Hollywood dreams

Finnish artists tempted by international fame

Tauno Palo 1908-1982 (Tauno Brännäs)
According to the popular legend, Tauno Palo, the biggest domestic star of all time, was approached with a Hollywood offer at the height of his fame. He turned it down for language problems and family considerations.

Tauno palo was a vesatile talent and a perfect leading man type since his first film role, as the male lead in the 1931 war drama Soldier's Bride. He sang with a soft, melodious voice and played comedy with ease. He played the lead in all of his 63 films untill he retired from the screen while still on top with the 1961 psychological thriller The Blood Red Dove.

The truth is that while several continental European actresses made it big as Hollywood stars (Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Marlene Dietrich, Heddy Lamarr), it was almost impossible for a big classic Hollywood leading man to have even the slightest continental accent. The only remarkable exception was Charles Boyer.

IMDb

Lea Joutseno 1910-1977
Finnish actress in bubbly comedies. A screenwriter.
In 1942 she visited Berlin as a member of an official Finnish delegation (along with the domestic stars Regina Linnanheimo, Helena Kara, Irma Seikkula and Leif Wager, the directors Hannu Leminen, Wilho Ilmari and Ilmari Unho, and the journalist Toini Pyykkö), invited by the German Film Chamber, which planned to create an artistic collaboration between the two countries.
She said about the visit to the UFA studios: "In Finland actors have to take care of many things, but at the UFA they were treated with respect. It's much easier to concentrate on your work in that kind of atmosphere. And the German directors really knew how to squeeze the best possible performance out of an actor. Scenes were rehearsed and repeated endlessly before the directors were satisfied. It was almost scary."
She never made a screen test in Germany. She retired while still on top in 1948.

IMDb

Teuvo Tulio 1912-2000 (Theodor Tugai). Finnish-Latvian.

Famed and notorious director of dramas and melodramas.

Late 1940s Tulio met Paramount boss Adolph Zukor in Stockholm and managed to have a discussion with him in Yiddish. Tulio showed Zukor some of his films and they made a deal of one Hollywood film for Paramount to be shot in Sweden and to be directed by Tulio.

Tulio wrote a screenplay about a river rapids navigating hero and his girl (to be played by Regina Linnanheimo) and the script was accepted by Paramount after several drafts. Clark Gable read it and accepted the lead. Later he refused. Then Gary Cooper read it and accepted it. Then Tulio's Paramount producer Carl P. York suddenly died and the project was cancelled.

IMDb

Irma Seikkula 1914-2001

Respected Finnish dramatic actress with a very long career from 1937 to 1994.

She was a member of the 1942 delegation to Berlin, and as they were entertained by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, Irma Seikkula had the honor to get seated next to the famous host at the dinner table. She never made a screen test in Germany.

She created on film the original character for which Loretta Young won her Oscar in The Farmer's Daughter.

IMDb

Regina Linnanheimo 1915-1995 (Axa Regina Elisabet Leino, Countess Mörner)

Regina Linnaheimo was a modern, strong, emotional dramatic actress in Finnish cinema. She started as an ingenue in 1934 but soon graduated to heavy drama and melodrama in 1936 with the lead in the rural tragedy The Fight Over The Heikkilä Farm.
Later in her career she felt restricted by her big studio costume films and looked to widen her range and to broaden her audience by aiming at film stardom in Nazi Germany.
She was a graduate of the Helsinki German School and spoke fluent German. She visited the UFA studios in Berlin for the first time before the war in 1938, and again in 1942. Linnanheimo was the only one among the official delagation who stayed behind in Berlin for an immediate screen test, which had already been arranged before this visit.
She herself chose three scenes out of a script called Nacht ohne Abschied and they built two new sets for her and two costumes were sewed for her personally. She had a dialogue coach who helped her with her scenes against Rudof Preiss. The test was a success and they changed her name to Regina Heimo.
She returned to Helsinki and waited for the call to return to Berlin but the war turned sour on the Nazis and the test reels have never been recovered in the vaults of UFA.
Regina Linnaheimo continued her domestic career to become the legendary independent dramatic star and screenwriter of Teuvo Tulio's smoldering melodramas untill her retirement while still a leading lady with the 1956 alcoholic melodrama You've Invaded My Blood, after which she became a reclusive legend, a cult figure and a Swedish countess.
IMDb

Tapio Rautavaara 1915-1979

After his 1948 javelin win at the London summer Olympics Tapio Rautavaara was approached by a Hollywood studio for a possibility to test for the part of Tarzan. He never made the test.

Tapio Rautavaara was a popular leading man in the 1940s and '50s, specializing in guitar-strumming heroes with hearts of gold.

IMDb

Vera Valtonen 1915-1998. Finnish-Norwegian. In Sweden since 1945.
Sang mezzosoprano with her two sisters in the trio Harmony Sisters (1934-56), the most beloved Finnish singing group of all time. They personified the spirit of the struggle of WWII.
The group toured Nazi Germany as Geschwister Waltonen in 1942-43, sent there officially by the National Finnish Broadcasting Company. They made recordings in Berlin, but those were mostly destroyed in bombings. They visited military hospitals and were entertained by Nazi leaders.
Vera was the eldest, the prettiest and the blondest of the trio, and she was tempted with offers to become a German movie star for UFA. She had no acting experience and was a very shy person, so she reclined and the group returned to Finland.

IMDb

Helena Kara 1916-2002

Helena Kara was another beautiful Aryan blond actress who received a lot of attention during the 1942 delegation visit to the Berlin film studios. She was tempted but never made a screen test there. She travelled together with her director husband Hannu Leminen.

Helena Kara was a big domestic star and always a leading lady all through her career since she started in 1937 untill her sudden retirement in 1952.

IMDb

Leif Wager 1922-2002. Finnish-Norwegian.

A romantic, gentlemanly leading man.

A member of the delegation to Berlin in 1942.

During coffee after the Goebbles dinner he sat on a sofa with Mrs. Goebbels, who showed him her personal photo ablum.

Later he was approached by the UFA and asked to go back for a screen test. He never did.

He had a long and rescpected domestic career in films and on the stage.

IMDb

Åke Lindman, born 1928

Dramatic actor, director. Played mostly villains, very memorably.

Was the contact person and played Soviet officers in most of the Hollywood films that used Helsinki as a substitute for St. Petersburg or Moscow during the '60s, '70s and '80s.

Alfred Hitchcock approached him, called him personally, and it was Lindman's wife, actress Pirkko Mannola, who answered the phone. Hitchcock wanted to test Lindman for a part of a villain in a film he was planning at the time.

Later Lindman did go to Hollywood and he did meet Hitchcock in his office on the studio lot and they had a long discussion about movies, but the screen test was never made.

Lindman also worked with Jerry Lewis up to the preliminary shooting stage of a concentration camp musical comedy which finally never got made.

IMDb

Armi Kuusela, born 1934 (Armi Hilario, Armi Williams)
Beauty queen, The Finnish Maiden 1952, Miss Universe 1952.
Armi Kuusela, the most legendary of all Finnish beauty queens, got as far as the Universal Studios publicity department in her pursuit of the Hollywood dream, but ultimately it wasn't her real dream and she never signed on the dotted line.
At 17 she won the first ever Miss Universe pageant in Long Beach, CA, June 29th 1952. Part of the deal was a Hollywood contract with Universal Studios.
"You must reap while it's ripe - that principle is not foreign to the American publicity machine", she wrote later. The Universal people were in hot pursuit of Armi the morning after her win, but the Finnish schoolgirl "with the million dollar smile" said that "sorry I've danced all night", and refused to get out of bed for the moguls. The studio driver waited outside her hotel but she never materialized. "We can't understand this", a studio representative said and added that they'd already lost $3000 because of her. She in turn said she felt like a money-making machine being forced to sign a contract.
The Hollywood papers wrote the next day: "Miss Universe being difficult" ... "Miss Universe gone missing".
And she indeed did disappear for three days. She spent time with her sister at the Pasadena residence of the Finnish consul and did some sightseeing with the then future CIA boss Paul Helms.
After her escapade, the studio got Armi for a week. Her first film role was planned to be with Abbot and Costello, in a scene where the guys go to heaven and she was supposed to be one of the angels alongside with other Miss Universe contestants. (Probably Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), where she would've eventually played a handmaiden of Mars) She refused the part. They fought over her contract, and the Finnish consul is said to have burst in tears in the middle of the hard negotiantions. Meanwhile Armi met her favorite star, Ann Blyth. She also posed on a horse as a cowgirl, in a ballet class, with Tony Curtis, with a movie camera and with the producers in a fake contract-signing handshake photo. She was offered the standard 7-year contract starting with $250 per week with full training in acting, speech, English, singing and dancing.
Finally the negotiantions were ended by Armi's sister Sirkka (Armi was underaged and didn't speak English) when the moguls pondered about the problem concerning Armi's work permit and came up with the idea that she should marry Tony Curtis. Sirkka came back to the hotel to Armi and they packed their bags and left. There were rumors that Armi was refused an assurance that she would have received the fullest star build-up from Universal and this had discouraged her.
Afterwards Armi said that "everything was sunny as long as my title was newsworthy, but afterwards nobody would have been interested in me."
Many Finns were disappointed they lost the opportunity to get a Finnish Garbo.
In the 1950s she made one film in Finland and one film in the Philippines. She now lives in San Diego, CA.
Links 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
IMDb

Pirkko Mannola, born 1938 (Pirko Manola)

Actress, singer, Miss Finland of 1958.

Pirko Manola was a popstar in Germany in the early 1960s and recorded many duets with Wyn Hoop.

In 1961 she was approached by Bavaria Films and was offered the lead in a schlager film Love Letters from Tyrol, but she was under contract to the SF (Suomen Filmiteollisuus) and her studio boss Toivo Särkkä refused to loan her out to the Viennese producers. Later there were other offers, but she never managed to utilize her pop stardom in German films because of her Finnish exclusive contract.

She's enjoyed long and lasting popularity as a domestic actress and musical performer.

IMDb
German tribute page with photos

Tamara Lund 1942-2005

WILL TAMARA LUND BECOME THE NEW BOND GIRL? (Suomen Kuvalehti magazine June 1965, translation:)

"Big London daily newspaper Daily Mirror has on June 24th published a page long echanting picture of "Finnish actress and pop singer" Tamara Lund, and says that while Tamara was vacationing in London she visited the Pinewood studios and as it happened, a certain director discovered her, suggested a screen test and...

Tamara Lund may be on her way to become the new James Bond girl, if things turn out favorably, as the director who became interested in hee was no one else but the director of James Bond films Terence Young. Tamara even met Mr. Bond himself, Sean Connery, who clearly paid favorable interest to the beautiful read haired actress. Equally excited was the publicist of these blockbusters, Mr. Roy McGregor, who actually was the first one to notice the sudden revelation of this Finnish girl in front of him, a girl with "that something special", with star quality.

All this happened during the shooting of the new Bond film Thunderball at Pinewood studios. Tamara Lund happened to be there just by accident, as she had travelled to London to meet the American producer and advertising man Halsey Raines, who is looking for a singing actress (several of them as a matter of fact) for an up-coming musical film. With her individual personality and her witty use of the English language, Tamara charmed all the producers, directors, photographers and newspapermen who met her.

At the Pinewood studios they were filming the last shots of the Ian Flemming novel based Thunderball, re-shooting a helicopter scene, with the principal photograpy all finished. At these great studios they were also shooting Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck in Arabesque and the new Hayley Mills film, directed by her father John Mills. There was no entry to the actual shooting set, but when Roy McGregor saw Tamara in the studio entrance foyer, many doors seemed to open simultaneously. "She is a girl for the next Bond film", the publicist thought, and took Tamara straight away to be introduced to Sean Connery, Terence Young and the producer of Bond films.

Director Young, who prior to Thunderball directed Kim Novak in Moll Flanders, is specialized in finding beautiful girls. He gave Tamara "the eye" from the very start and asked right away if she knew how to ski. Of course can Tamara ski. "What an extraordinary coincidence, as we need a Finnish girl who can ski for the next Bond film, and she must be very good looking, like all Bond girls", said publicist McGregor [The next Bond film was You Only Live Twice (1967) with no Finnish skiers]. And Terence Young said that he needed a Scandinavian girl for his next film to be shot in Paris with Kim Novak, Romy Schneider, Jeanne Moreu, Peter O'Toole and Cary Grant. The film is commisioned by the UN and it deals with the international drug problem [The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966) was made with an entirely different cast with no Scandinavian girls].

Then the director gave orders: "Get photographers to take pictures of her, then send me those pictures and arrange an agent for her, then we shall see." They are always looking for new, beautiful, unknown girls for Bond films, and all the beauties who have previously been cast in them have become famous. The latest Bond girl is the French Claudine Auger, a former Miss France, who was chosen after a screen test in London out of countless of girls from all over the world.

Tamara Lund followed the production team to the exterior set on the Pinewood meadows and there the still-photographers were put to work. Tamara was photographed from all angles, even in a stable among thoroubreads. Suddenly two very important men appeared: English film journalist Tony Crawley and a photographer of famous London beauties David Hurn. The former had arrived to interview Sean Connery and the latter to take photographs for a magazine. Both discovered Tamara almost simultaneously, the former immediately aranging an interview with her, and the latter got assigned by the Bond producers to take as many studio heashots of Tamara as possible.

And so it happened that Tamara was forced to prolong her one week trip to London for a few days because of these photo shoots and interviews. Now everyone's waiting for the results, which base strongly on the taken photographs. The producers want to see first how their new Bond girl candidate photographs. After this there will follow a proper screen test, for which Tamara will be flown to London. It's doubful there'll be anything wrong with the photos, as Tamara is an exeptionally "photogenic girl", quoting the English photographer. "When we see a beautiful woman, we can even write a part especially for her in the new Bond film", has the director Terence Young said. Now we wait for the answer to this question: Will Tamara Lund become the new James Bond Girl?"

Photos:
Page long photo in the Daily Mirror (circulation about five million) made Tamara instantly famous:
"Finnish actress and pop singer Tamara Lund, 24 (above), is a real eye-catcher. A film director spotted hew on the "Thunderball" set at Pinewood Studios, Bucks. The director asked Tamara, who is Britain for a holiday, to take a screen test. She did ... and she hopes to know the result before she goes home to Finland tonight."

Tamara Lund in London with her two "discoverers", the English journalist Tony Crawley and the head publicist of Bond films Roy McGregor. Photo Eddie Waters

IMDb

Hannu Puhakainen, born 1943

Adventurer.

In the early 1970s, Puhakainen lived in Los Angeles and pursued the Hollywood dream of becoming a movie star. He never made a film appearance, but got mixed up with the seedy underbelly of the movie capital and ended up a paid companion to an obscure ex-bit player named Eileen Darlington.

He survived, and published his autobiography The Boulevard Of Broken Dreams in 1999.