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Mela Schwarz - Biography
Mela Schwarz aka Mella Schwarz / Melanie Schweinburg / Mela Swinburg (1888-1976), was an Austrian actress who played in a handful of Austrian and German films in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Born in Vienna, Mela's first part was in the Austrian film Zweierlei Blut (1912), directed and scripted by Jakob and Luise Fleck, and produced by Wiener Kunstfilm. In 1915 she played in the short Das erste Weib, directed by and starring Hubert Marischka, and prodced by Sascha-Film. Next followed another short, Der Glücksschneider (1916) by Hans Löwenstein, starring Rudolf Schildkraut and coproduced by Arnold Pressburger. It was a comedy about a tailor who wins the lottery and is immediately surrounded by 'vultures'. After a life in luxury he returns to his tailor shop. After a gap of three years, Mela Schwarz returned to the film screen but now in Germany. She now acted with some frequency in films shot first in Munich - Aus Liebe gesündigt (Franz Osten 1919), with Eric Kaiser-Titz, and Am Weibe zerschellt (Osten 1919), again with Kaiser-Titz. Schwarz then moved to Berlin to perform in Don Juan, Weib und Hölle (1920) by Max Maschke, and back to Munich for Die Laune eines Lebesmannes (Hans Oberländer 1920), and the two-part film Hyänen der Welt (Fred Stranz 1921), who also produced the film and starred in it. That was the last film in which Schwarz is known to have performed. No dates on birth and death are known.On stage, Mela Schwarz was employed at the Munchner Schaispielhaus in 1914-1919. She got known for her performance in the Munich premiere of Lion Feuchtwanger's Jud Süss (1917) . One critic called what Schwarz herself translated as ' sexy and groovy'; still she recalled that precursors of Hitler's voices were there already. In 1917 she also played Anitra in Peer Gynt on the Munich stage. In the early 1920s Mela Schwarz worked at the Hamburger Kammerspiele. With that company she played in Zwischenspiel, directed by Erich Ziegel, which had a guest performance in The Hague in 1922. She emigrated to the USA, where she first worked as a maid in Rochdale under the name of Melanie Schweinburg and later lived in Los Angeles and was named Mela Swinburg. She died in LA in 1976. She was married to Hans Schweinburg, born Vienna 1877.
