Wera Engels ~ This card is from the 1937 series Bunte Filmbilder. It measures about 2¼"x2¾"x and has a great photo of Vera Engels! This is an original cigarette card issued as #302 of the series. Given that it is over 70 years old it is in excellent condition. Please study my scan!

Wera Engels was a daughter of a German Admiral and Governor of the then German colony Tsing-tau China. After successful leading roles in productions of the well-established German UFA-studios in Babelsberg as well as in France, Engels was invited to Hollywood. Like many other German starlets, American producers saw her as a possible alternative to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. She contracted with RKO and was given roles under Walter Futter and M.H. Hoffman. By 1935 she returned to Germany, but soon fled the Nazi propaganda machine the came to dominate German films. She never returned to the screen. In Hollywood, Engels married the Lithuanian-born actor/writer Ivan Lebedeff. After Lebedeff's death in 1958, she eventually returned to Germany.