Vilma Bánky(1898-1991)
- Actress
Vilma Bánky appeared in Hungarian, Austrian and French movies between 1920
and 1925, the year in which Samuel Goldwyn signed her, in Budapest, to a
Hollywood contract. In Hollywood she was billed as the "The Hungarian
Rhapsody". In the mid and late 1920s she was Goldwyn's biggest money
maker, especially playing with Ronald Colman. Her best-known works were with
Rudolph Valentino: daughter of a Russian aristocrat in The Eagle (1925) and an Arab dancer
in The Son of the Sheik (1926). Her first talking movie was This Is Heaven (1929). She toured the U.S. in
"Cherries Are Ripe" with her husband Rod La Rocque in 1930-1 and, the next
year, went with him to Germany to make her last film.