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Nevertheless, as long as Lieschen was crying in her beer, Maria was wasting her talent, and in the fall of 1953 she took thought, went to work for the most gifted moviemaker in Germany. Helmut (The Devil's General) Käutner. In The Last Bridge, cast as a woman doctor in wartime, she gave a memorably jolting performance, and in 1954, at the Cannes film festival, Maria was voted the year's best actress. Overnight she had a world reputation, and the films that followed impressively sustained it.
The Sun Came Out. By 1957 Maria decided that she was ready for Hollywood. Alone, and armed with only an invitation to the Academy Award festivities, she left last March for the U.S. An officer of the Academy met her at the Los Angeles airport and took her to her hotel. No flashbulbs, no pressagents; nobody knew who she was and nobody cared. But 48 hours later she had MGM's top brass in a corporate rattle, and into her lap had fallen a tentative offer of the juiciest part the studio had to offer. And how did she do it? She went to a cocktail party.
The room was full of famous and beautiful women. "But when Maria walked in," says an actor who was there, "it was as if the sun had come out. and a lot of stars looked suddenly pretty dim." Producer Pandro Berman (who had just lost Marilyn Monroe for the part of Grushenka, and could not be sure that Warner Bros, would let Carroll Baker play it), took one startled look at Maria and got on the phone to Director Brooks. "I just saw Grushenka." After the party, Maria happened to meet Actor Brynner in the lobby of her hotel. He took one startled look and got on the phone to Director Brooks. "I just saw Grushenka." "O.K., O.K.," said Brooks. "You just saw Grushenka. Everybody just saw Grushenka. But can she act?" A quick look at Gervaise settled that. Brooks arranged a lunch at MGM. They gave her the script to read. "I could hardly breathe," Maria recalls; but the next day she had breath enough to harangue Brooks and Brynner "like a Prussian drill sergeant" about why she should have the part and Carroll Baker should not.
The Walls Shook. M-G-M was hopeful that in Actress Schell it had found a dish to tempt the flagging U.S. appetite for films—but was the dish just a little bit too full for the American taste? Director Brooks suggested tactfully that Maria refuse some of those second helpings of Kartoffelklösschen and Sachertorten, and lose a little weight—say, 20 Ibs. Maria agreed, but when she arrived in Hollywood to start shooting, she was as broad as ever. Furthermore, she was dressed like a middle-aged Central European frump. Her frocks were all in the height of Paris fashion—most of them made by Dior—but she had not bothered to take care of one minor detail: none of them had been properly fitted.
Director Brooks decided to be firm. "Maria, you have to lose weight." "Why?" "Because"—he took a deep breath—"you are not sexually attractive." That tore it. Says Brooks: "The walls shook. My teeth rattled. What a tigress." She concluded coldly: "In Europe, people look at my face, not at my body." But she pared away 15 Ibs. in about two weeks.