Two Beautiful Women

Last week two beautiful women made news. One was a heroine, the other a traitor.

Heroine. Olga Tschechowa,* nee Knipper, born in the Russian Caucasus, fled in 1921 to Germany, where she became a cinema celebrity and ostensibly a great chum of Adolf Hitler. All during the war, said the Russians last week, she had really been a Russian spy, using her chauffeur to get through to Moscow the tiny, gold-covered notebooks in which she jotted the requests which Nazi bigwigs wanted her to put to Adolf. During the battle of Berlin, she hid in a bomb shelter, was rescued, in the best movie spy tradition, by a Red Army colonel.

Traitor. Lida Baarova (real name: Ludmilla Babkova) was born in Prague. Her father was a Milquetoasty little fellow who worked in the city hall; her domineering mother was determined that Lida should be a radiant somebody. She became one, in motion pictures. Seven years ago she was the center of a great brouhaha when goatish little Paul Joseph Goebbels was beaten up (either by her burly husband, Gustav Froelich, or by friends of his) for being entertained in Lida's chambers. Berliners coined a crack--"Ich moechte so gern froehlich sein"--which can mean either "I wish I were happy" or "I wish I were Froelich." In Prague last week Lida was indicted by the People's Court as a traitor to Czechoslovakia.

* Heroine Olga, who married and divorced Michael Chekhov, is not to be confused with her distinguished aunt, Actress Olga Chekhova, widow of Michael's uncle, the great Anton Chekhov.

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