From Wikipedia
Wera Engels was a daughter of a German Admiral and Governor
of the then German colony Tsing-tau-China. After successful leading roles in
productions of the well-established German UFA-studios in Babelsberg as well as
in France, Engels was invited to Hollywood. Producers saw her as a cheap
alternative to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. She was contracted with RKO.
Engels was given roles under Walter Futter and M.H. Hoffman. She and the silent
movie super star Mary Pickford became best friends. By 1935 she returned to
Germany, but left soon thereafter, because of the decline of the German movie
industry caused by the Nazi propaganda machine. Back in Hollywood, she dated
Gary Cooper for a while but married the Lithuanian-born actor/writer Ivan
Lebedeff. After Lebedeff's death in 1953 of Angina pectoris, she moved back to
Europe, where she stayed with several friends in London and Stockholm before
she went back to Germany. She lived the rest of her life with Erna Hoffmann
(widow of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's friend and personal photographer) in the
Munich area.
She died on November 16, 1988 (age 79) in Munich, Germany.
