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**Lotte Palfi Andor**
Lotte Palfi Andor
Born	Lotte Mosbacher; 28 July 1903; Bochum, German Empire
Died	July 8, 1991 (aged 87); New York City, United States
Nationality	German-turned-American
Other names	Jean Brooks
Occupation(s)	Actress, memoirist
Years active	1939–1986
Known for	Casablanca; Marathon Man;
Spouses	Victor Palfi (divorced); Wolfgang Zilzer (m. 1942; div. 1991);

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Lotte Palfi Andor (née Lotte Mosbacher, pseudonym Jean Brooks; 28 July 1903 in Bochum – 8 July 1991 New York City), was a German-turned-American actress and author.

Lotte Palfi Andor [de]

Life

Early life and background

Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Bochum, Lotte Mosbacher trained as a stage actress and performed in cities such as Darmstadt. She married, for the first time, November 7, 1933, in Paris to Berlin-born film editor Victor Hermann Theodor Drechsler Palfi (1910–1985) at IMDb. After the Nazis came to power, she fled Germany in 1934 with Victor Palfi, traveling via France and Spain to the United States. Lotte's father, Dr. Felix Mosbacher, a physician, died in 1930.

Holocaust

Lotte's mother, Betty Mosbacher (née Katzenstein; 1869), perished December 13, 1941, in the Łódź Ghetto in occupied Poland during the Holocaust.

Victor Palfi's second wife, Elizabeth Gerardina Messchaert (maiden; 1916–1995) whom he married May 8, 1941, in Los Angeles, lost her first husband, Hendrik Marinus Hartog (born November 18, 1915, Nijmegen, The Netherlands), on April 30, 1943, at Auschwitz.

Elisabeth Else Fürth Adelaar (born August 8, 1881, in Darmstadt) – a sister-in-law of Lotte's older sister (and Elisabeth's husband, Eduard Adelaar; born 1879), Margarete "Grete" Fürth (1892–1977) – perished at the Sobibor extermination camp July 16, 1943.

Two of Elizabeth and Eduard's children, Frederika Sophie (Freddy) Adelaar (born 1907) and Wilhelm Meijer (Willy) Adelaar (born 1909) perishished in Poland; Frederika at the Sobibor extermination camp July 16, 1943, and Wilhelm in the Oswiecim Monat concentration camp December 30, 1942.

Marie Anna Fürth Adelaar (born January 12, 1884, in Darmstadt) – another sister-in-law of Lotte's older sider (and Marie's husband, Henri Adelaar; born 1881, and Eduard's brother), Margarete "Grete" Fürth (1892–1977) – perished at the Auschwitz May 22, 1944.

America

They both lawfully entered the United States for permanent residence June 29, 1937, under the name Lotte (Charlotte) Drechsler-Palfi, sailing aboard the RMS Aquitania from Southampton to New York City. She became a naturalized United States citizen September 24, 1943, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

Victor Palfi’s father, Victor Palfi [de] (1877–1921), was a Hungarian actor, theater impresario, and long-time director of the Kurfürstenoper [de] in Berlin. His sister, Marion Palfi (1907–1978), became a noted German-American social-documentary photographer.

Hollywood and wartime roles

In the U.S., Lotte and Victor Palfi initially struggled to find work in their professions and supported themselves as cooks and domestic workers. They eventually separated.

Adopting the stage name Jean Brooks, Lotte made her Hollywood debut in 1939 in a small role in Anatole Litvak’s anti-Nazi film Confessions of a Nazi Spy. During filming, she met actor Wolfgang Zilzer, also of German-Jewish descent, known professionally as Paul Andor.

In 1942, both appeared in minor but memorable roles in Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz: she as “The Woman Who Must Sell Her Diamonds”, he as “The Man with Expired Papers”. Although uncredited, their roles remain familiar to fans of the film.

Postwar work and theater

Lotte married Wolfgang Adolf Zilzer on March 3, 1942, in Los Angeles. After World War II, as Hollywood’s demand for German character actors declined, the couple shifted to stage work.

Later career and memoir

In 1976, John Schlesinger cast Lotte Palfi Andor—who had not appeared in films since 1952—in a brief but memorable role in his thriller Marathon Man, starring Dustin Hoffman. In the film, she plays a Holocaust survivor who recognizes her former tormentor, Dr. Szell (played by Laurence Olivier), and chases him screaming down Manhattan’s 47th Street. The scene echoes her earlier role in Casablanca, in which she is forced to sell her diamonds to escape the Nazis; here, more than three decades later, she attempts to stop a Nazi from smuggling stolen diamonds to safety.

Lotte Palfi Andor made a few further film appearances, including roles in All That Jazz (1979), directed by Bob Fosse, and Lovesick (1983), starring Dudley Moore.

In the mid-1980s, she published her memoirs under the title Memoirs of an Unknown Actress. Her reflections appeared in the 1991 German anthology Die fremden Jahre: Erinnerungen an Deutschland [The Foreign Years: Memories of Germany] (in German) and were later translated and posthumously published in 1996 as Years of Estrangement. She also presented readings from her memoir in Berlin.

Death

Wolfgang Adolf Zilzer died June 26, 1991, in Berlin. Lottie died 12 days later, on July 8, 1991, in New York City. Shortly before their deaths in 1991, her marriage to Wolfgang Zilzer ended in divorce. Suffering from Parkinson's disease, Zilzer—born in the U.S. but raised in Germany—wished to return there to die. Lotte, who had fled Germany as a Jewish refugee, refused to set foot in her homeland again.

Legacy

Although her roles were often uncredited, Lotte Palfi Andor left a subtle but resonant mark on 20th-century film history. Her brief appearances in Casablanca (1942) and Marathon Man (1976) have drawn retrospective interest for their symbolic depth. In Casablanca, she portrayed a woman forced to sell her diamonds in order to flee the Nazis; more than thirty years later, in Marathon Man, she plays a Holocaust survivor who recognizes a Nazi attempting to escape with stolen diamonds. Seen in light of her real-life experience as a Jewish refugee whose mother perished in the Holocaust, these roles form a kind of mirrored arc—one of dispossession, the other of confrontation.

This resonance gained greater dimension with the posthumous publication of her memoir, "Memoirs of an Unknown Actress; or, I Was Never a Saint Bernard", which first appeared in German in 1991 and was later translated into English in 1996 as part of the anthology Years of Estrangement. Her writing offers insight into the upheaval, marginalization, and quiet resilience that marked both her life and career.

Though her name was little known during her lifetime, Andor’s story – interwoven with displacement, survival, and cinematic fragments – has continued to resonate, inviting reevaluation by film scholars, historians, and viewers alike.

Filmography

1939: Confessions of a Nazi Spy
1940: Escape
1940: Four Sons
1941: Underground
1941: Out of Darkness (11-minute film) at IMDb^[a]
1941: Blossoms in the Dust
1941: Forbidden Passage
1942: Casablanca
1942: Reunion in France
1943: Above Suspicion
1943: The Leopard Man
1944: The Hitler Gang, Lotte Palfi Andor (uncredited) played Karin Göring (1888–1931), Hermann Göring's first wife
1944: The Mask of Dimitrios
1944: Enemy of Women
1944: In Our Time
1944: The Seventh Cross
1945: Stairway to Light (short film)
1945: Son of Lassie
1952: Walk East on Beacon!
1976: Marathon Man
1979: All That Jazz
1981: A Private Life at IMDb & OCLC 9144001^[b]
1983: Lovesick – The Lovesick Psychiatrist
1986: Katzenjammer Kids at IMDb, written and directed by Waltraud Ehrhardt (born 1954) at IMDb

Filmography

Katzenjammer Kids (1986)

(as Lotte Audor)

Lovesick (1983)

Analysis

Bill (1981)

TV Movie

Ida Miller (as Lotta Palfi-Andor)

All That Jazz (1979)

Old Woman (as Lotta Palfi-Andor)

Marathon Man (1976)

Old Lady on 47th Street (as Lotta Andor-Palfi)

Naked City (1958)

TV Series

Bridesmaid

Maria Lubasz

1961–1962

2 episodes

Walk East on Beacon! (1952)

Anna Kafer (as Lotte Palfi)

Stairway to Light (1945), Short

Supporting Role (uncredited)

Son of Lassie (1945)

Old Woman (as Lotta Palfi)

Enemy of Women (1944)

Gloria Stuart, Claudia Drake, Sigrid Gurie, Beryl Wallace, Donald Woods, and Wolfgang Zilzer

Housekeeper (uncredited)

The Seventh Cross (1944)

Anna (uncredited)

The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)

Yugoslav Receptionist (uncredited)

The Hitler Gang (1944)

Karin Göring (uncredited)

In Our Time (1944

Wanda (uncredited)

Above Suspicion (1943)

Ottilie (as Lotta Palfi)

Reunion in France (1942)

Unpleasant German Customer (uncredited)

Casablanca (1942)

Woman Selling Her Diamonds (uncredited)

Blossoms in the Dust (1941)

Maid (uncredited)

Underground (1941)

Greta Rolf (as Lotte Palfi)

Out of Darkness (1941), Short

Madame Rochelle (uncredited)

Forbidden Passage (1941), Short

Anna Kestler (uncredited)

Escape (1940)

Julie - Ruby's Maid (uncredited)

Four Sons (1940)

Peasant (uncredited)

Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)

Kassel's Nurs

Videography

1961: Naked City, 2 episodes: 1961–1962, playing Maria Lubasz, a bridesmaid

1981: Bill, Lotte Palfi-Andor played Ida Miller

Early career in Germany

In der Komödie erlebte das Lustspiel von Leo Lenz „Das Mädchen aus der Fremde“ seine Uraufführung. Ein flottes, nettes Stück, in dem sich besonders Lotte Mosbacher und Kurt Dehn auszeichnen.

Translation (English):

At the Komödie theater, the comedy by Leo Lenz [de; sv] (1878–1962), The Girl from Abroad, had its premiere. A lively, charming play in which Lotte Mosbacher and Kurt Dehn particularly distinguished themselves.

Bibliography

Annotation

^
Out of Darkness is an 11-minute short film released in 1941, directed by Sammy Lee (1890–1968) and written by Doane R. Hoag (1908–2008). The film dramatizes the Nazi suppression of La Libre Belgique, an underground resistance newspaper in occupied Belgium during World War II. The cast includes
- John Booth Nesbitt (1910–1960) (narrator)
- Egon Brecher (1880–1946) as Victor Jourdain, the first editor of La Libre Belgique
- Lotte Palfi Andor as Madame Rochellem Jack Shea (1913–1972) ( at IMDb) as a man at a blackboard
- Frederik Vogeding (1887–1942) ( at IMDb) as Rudolph von Heinrich
- Charles Wagenheim (1896–1979) as a traitorous assistant editor
- William Yetter, Sr. (1896–1885) ( at IMDb), as a German officer
- Wolfgang Zilzer (1901–1991) as Leon Rochelle, the twenty-second editor of La Libre Belgique.
^ A Private Life was the first Mikhail Bogin's [fr; da; no; it; pl; uk; ru; hy] (born 1936) first American film. His collaborators included producer Peter Otto Almond (born 1943) (a documentary and narrative filmmaker), who co-wrote the screenplay with Nancy K. Musser (maiden, born 1952). Both Almond and Musser are independent filmmakers based in the San Francisco area. The film was later acquired by the Museum of Modern Art's Circulating Film Library.

Notes

References

"The Drama World: Refugee Actors Present Plays of Schnitzler". Los Angeles Times. Vol. 58, no. 50 (Final ed.). January 22, 1939. p. 2 (part 3) (digital image no. 46). Retrieved April 21, 2025 – via Newspaper.com.

See Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931)

Formed by actors and actresses who are refugees from Germany, The Tribune, the name of the theater group, last night repeated its presentation of two one-act plays by the great German-Jewish author, Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931), and offered a program of vaudeville at the Hamburger Home in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles, 1225 S. Union Avenue at Girard. Participating were Lotte Mosbacher, Lisl Valetti [de; es] (1914–2004), Irene Rohan, Wolfgang Zilzer, Ernest Roberts, Frederick Mellinger (1890–1970), Eric [Peter] Tarne (né Erich Tarnowski; 1901–1990), and Alfred Pincus (1893–1942), all of whom come from theaters of Germany and Austria.

Einstein, Albert (August 20, 1949). "Letter from Albert Einstein to Victor Palfi" (PDF) (in German). Antiquariat INLIBRIS Gilhofer Nfg. Retrieved 21 April 2025. Ich verstehe den Wunsch von Herrn Bois sehr wohl, sehe aber nicht, was ich tun könnte, um ihm in seiner Bestrebung zu helfen [I fully understand Mr. Bois's wish, but I do not see what I can do to assist him in his endeavor]

Senftleben, Johannes; Jursch, Aleksander; Jaensch, Erich, eds. (January 16, 1929). "Wiener Theaterbericht" [Vienna Theater Report]. Posener Tageblatt [de; pl] (Beilage zu Nr. 13 [Supplement to No. 13]). Illustrierte Beilage „Die Zeit im Bild“ – „Die Welt der Frau“ – Tägliche Unterhaltungsbeilage „In freier Stunde“ [Illustrated Supplement "The Times in Pictures" – "The World of Women" – Daily Entertainment Supplement "In Leisure Hours"]. Vol. 68, no. 13. Poznań: Konkordia Literarische Gesellschaft mbH – via Internet Archive (Biblioteka Jagiellońska). OCLC 1150577485 (all editions); 985768727.

Note: The Posener Tageblatt was acquired in 1924 by the Konkordia Literarische Gesellschaft mbH (Concordia Literary Society), a front organization established in January 1920 under the direction of Max Winkler (1875–1961). Winkler had access to substantial financial resources earmarked for the acquisition of German-language newspapers abroad, with the goal of securing their continued publication. This backing enabled Konkordia to quickly grow into a powerful media conglomerate that controlled nearly the entire German-language press outside Germany.

An even more influential institution was the Deutsche Stiftung (German Foundation), founded in November 1920 and led by Erich Krahmer-Möllenberg [de] (1882–1942), a former senior official in the Posen provincial administration at Bromberg and later in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. The Deutsche Stiftung financed the Central Working Group of German Parties (Zentralarbeitsgemeinschaft deutscher Parteien [de] or ZAG), for twenty years. Like Winkler, Krahmer–Möllenberg operated behind the scenes as a key strategist of ethnonationalist policy (Volkstumspolitik). Unlike Konkordia, however, the Deutsche Stiftung maintained closer ties to government agencies and, according to a 1925 memorandum, functioned as a "camouflaged agency" of the Foreign Office.

===================

Wolf, Gerhard (born 1954). 2010 PhD dissertation (in German) and 2020 translation (in English). These are commercially published editions of Gerhard Wolf's dissertation submitted for his 2010 PhD at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

2012 German-language original. Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik in Polen (in German). Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) ISBN 978-3-8685-4245-5, 3-8685-4245-0; OCLC 1039842033 & 794319959.
2020 English translation. Ideology and the Rationality of Domination: Nazi Germanization Policies in Poland. Translated by Wayne Yung (born 1971). Bloomington: 2020 translation published by Indiana University Press.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) doi:10.2307/j.ctv10h9f66; JSTOR j.ctv10h9f66; LCCN 2019-54996 (print); LCCN 2019-54997 (eBook); ISBN 978-0-2530-4807-3, 0-2530-4807-9 (hard cover); ISBN 978-0-2530-4808-0, 0-2530-4808-7 (eBook, pdf); ISBN 978-0-2530-4809-7, 0-2530-4809-5 (eBook); OCLC 1139013187 (all editions).

Limited preview – via Google Books.
Limited preview – via Google Books.

Beilage zu Nr. 13

Translation (English):

Supplement to No. 13

editors:

Editorial content: Johannes Senftieden

Sections: City and Country, Courtroom and Letters: Rudolf Gerbrechtsmeyer

Remaining editorial content and the illustrated supplement "Die Zeit im Bild": Johannes Genftleben

Advertising and mailing section: Margarete Wagner

"Posener Tageblatt". Printing: Drukarnia Concordia Sp. Ake. All in Boin Zwierzuniecto 6.

Johannes Senftleben

Aleksander Jursch

Erich Jaensch

"Victor Palfi letters to Dody Weston Thompson, 1956-1979". Cal Berkeley Bancroft Library. OCLC 1434262954.

Victor Palfi, creator: The collection includes correspondence from Victor Palfi to Dody Weston Thompson (1923–2012) and other recipients. Notable items include letters inquiring about the safety of friends in Los Angeles following the 1961 Bel Air Fire; an unsigned letter describing his work as a film editor on John Marcellus Huston's (1906–1987) Freud: The Secret Passion (1961); correspondence with Wolfgang Reinhardt (1908–1979) and Annie Capel concerning a film script in 1964; and several letters of a romantic nature addressed to Thompson. The collection also contains postcards sent by Palfi to Dody Weston Thompson from the 1960s through the 1970s, as well as envelopes addressed to Dody, Dan Thompson, and Dorothea Thompson.

Mosbacher-Andor, Lotte (1962). In aller Unschuld : Kinderaussprüche [In All Innocence: Children's Sayings]. Munich: Heimeran Verlag. DNB-IDN 453464289; OCLC 52406757 (all editions).

Leyens, Erich (1898–2001) [in German]; Andor, Lotte. Two autobiographies in two editions → one in German and the other in English:{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

1991 German language original. Die fremden Jahre: Erinnerungen an Deutschland [The Foreign Years: Memories of Germany]. Lebensbilder (in German) (1st ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) ISBN 978-3-5961-0779-7, 3-5961-0779-2; OCLC 25823435 (all editions).

Leyens. "Unter dem NS-Regime 1933–1938. Erlebnisse und Beobachtungen". pp. 15–53. OCLC 1018055949.
Andor. "Memoiren einer unbekannten Schauspielerin oder Ich war nie ein Bernhardiner". pp. 59–120.