Funny Fat Girl
Funny Fat Girl
Geertruida Everdina Wilhelmina van Aalten (born August 2, 1910, Arnhem, Netherlands; died June 27, 1999, Warmond, Netherlands) was a Dutch actress who appeared in many German films in the 1920s and 1930s.
Biography
Early life
Truus found a job with a milliner after school, then trained as a salesgirl at a fashion store in Amsterdam (4, 38). She passionately wanted to be a movie actress (31), but very few films were made in the Netherlands at the time.
Early career with Ufa
In 1926, Truus entered a beauty competition in a Dutch magazine - if she won she'd have the chance to audition for a part in a real movie in Berlin. Not long after, she was summoned to the German capital for an audition - along with two hundred other girls. Truus had never had an acting lesson in her life, and was certain she’d be sent home at once (1, 4). One after the other, the girls were filmed. They were all older than Truus, and she could see she hadn’t a hope (31).
When the director watched the tests, one girl stood out - where everyone else had gazed into the lens with expressions of the deepest sincerity, this one hadn’t been able to repress a laugh. She was funny, it shone through, and she got the job (31).
Like its counterparts in California, Rome and New York, Ufa was a factory - scripts were being written, scenes were being shot in big, barn-like studios, editors assembled printed footage in cuttingrooms. There were plasterers’ workshops, carpentry shops, prop stores, hair and wardrobe departments, and publicity offices planning the release of completed movies (Ufa ran 3,000 cinemas, admitting nearly a million people a day (10)). Truus met the other members of the cast - her six “sisters” (including English actress Betty Balfour) and Willy Fritsch as Count Horkay (19). Fritsch was very well-known and handsome, and Truus fell in love with him on the spot (31).
Truus had to quickly get used to being made up and going through wardrobe, then finding her place on the sets. She watched cameraman Carl Hoffman (who had lit big hits like “Dr Mabuse Der Spieler” and “Die Niebelungen”) and all the grips, riggers, plasterers, cable bashers, and set dressers bustling about their jobs. She learned that acting didn’t just mean showing emotions and moving about, but demanded that she concentrate on staying within chalk marks on the floor so as not to stray outside the range of the lights or the camera’s focus. Despite it all (and perhaps because of one particular scene in which Willy Fritsch kissed her), Truus loved the work (31).
Ufa bigwigs made a decision. Truus's German was wobbly at best, but she was sparkly and funny and the camera liked her. If her father would sign a contract, Ufa would train Truus and put her in more films. Her future would depend on hard work and luck. Truus and her father talked it over. Being an actress wasn’t a secure job - it wasn’t even a well-respected job - but it was all she’d ever wanted to do. The contract was signed and Truus moved to Berlin.
At Ufa Truus was introduced to a major figure in her life, highly-respected actress Olga Tschechowa, who became her unofficial mentor and mother-figure in movieland. Olga was a fascinating woman, born in exotic Transcaucasia, part of the Russian Empire. Her claim to be related to Anton Chekhov was true, but she also loved to spin the most amazing yarns about her early life: she was close to Tsar Nicholas II, had met Rasputin and had fled the Revolution disguised as a mute peasant woman, hiding her jewellery in her mouth. She’d been acting since 1917, and had become one of Germany’s most popular stars (19). Truus adored Olga, later citing her as a major influence both personally and professionally. Nicknaming her “Trulala”, Olga taught her the disciplines of movie work and encouraged her to be more serious in her approach to it. She also badgered the still-chubby girl to lose some of her 106 pounds. “Have you done any exercises yet today, Trulala?” she would cry. “Which ones? For how long? Go get a copy of ‘Eat Well And Stay Healthy’ - we can’t use fat girls in films!” (31)
Ufa put Truus into her next film, “Die Selige Exzellenz” (“His Late Excellency”) in 1927. It starred Willy Fritsch, Max Hanson and Olga Tschechowa, and was directed by William Thiele (29).
In preparation for the premiere of “Die Sieben Töchter Der Frau Gyurkovics”, Truus had a dress made specially. It’s possible that the more sophisticated ladies present may have thought that in a dress so decorated and with so many colours in it, she looked rather like an over-decorated birthday cake, but Truus was delighted with it. She sat in her box, trembling with nerves as the lights went down, waiting for her scenes to appear. What nobody had told her was that the film had been edited severely to get it to length - her scenes had been shortened or cut altogether. Soon she was grateful that nobody could see her in the dark as she hid at the back of her box, crying all over her beautiful new dress. When the credits ran at the end, her name wasn’t even mentioned - but this was the new, tough Truus van Aalten, not the kid from Arnhem any more. She decided to stay in Berlin and make a career as an actress (31). Ufa continued to employ her for the following year, after which she worked for various other film companies (1).
Silent films were genuinely international. While today’s Hollywood movies are typically dubbed straight into German, French, Russian and Spanish, films were originally adapted much more closely to different countries’ tastes. Reading intertitles specially written for them, an audience in Florence or Heraklion or Omsk could enjoy a story about people with local names (John became Hans or Jan or Ioan or any other name that suited his character better - if a fat man was funnier coming from Düsseldorf rather than Dortmund, then that’s where he came from). Local jokes and references were built into the dialogue, and audiences welcomed foreign actors into their lives with far greater affection than later when the movies became talkies. Truus was funny, pretty, spunky - and audiences across Europe were destined to love her.
The next year brought more film parts. She benefitted hugely from all this experience - particularly in dealing with directors, who played a particularly powerful rôle in German moviemaking. One problem she did occasionally encounter from older actors was a certain snobbishness about her non-theatrical origin: a “real” actress had stage training (29).
German film companies tended to draw from a fairly small pool of actors and actresses. A trusted performer moved from production to production (26), and being welcomed into this movie village meant that Truus could anticipate the same security - as long as she worked hard and didn’t do anything to turn the public against her.
Truus learned about the machinery of being a movie starlet - she posed for photos and gave interviews for film magazines. She even found herself being asked to appear in advertisements, and earned a surprising amount of money endorsing Bubisan hair products and Marylan face cream.
The "Truus" style
Truus had a distinctive look - her mixture of boyish yet feminine energy was very 1920s. Her sharply bobbed hair and uninhibited style owed a lot to American comic actress Colleen Moore, who’d appeared in her first film in 1916. Seven years later, trapped in “little girl” roles, Moore had sought a way out of the long dresses and demure ringlets that she knew no longer represented young American women. When she’d read the scandalous modern novel “Flaming Youth”, then learned that it was to be filmed, she’d seen that the lead part could be her route to stardom. “I begged for the role,” she remembered in her autobiography, “but the New York office said I wasn’t the type, I was better in costume parts. I was frantic for fear they’d give the part to someone else.” It was Colleen’s mother who’d had the inspiration: “She said, ‘Why don’t we cut your hair?’ I was elated. She picked up the scissors and, whack, off came the long curls. I felt as if I’d been emancipated. Then she trimmed my hair around with bangs like a Japanese girl’s haircut. Five days later I had the part.”
Moore wasn’t the first girl to bob her hair, but doing so was still quite shocking for most people. “Flaming Youth” was a hit around the world, and women in their millions started queuing at barber shops for Colleen Moore bobs (30).
Silent films
Truus’ next films built up her experience and slowly added to her fanbase. The funny Dutch girl was attracting attention that could easily have dissipated had her “Girl Wins Film Competition” fame not been backed up by talent and hard work. In quick succession, Truus worked on “Sechs Mädchen suchen Nachtquartier” (“Six Girls Seek Sleeping Quarters”), “Das Spreewaldmädel” (“Girl From The Spreewald”)/“Wenn die Garde Marschiert” (“When The Guards March”), “Leontines Ehemänner” (“Leontine’s Husbands”), “Die lustigen Vagabunden” (“The Merry Tramps”) and “Der moderne Casanova”, all released in 1928.
Comedy was definitely what Truus did best - and she was a bright spark in often uninspired films. German audiences loved to laugh, and almost a quarter of all films made in Germany were comedies (29).
The film-making community adored her, and referred to her affectionately as “die kleine Hollandische Käse” (The Little Dutch Cheese). A 1927 article about her in the Dutch weerkly magazi
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