Ingrid Pitt

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Ingrid Pitt

Ingoushka Petrov Born 21 November 1937 Warsaw, Poland

Died

23 November 2010 (aged 73) South London, England

Occupation

Actress, writer

Years active

19642010

Laud Roland Pitt Jr (divorced) Spouse(s) George Pinches (divorced) Tony Rudlin

Children

Steffanie Pitt-Blake

Ingrid Pitt (21 November 1937 23 November 2010) was an actress best known for her work in horror films of the 1960s and 1970s.[1]

Contents

1 Background 2 Acting career 3 Writing career 4 Personal life 5 Death 6 Legacy project 7 Filmography 8 Bibliography (partial) 9 References 10 External links

Background
Pitt was born Ingoushka Petrov in Warsaw, Poland, to a German father of Russian descent and a Polish Jewish mother.[2] During World War II, she and her family were imprisoned in a concentration camp. She survived; and, in Berlin in the 1950s, married an American soldier and moved to California. After her marriage failed, she returned to Europe; but, after a small role in a film, she headed to Hollywood where she worked as a waitress while trying to make a career in the movies. Her natural hair colour was brown, though she frequently lightened it to blonde.

Acting career
In the early 1960s, Pitt was a member of the prestigious Berliner Ensemble, under the guidance of Bertolt Brecht's widow Helene Weigel. In 1965, she made her film debut in Doctor Zhivago, playing a minor role. In 1968, she co-starred in the low-budget science fiction film The Omegans and, in the same year, played "Heidi" in Where Eagles Dare opposite Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. She appeared as Queen Galleia with John Pertwee and Roger Delgado in 'The Time Monster',which was the fifth Serial of the ninth season of 'Doctor Who', broadcast in six weekly parts between 20th May - 24th June 1972. She also appeared as It was her work with Hammer Film Productions that elevated her to cult figure status. She starred as "Carmilla/Mircalla" in The Vampire Lovers (1970), based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla, and played the title role in Countess Dracula (1971), based on the legends around Countess Elizabeth Bthory. Pitt also appeared in the Amicus horror anthology film The House That Dripped Blood (1971) and had a small part in The Wicker Man (1973). In the mid-1970s, she appeared on the judging panel of the British ITV talent show New Faces.[3]

During the 1980s, Pitt returned to mainstream films and television. Her role as Fraulein Baum in the 1981 BBC Playhouse Unity, who is denounced as a Jew by Unity Mitford (Lesley-Anne Down), was uncomfortably close to her real-life experiences. Her popularity with horror film buffs saw her in demand for guest appearances at horror conventions and film festivals. Other films Pitt has appeared in outside the horror genre are: Who Dares Wins, (aka The Final Option), Wild Geese II, and Hanna's War. Generally cast as a "baddie", she usually manages to die horribly at the end of the final reel. "Being the anti-hero is great they are always roles you can get your teeth into." It was at this time that the theatre world also beckoned. Pitt founded her own theatrical touring company and starred in successful productions of Dial M for Murder, Duty Free (aka Don't Bother to Dress), and Woman of Straw. She also appeared in many TV shows in the UK and the U.S. Ironside, Dundee and the Culhane, Doctor Who (The Time Monster, Warriors of the Deep), Smiley's People, etc. In 1998, Pitt narrated Cradle of Filth's "Cruelty and the Beast" album, although her narration was done strictly in-character as the Countess Elizabeth Bthory, as she portrayed in Countess Dracula. In 2000, Pitt made her return to the big screen in The Asylum, starring Colin Baker and Patrick Mower and directed by John Stewart. In 2003, Pitt voiced the role of "Lady Violator" in Renga Media's production Dominator. The film was the UK's first CGI animated film. After a period of illness, Pitt returned to the screen in 2006 for the Hammer FilmsMario Bava tribute, Sea of Dust.

Writing career
Pitt's first book, after a number of ill-fated tracts on the plight of Native Americans, was a novel, Cuckoo Run, a spy story about mistaken identity. "I took it to Cubby Broccoli. It was about a woman called Nina Dalton who is pursued across South America in the mistaken belief that she is a spy. Cubby said it was a female Bond. He was being very kind." This was followed in 1984 by a novelisation of the Peron era in Argentina ("The Perons"), where she lived for a number of years: "Argentina was a wild frontier country ruled by a berserk military dictatorship at the time. It just suited my mood." In 1984, Pitt and her husband Tony Rudlin were commissioned to script a Doctor Who adventure. The story, entitled The Macro Men, was one of a number of ideas submitted by the couple after she appeared in the Season 21 story arc Warriors of the Deep (1984). The plot concerned events surrounding the Philadelphia Experimentthe urban legend about a U.S. Navy experiment during World War II to try to make the USS Eldridge destroyer escort invisible to radar. Pitt and Rudlin had read it in The Philadelphia Experiment - Project Invisibility (1979) by paranormal writer Charles Berlitz, grandson of the founder of the Berlitz Language Schools. It involved The Doctor (Colin Baker) and companion Peri (Nicola Bryant) arriving on board the ship in 1943 in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and becoming involved in a battle against microscopic humanoid creatures native to Earth but previously unknown to humankind. The couple

had several meetings with script editor Eric Saward and carried out numerous revisions, but the story progressed no further than the preparation of a draft first episode script under the new title The Macros. The story was released in June 2010 by Big Finish Productions as The Macros in their Doctor Who: The Lost Stories audios, five months before Pitt's death. In 1999, her autobiography, Life's a Scream (Heinemann) was published; and she was short-listed for the Talkies Awards for her own reading of extracts from the audio book, "I Hate Being Second". The autobiography detailed the harrowing experiences of her early lifein a Nazi concentration camp, her search through Europe in Red Cross refugee camps for her father, and her escape from East Berlin, one step ahead of the Volkspolizei. "I always had a big mouth and used to go on about the political schooling interrupting my quest for thespian glory. I used to think like that. Not good in a police state." The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Ghosthunters (2003) was Pitt's tenth book. It was preceded by the The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers (1998) and The Ingrid Pitt Book Of Murder, Torture & Depravity (2000). Pitt's credentials for writing about ghosts spring from a time when she lived with a tribe of Indians in Colorado. Sitting with her baby daughter, Steffanie, by a log fire, she was sure that she could see the face of her father smiling at her in the flames. "I told one of the others and he went all Hollywood Injun on me and said something like 'Heap good medicine'. I guess he was taking the mickey." Other writing projects include a different look at Hammer Films entitled The Hammer Xperience. She also wrote a story under the pen name Dracula Smith, which was illustrated within the Fan club magazine and is rumoured to be waiting to be snapped up for production. Pitt wrote regular columns for various magazines and periodicals, including Shivers magazine, TV & Film Memorabilia, and Motoring and Leisure. She also wrote a regular column, often about politics, on her official website, as well as a weekly column at UK website Den of Geek.[4] In 2008, she was added to the merchandising of MonsterMania: The Magazine.[5] In 2011, Avalard Publishing acquired the reprint rights to Cuckoo Run (1980) and four other titles, including Annul Domini: The Jesus Factor (March 2012), a speculative novel about what would have happened if Jesus had never made it to Jerusalem.

Personal life
Pitt married three times: Laud Roland Pitt Jr, an American GI; George Pinches, a British film executive; and Tony Rudlin, an actor and racing car driver. Her daughter, Steffanie Pitt-Blake, is also an actress. She had a passion for World War II aircraft. After revealing this on a radio programme, she was invited by the museum at RAF Duxford to have a flight in a Lancaster.[6] She held a student's pilot licence and a black belt in karate.[7]

Death
Pitt died in a south London hospital on 23 November 2010, a few days after collapsing, and two days after her 73rd birthday.[8]

Legacy project
Seven months before she died, Pitt finished narration for Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest (2011), an animated short film on her experience in the Holocaust, a project that had been in the works for five years. Character design and storyboards were created by twotime Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Bill Plympton. The film is directed by Kevin Sean Michaels; co-produced and co-written by Dr. Jud Newborn, Holocaust expert and author, "Sophie Scholl and the White Rose"; and drawn by 10-year-old animator, Perry Chen. There will a feature-length documentary, also by Michaels, to follow.[9][10][11]

Filmography
Film Year Title 1964 Sound of Horror 1965 Chimes at Midnight 1965 Doctor Zhivago 1966 Un beso en el puerto A Funny Thing Happened on 1966 the Way to the Forum 1968 The Omegans 1968 Where Eagles Dare 1970 The Vampire Lovers 1971 Countess Dracula Role Sofia Minelli Uncredited Uncredited Dorothy Courtesan Linda Heidi Marcilla/Carmilla/Mircalla Karnstein Countess Elisabeth Nodosheen Segment: "The Cloak" Uncredited Notes

1971 The House That Dripped Blood Carla Lind 1972 Nobody Ordered Love 1973 The Wicker Man 1982 Who Dares Wins 1983 Octopussy 1984 1985 1985 1986 1988 2000 Bones Wild Geese II Underworld Parker Hanna's War The Asylum Alice Allison Librarian Helga Gallery Mistress Hooker Pepperdine Widow Margit Isobella

Voice; uncredited

Film Year Title 2000 Green Fingers 2003 Dominator 2006 Minotaur 2008 Beyond the Rave 2008 Sea of Dust Year 1967 1967 1972 1973 1974 1975 1981 1981 1982 1983 1972 1984 1984 1987 Title Dundee and the Culhane Ironside Jason King The Adventurer The Zoo Gang Thriller BBC2 Playhouse Artemis 81 Smiley's People The Comedy of Errors Doctor Who The House Bulman Role Mrs. Bowen Lady Violator The Sybil Tooley's Mum Anna Television Role Tallie Montreaux Irene Novas Nadine Elayna Lyn Martin Ilse Fraulein Baum Hitchcock Blonde Elvira Courtesan Galleia/Dr. Solow Countess Von Eisen Laura Writer Year Title Notes 2011 Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest Short film; released in 2011 Notes Notes Short film Voice Direct-to-video

Episode: "The 1000 Feet Deep Brief" Episode: "The Fourteenth Runner" Episode "Nadine" Episode: "Double Exposure" Episode: "Mindless Murder" Episode: "Where the Action Is" Episode: "Unity" Television film Episodes: season 1.1, season 1.2; television mini-series Television film 5 episodes Television film Episode: "Chicken of the Baskervilles"

Bibliography (partial)

Cuckoo Run (1980) The Perons (1984) Eva's Spell (1985) Katarina (1986) The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers (1998) The Autobiography of Ingrid Pitt : Life's A Scream (1999) Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Ghosthunters (1999) The Ingrid Pitt Book of Murder, Torture and Depravity (2000) Annul Domini (2012) Dracula Who...? (2012)

References
1. ^ Margalit Fox (25 November 2010). "Ingrid Pitt, Horror Star Who Survived Nazis, Dies at 73". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/arts/25pitt.html?hpw. Retrieved 25 November 2010. "Lovely and voluptuous, the actress Ingrid Pitt was given a choice early in her film career: pornography or horror. Ms. Pitt, who had spent her childhood in a Nazi concentration camp, later scoured Europe in search of her vanished father and still later was forced to flee East Germany a step ahead of the police, chose horror. It was a genre she knew firsthand. ..." 2. ^ Ingrid Pitt 3. ^ Pitt, Ingrid (8 September 2008). "The Ingrid Pitt column: talent shows". Den of Geek. Dennis Publishing. http://www.denofgeek.com/captainsblog/111232/the_ingrid_pitt_column_talent_shows. html. Retrieved 24 November 2010. 4. ^ Pitt, Ingrid (29 January 2008). "Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep". Den of Geek. http://www.denofgeek.com/captainsblog/8782/the_ingrid_pitt_column_doctor_who_wa rriors_of_the_deep.html. 5. ^ "Monster Media". 2008-02. http://www.monstermania.net/Magazine.htm. 6. ^ "Ingrid Pitt". The Daily Telegraph (London). 24 November 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/filmobituaries/8158061/Ingrid-Pitt.html. 7. ^ Cotter, Robert Michael (2010). Ingrid Pitt, Queen of Horror. McFarland & Co. pp. 170, 205. ISBN 978-0-7864-5888-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=hGHGSSQB1oQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gb s_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. 8. ^ "Hammer horror actress Ingrid Pitt dies aged 73". BBC News (BBC). 23 November 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11823418. Retrieved 23 November 2010. 9. ^ Child, Ben (25 November 2010). "Ingrid Pitt made film about concentration camp childhood-Prior to her death, Hammer horror muse narrated animated short film about her childhood experience of the Holocaust". The Guardian (UK). http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/nov/25/ingrid-pitt-film-concentration-camp. Retrieved 25 November 2010. 10. ^ . perrys previews. http://www.perryspreviews.com/?p=1779. Retrieved 24 November 2010. 11. ^ . http://www.judnewborn.com.

External links

Ingrid Pitt at the Internet Movie Database Obituary in The Guardian Obituary in The Independent Pitt of Horror Ingrid Pitt: Beyond The Forest biopic Ingrid Pitt at HorrorStars Renga Media Weekly column at Den Of Geek

t e

Hammer Film Productions cast and crew

Film directors

Roy Ward Baker Michael Carreras Terence Fisher Freddie Francis John Gilling Seth Holt Peter Sasdy Don Sharp Ralph Bates Peter Cushing Veronica Carlson John Carson Jennifer Daniel Edward de Souza Clifford Evans Suzan Farmer Michael Gough Andrew Keir Duncan Lamont Christopher Lee Miles Malleson Francis Matthews Andr Morell Richard Pasco Jacqueline Pearce Ingrid Pitt Oliver Reed Michael Ripper Yvonne Romain Barbara Shelley Patrick Troughton Thorley Walters Barry Warren Noel Willman Jack Asher (cinematographer) Roy Ashton (make-up artist) Don Banks (composer) James Bernard (composer) Michael Carreras (producer) Arthur Grant (cinematographer) Anthony Hinds (producer, writer) William Hinds (founder, producer) Phil Leakey (makeup artist)

Notable actors and actresses

Miscellaneous

Eddie Powell (stuntman) Michael Reed (cinematographer) Bernard Robinson (designer) Jimmy Sangster (writer, director)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ingrid_Pitt&oldid=516680975" Categories:

1937 births 2010 deaths British non-fiction writers British novelists British television actors British film actors British Jews British voice actors British people of Russian descent British people of Polish descent German film actors Holocaust survivors Polish Jews Polish actors German television actors

Source Material: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Pitt More: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0685839/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countess_Dracula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampire_Lovers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_That_Dripped_Blood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Geese_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopussy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Eagles_Dare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimes_at_Midnight