Salka Viertel's Former Residence

By OTTO

Ironical Chronicle photo Salka Viertel's former residence at 165 Mabery Road, Santa Monica, CA.

Salka Viertel (Steuermann)

Salka Steuermann had been an actress in Vienna and a writer in the German movie industry before coming to Hollywood. She married Berthold Viertel, whom she met in 1916 while he was a lieutenant in the Austrian army, in Vienna on April 30, 1918.

Salka Viertel, whose stage name was Steuermann, is the actress who played Marthy in the German version of Anna Christie. Greta Garbo played the leading role in both the English and German versions which were filmed consecutively using the same sets by MGM. Other than Garbo, the two versions had different casts and directors.

Salka Viertel has an interesting background. She was born in Sambor, Poland, in 1889 and died in the US in 1978. She acted in only two movies, but wrote many screen plays and was closely associated with Garbo in Hollywood. She actively sought roles which she felt were appropriate for Garbo and Garbo often accepted her advice.

from Anna Christie Salka Steuermann as Marthy in the German version of the MGM film Anna Christie (1930).

Her career was destroyed by Senator Joseph McCarthy because of her association with some relatively innocent left-wing causes. In fact, knowing the ruthlessness of Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, the studio that both Garbo and Viertel worked for, the constant friction between him and Garbo, Garbo and Viertel's friendship, and Mayer's suspicion that Viertel was the instigator of Garbo's independence, one is left with the suspicion that Mayer may have instigated McCarthy to effectively blacklist Viertel in order to get rid of her. While it's not likely we'll ever know this with certainty, what is beyond doubt is that Mayer was perfectly capable of doing it.

Her autobiography The Kindness of Strangers was published in 1969 by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

The house at 165 Mabery Road in Santa Monica, California, which she bought in the Spring of 1933 for $7500, still stands.