Henny Porten

Henny Porten (1890 to 1960) was a German actress and film producer of the silent era, regarded as Germany's first major film star. She made her first film appearance in 1906 in a short directed by her father, Franz Porten, for the pioneer Oskar Messter, and her success in The Love of a Blind Girl (1910) made her the first diva of German cinema and forced producers to print the names of their players. She went on to appear in more than 170 films between 1906 and 1955, working with directors such as Ernst Lubitsch and Georg Wilhelm Pabst. In 1919 she founded a film production company of her own, which merged with the firm of Carl Froelich in 1924. She stayed in Germany under the Nazi regime and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1960.