Biography
Born in 1916 as the eldest child of a German-Baltic aristocrat, Baroness Irene Isabella Margarete Pauline Caecila von Meyendorff never intended to become a movie star. When the Russian Revolution erupted, her family fled to Germany, where Irene's mother, Elisabeth, left her conservative husband and children to pursue an unconventional life within the theatre circles of Weimar and Thuringia. In the early 1930s, Irene moved to Berlin to work as a cutter at the UFA film studios in Babelsberg. With her striking beauty and icy blond allure, she would have been an ideal lead for Alfred Hitchcock films. However, living in Nazi Germany during the 1930s limited her opportunities. When she was discovered for the screen, her debut was a mediocre swashbuckler film that unexpectedly made her a star. Perhaps her finest role was as the noble Hamburg patrician daughter Octavia in Veit Harlan's Opfergang (1944). She was never a supporter of the Nazi regime. Her first husband, Dr. Heinz Zahler, belonged to the Kreisau Circle, a group of religiously motivated anti-Nazi bourgeois. Her beauty caught the attention of Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister, who was sharply rebuffed by her with the words, “You would degrade me—and you would degrade yourself.” The infamous nickname "Bock von Babelsberg" ("the old horny goat of Babelsberg") for Goebbels was coined by Irene. After the war, she appeared only in minor roles in German films. In 1961, she met British actor James Robertson Justice, fell in love, and left her second husband, journalist Pit Severin of Hamburg, to follow Justice to England. She returned briefly to the screen in 1968 for a small role in the costume drama Mayerling but showed no interest in continuing her acting career. Eight years after James Robertson Justice’s death in 1975, she met and later married philanthropist Keith Bromley. Even at age 70, she journeyed to the Arctic and the Orinoco River. She passed away on September 28, 2001, in Hampshire, leaving behind a full and remarkable life.
