Georg Alexander Movies

Originally released as Liebesexpress, Acht Tage Gluck (Eight Days Happiness) gets under way when heroine Annie (Dina Gralia) wins a huge cash award in a typewriting contest. She uses the money to go to Venice, where she hopes to start her life all over again. Placing an ad in the paper for a personal secretary, Annie is quite pleased when handsome Kurt (Georg Alexander) answers her request. She'll be even more pleased when she discovers that Kurt is an incognito millionaire. Robert Wiene, the man responsible for the surrealist classic Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, handled the directorial responsibilities. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Several European countries collaborated to create this drama. The story begins as a young British woman meets and falls in love with her tour guide during a vacation to Naples. Along the way, she hears him singing. Recognizing a good tenor voice when she hears one, she takes him back to England for special vocal training. The tour guide is one handsome heartbreaker and one of his lovers is angered by his desertion. In England he sings at a fancy party. They are so impressed, that he is immediately booked into an opera house the following night. During the party, he finds himself becoming increasingly jealous of his newest girlfriend's flirtatious ways. When he discovers that his operatic debut is being financed by other party goers, the tenor flies into a rage and begins attacking the backers. Naturally they cancel his performance. The tour guide returns to Naples and to his other lover. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The "Women's Paradise" of the title is the ironic nickname of a heavily-in-debt Vienna fashion salon. The business is taken over by Gary Field (Ivan Petrovich), a handsome young aviator. The shopgirls all swoon over Gary, especially starry-eyed little Eva (Hortense Raby), who offers to moonlight in order to pay the store's ever-mounting debts. In desperation, Eva tries to flatter the necessary funds out of a rich boor named Muehldoerfer (George Alexander) whose attentions she had once spurned. Touched by her devotion to Gary, Muheldoerfer gives her the money with no strings attached, but Gary suspects the worst and thereby hangs the rest of the tale. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The "Castle in Flanders" of the title is where six aristocratic British officers are billeted during WWI. To pass the time, they play a scratchy old record on a ramshackle gramophone, eventually falling in love with the female voice heard on the recording. Meanwhile, the selfsame girl, a Parisian revue artiste named Gloria Delamare (Marta Eggarth) must fend off the attentions of her many ardent suitors. When she finally falls in love, it is of course with one of those six British officers, a man who has gone broke and is now a "suitable" beau for the low-born Gloria. The lucky swain is played by Paul Hartmann, one of Germany's most popular leading men of the 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Though the witty, epigrammatic style of Oscar Wilde would seem best suited to the rhythms of the English language, a surprising number of Wilde's plays and short stories were filmed in Europe. The German Ein Idealer Gatte is a fairly faithful adaptation of Wilde's 1895 play An Ideal Husband. The title character is Lord Chiltern (Carl Ludwig Diehl), a prosperous steel magnate. Blackmailed by an old flame, Gloria Chevney (Sybille Schmitz), Lord C. is at last rescued by the real brains of the Chiltern family, his loyal, supportive and eminently courageous wife (Brigitte Helm). Film buffs take note: Ein Ideal Gatte affords a rare opportunity to see Metropolis star Brigitte Helm and Vampyr star Sybille Schmitz in the same picture. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

"Ist Mein Mann Nicht Fabelhaft?" ("Isn't My Husband Wonderful?") coos adoring wife Lu Brandt (Lien Deyers). Lu's hubby Victor (Georg Alexander) may indeed be wonderful, but rich he's not. A lowly employee in a record-player factory, Victor discovers that his wife has told their neighbors that he's actually the company's supervisor. Rather than embarrass Lu, Victor tries to live up to his reputation -- and nearly goes broke in the process. But the worst is still to come when Victor's neighbors, each of them laboring under the misapprehension that they're musically talented, descend upon the Victrola factory en masse demanding auditions. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This epic German production was said to have had a cast of 100,000. Whether there was any truth to this claim is extremely questionable, and there were but three really important roles in the film: Conrad Veidt as Lord Nelson, Werner Kraus as Sir William Hamilton, and Liane Haid in the role of a lifetime as Lady Hamilton. The film covers Lady Hamilton's life, including her beginnings as Emma Lyon, a blacksmith's daughter. Young Emma learns how to fend for herself by becoming the mistress to many men before marrying Sir William Hamilton, the uncle of her lover, Charles Greville. Then she meets and falls for Lord Nelson, the famed English Admiral. She helps Nelson achieve his first great naval victory, along with becoming his lover and bearing his child out of wedlock. Although both Hamilton and Nelson's wife appear to accept the scandalous relationship, when Hamilton dies, Emma is virtually cut out of his will. Emma lives a poverty-stricken life that is only brightened by the knowledge that Nelson will return -- but he doesn't. Nelson dies in the Battle of Trafalgar. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi