Willy Fritsch & Heli Finkenzeller ~ This card #86 from the Bunte Filmbilder cigarette card series. It is a vintage 1936 original. The edges show minor wear but it is still a nice example: VF. The card is larger than a British or American cigarette card (over 2¼"x2¾"). Click on my scan to greatly enlarge the image (opens a new browser window).

This image is most likely from Boccaccio (1936).

Willy Fritsch studied drama under Max Reinhardt and entered the German film industry in the early-1920s. He became a highly popular star of light operettas and romances often opposite Lilian Harvey or Käthe von Nagy. Fritch kept working right through the Nazi domination of the German cinema averaging about one film a year including Vienna Blood (1942) and The Bat (1945). As easily as he had worked under the Nazis, Fritch continued acting in occupied Germany and then West Germany until retiring in 1964.

Heli Finkenzeller was a German comedic stage and film actress active between 1935 and 1989. Most of her pre-1945 films were light escapist fare. She suffered the usual post-war blacklisting which usually lasted four or five years and then continued her career. Postwar she was more often cast as motherly characters.