The Sun and Her Stars

November 1, 2019

After the collapse of Germany's Weimar Republic and during the rise of Hitler's Europe, thousands of artists and intellectuals streamed out of occupied countries, trying to beat the closing door and overcome restrictive immigration quotas to enter the United States. Many gravitated west to the sunny climes of Hollywood. There, onetime actor and screenwriter Salka Viertel opened her home for Sunday parties, offering memories of home and a place to exchange information and learn a new language and customs, while forging relationships. Rifkind (Wall Street Journal) offers an overdue appreciation of a neglected figure. A confidante to Greta Garbo, Viertel worked on five of the iconic actor's films, most notably Queen Christina. Among the many who crossed Viertel's path were playwright Bertolt Brecht, novelists Christopher Isherwood and Thomas Mann, and composer Arnold Schoenberg. She struggled with constant money worries, a long-distance marriage, and concerns about friends and family living in Europe under Nazism. VERDICT This is a study of a complex, openhearted woman who had a key role in saving the displaced while shaping mid-20th century Hollywood. Rifkind has penned a perceptive, exhaustively researched contribution to social and film history.--Stephen Rees, formerly with Levittown Lib., PA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 18, 2019
Book critic Rifkind debuts with an immersive biography of actor, screenwriter, and salon hostess Salka Viertel, a central figure in the community of European artists and intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany for Los Angeles in the 1930s and ’40s. Rifkind opens the narrative in 1960s Switzerland, where Viertel lived and wrote her memoir, The Kindness of Strangers, after the House Un-American Activities Committee made it difficult for her to get work in Hollywood, then rewinds to 1928, when Viertel and her husband left Berlin for America. A year or two after her arrival, Viertel met Greta Garbo and became close friends, collaborators, and rumored lovers with the Swedish film star. At the same time that Viertel was writing Queen Christina (1933) and Anna Karenina (1935) for Garbo, she was hosting Sunday afternoon gatherings for European émigrés at her Santa Monica home. Her guests included Bertolt Brecht, Charlie Chaplin, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and Thomas Mann. Working with the European Film Fund, Viertel helped to obtain U.S. visas and Hollywood jobs for German and Austrian refugees from WWII. Rifkind also delves into Viertel’s role as a leading advocate against fascist sympathizers in America. Chock-full of scandalous affairs and wartime atmosphere, this sparkling account brings overdue attention to a woman who helped make Hollywood’s golden age possible.

November 1, 2019
Remembering a neglected woman of early Hollywood. Journalist Rifkind begins her impressive biography of screenwriter Salka Viertel (1889-1978) with a question: How can so "large and estimable" a woman "been more or less forgotten in America"? The author hopes Salka (as she is referred to throughout) will provide a role model for a new generation of readers, especially women, currently experiencing the same kinds of geopolitical issues of human migration and anti-Semitism that Salka also suffered. Her early years in Austro-Hungary were privileged. She acted on stages throughout Europe, and her circle of friends included Franz Kafka and Max Brod. In 1928, with National Socialism on the rise, Salka and her filmmaker husband, Berthold, along with thousands of other refugees, fled to greater Los Angeles. They both worked with F.W. Murnau on film projects and befriended other immigrants like Bertolt Brecht, Arnold Schoenberg, and Ernst Lubitsch. Rifkind chronicles in meticulous detail Salka's substantial career in a hostile Hollywood studio system that regularly ignored the contributions of women. She wrote screenplays for a number of films, most notably Queen Christina (1933), working closely with producer Irving Thalberg and the film's star, Greta Garbo, who took Salka under her wing. Their relationship would become the "longest and most important...either of them would ever have in Hollywood." Rifkind calls Salka a "connector of people." Her legendary Sunday afternoon gatherings at her Santa Monica home on Mabery Street became an intellectual "place of shelter" for immigrants, including Sergei Eisenstein, Aldous Huxley, and Thomas Mann and Christopher Isherwood, two of Salka's best friends. She helped refugees find jobs and places to stay, and she provided financial support. Her activities with political organizations supporting refugees drew the attention of the FBI, which tapped her phones and read her mail. In 1953, Salka moved to Switzerland, where she wrote her memoir, The Kindness of Strangers. An impassioned and revelatory biography occasionally hampered by excessive detail.

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January 1, 2020
Rifkind brings a forgotten female figure of Hollywood's Golden Age back into the spotlight in this expansive, engaging biography. Salka Viertel was a Jewish stage actress who left Germany with her husband, Berthold, in 1928, for Los Angeles so that he could pursue a writing opportunity. At 39 and with three young sons, Viertel found few acting opportunities, so she turned to screenwriting. A fortuitous meeting with Greta Garbo led to a decades-long collaboration and friendship when Viertel was hired at MGM to write screenplays for the immensely popular actor. As Hitler's power in Germany grew, fellow creatives fled Europe for Los Angeles, including novelist brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann and playwright Bertolt Brecht, among dozens of others. All were welcomed into Viertel's Santa Monica home, either as guests at the parties she hosted or as lodgers. Rifkind draws on Viertel's memoirs, the letters she and Berthold exchanged, and writer Christopher Isherwood's memoirs to create a detailed, vibrant, invaluable portrait of Viertel's life and the remarkable community of European exiles to whom she offered refuge and friendship.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)