Salka Viertel

(1889 - 1978)

Born in Galicia, actress Salomea Steuermann joined the Viennese theatrical outfit Neue Wiener Bühne, where she met her future husband, Berthold Viertel. In 1928, nearing bankruptcy, the couple left for Hollywood. Berthold wrote and directed major studio films, while Salka wrote scripts for Greta Garbo. Throughout the 1930s, the Viertels worked to help relocate Jewish émigrés fleeing Nazi Germany. “Hitler’s hideous, demented voice carried across the Atlantic,” she wrote in her memoir, “but I believed in the future.” After a 1947 divorce, she moved to Klosters, Switzerland, where she lived for the rest of her life.