Lil Dagover (
September 30,
1887 -
January 24,
1980)
[Lil Dagover Biography] was a
German stage, film and television actress whose career spanned nearly six decades.
Early life
Lil Dagover was born
Marie Antonia Siegelinde Martha Seubert in
Madiun,
Java,
Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia) to Dutch parents. Her father was a forest ranger in the service of the Dutch colonial authorities.
[Film Reference: Lil Dagover] In 1897, at the age of ten, Seubert's parents sent her back to Europe to continue her education in boarding schools in
Baden-Baden,
Weimar and
Geneva,
Switzerland.
After completing her education she began pursuing a career as a stage actress. In 1917 she married actor Fritz Daghofer, who was twenty-five years her senior. The couple would divorce in 1919 and the union produced a daughter, Eva Marie, born the year of the divorce. Seubert would begin using a variant of her ex-husband's surname as a professional moniker - changing the spelling of 'Daghofer' to 'Dagover'.
[AllMovie.com]
Acting career in the Weimar Republic
Lil Dagover made her screen debut in a 1913 film by director
Louis Held. During her brief marriage to Fritz Daghofer, Lil Dagover was introduced to several notable film directors; among them
Robert Wiene and
Fritz Lang. Lang would cast Dagover in the role of 'O-Take-San' in the 1919 exotic drama
Harakiri which would prove to be Dagover's breakout role. Lang would direct Dagover in three more films: 1919's
Die Spinnen (English title:
Spiders), 1921's
Der Müde Tod (English release titles:
Destiny and
Behind The Wall), and 1922's
Dr. Mabuse der Spieler. The following year, she would be directed by Robert Wiene in the
German Expressionist horror classic
Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari, from a script by
Carl Mayer and
Hans Janowitz opposite actors
Werner Krauss and
Conrad Veidt.
