Lya Lys

American actress

Lya Lys (born Nathalie Margoulis; May 18, 1908 – June 2, 1986) was a German born American actress.

Lya Lys was born in Berlin on May 18, 1908 to a Russian banker and French pediatrician who moved to Paris when she was about seven. Her mother was Ina Löscht (née Blumenfeld), who later served at a French field hospital during the early months of World War II. Her fate during or after the German invasion is unclear. Nathalie was educated in France and Switzerland and later studied language at the Sorbonne. She then returned to America. In 1931 she married Charles Morton, a young silent film actor. The couple divorced some months later not long after the birth of their daughter. Later a dispute over alimony payments would see Morton spending a few days behind bars. Her second marriage to Percy Montague, a business manager, in April 1932

Once while filming a scene in the 1939 film The Return of Doctor X, actor Dennis Morgan took Lys by the arm and broke into song when she became upset over blowing her lines. A moment later Humphrey Bogart, who was also in the scene, joined Morgan in the serenade. Lys' early Hollywood career was hampered by her thick accent that, by the time she appeared in Paramount's The Great Gambini (1937) and toured in the play Night of January 16, had become barely noticeable. Their marriage, which Lys later described as the worst mistake of her life, ended in a Mexican divorce in 1943, some nine months after she'd suffered a nervous breakdown. On the same day she filed for divorce, with no request for alimony. She never returned to acting. Her last film was Murder in the Air (1940) opposite Ronald Reagan. Lys' name continued to appear in the papers for a few years in columns giving fashion advice. In 1954 she married George Feit. Lya was one of the first people to raise and show champion Afghans at Madison Square Gardens. Lya Lys Feit died on June 2, 1986, at Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach, from heart failure at the age of 78. She was survived by George Feit, her husband of 32 years, daughter Joyce Morton, grandson TV Producer Randy Caruso, Author Marisa Rudder and two granddaughters.

Jacqueline Susann's play, The Temporary Mrs. Smith, is a story about a likable, but less than talented singer whose search for a rich husband to is complicated by her former husbands, was in part based on the life of Lya Lys. At one time the two were neighbors at the Hotel Navarro near New York's Central Park. Critic Ado Kyrou wrote of Ava Gardner's Pandora in the 1951 film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, "Ava now belonged in the exclusive pantheon with Lya Lys of Dalí and Buñuel's L'Age d'Or as the greatest surrealistic woman in the history of film'."