Lenya, Lotte

(Karoline Blamauer, 1900-1981)

   Actress. Best known for her association with Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, Lenya appeared in the world premieres of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Ma-hagonny (The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny), Pioniere in Ingolstadt (Pioneers in Ingolstadt), and Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). Her New York career was nearly as remarkable, largely because on Broadway she reprised the career she had established in Berlin—a feat no other German theater artist except Weill has ever replicated; she was also married to Weill twice, once in Germany and again in the United States. Lenya's Broadway debut took place in 1937 under Max Reinhardt's direction, but her first real success there was the premiere of The Threepenny Opera, which opened in 1955 and ran for 2,600 performances. She won a Tony Award for her performance as Jenny, the same role she played in Berlin at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and in the 1931 film version. In Cabaret (1966), however, she not only reprised her work in Berlin but revivified it in a show that was an ingenious epigone of the Brecht-Weill oeuvre, in the process receiving another Tony Award. Lenya's work in film was less substantial, with one notable exception: in the James Bond thriller From Russia with Love (1963), she played the murderous Rosa Klebb, a former KGB agent who wore poison-tipped shoes.