Obit of the Day

Obit of the Day: Scranton’s Silent Star

When Polly Alpert died in Scranton, Pennsylvania at the age of 103 she had lived in the city for 57 years, raising her four children and doing all the things that post-World War II American moms did. But there’s a good chance that not a lot of her Scranton peers were European film stars of the silent era.

Pola Illéry was born in Romania in 1908. By 1928 she had moved to France and became a star in their film industry. In ten years she performed in fifteen films, often as the star. She fled France in 1939 with the coming of the Nazi threat - Illéry was Jewish. She and her husband found their to the U.S. and Illéry became a naturalized citizen in 1946. They settled down in Scranton in 1954 and Illéry moved on with her life.

You can find Illéry’s full filmography here.

(The image of Illéry is from Sous les Toits de Paris or Under the Roofs of Paris and is courtesy of www.cinema.de)