James Robertson Justice, fell in love with him and left her third husband Pit Severin, a journalist from Hamburg, to follow Justice to Britain. She all but gave up acting, returning only briefly in such films as the costume drama Mayerling (1968).