2024-10-29 09:10:00
A convicted bank robber and Romy Schneider appear on a talk show in 1974. “I like you, I like you a lot,” says the movie star, leaving the audience and the press breathless.
Colony.
Imagine if Angela Merkel went to a jungle camp. Maybe not quite so, but it was a sensation when Rosemarie Magdalena Albach, known as the film actress Romy Schneider, took her seat in a German television studio on October 30, 1974 – on the talk show “Jelater der Abend”, moderated by Dietmar Schönherr. It created a legendary moment in the history of German television.
Romy Schneider had disappeared in German-speaking countries at the time – well, two days before her film “Le Train – Just a Touch of Happiness” was released in West German cinemas (in it Schneider plays a German Jew in France in escape from the Nazis). he made this appearance on the WDR talk show.
Moderator Dietmar Schönherr makes a great effort to convince Romy Schneider to speak on the talk show “The Later the Evening”. (archive image) Image: Horst Ossinger/dpa
Moderator Dietmar Schönherr makes a great effort to convince Romy Schneider to speak on the talk show “The Later the Evening”. (archive image) Image: Horst Ossinger/dpa
Schneider, then at the peak of her career in France – in 1973/74 she shot five films in ten months – came from the Côte d’Azur, where Claude Chabrol’s film “The Innocents with Dirty Hands” was being shot. I came to Cologne.
During the broadcast, the Viennese put her hand on the leather jacket of former bank robber, writer and actor Burkhard Driest and said with her incomparable charm: “I like you, I like you very much.” Crackling in the studio, indignation on many sofas in the Federal Republic.
Schönherr had already spoken to Driest about his bank robbery when he was a law student in 1965. For this, Driest spent several years in prison. Schönherr wanted to know whether he meant his act politically. There was a lot of politicization in Germany then.
Romy Schneider liked quotes about Willy Brandt
Driest explained, “To me, it’s not political if someone says to themselves that what I’m doing now is what I call political. To me, it’s political when it happens in the context of social action.” For example, a strike is political. “But if I personally decide to throw an egg at Mr. Brandt’s head, then it is not political. It is: indecent. Or: bad.”
Schneider then told her: “I like you, I like you very much”, which perhaps you should know: the SPD politician Willy Brandt, whom Schneider admired, had resigned as chancellor about six months earlier.
Driest, who had rehearsed for Tennessee Williams’ play “Endstation Sehnsucht” at the Bochum Schauspielhaus under the direction of Peter Zadek in the fall of ’74, had written a book about his time in prison. “The Brutalization of Franz Blum” was also made into a film and was screened at the ARD in March. He sat there with his legs spread, his shirt open, marking the boy. Romy’s comment and touch almost ennobled him. The diva and the city terror.
“With his tongue he wiped the wet sheen on his lips”
The small moment sparked big fantasies. Did the two have anything together after the show? Driest, who died in 2020 at age 80, said years later that something had happened; Schneider had been dead for some time (she died in 1982 at the age of 43). Schneider, who hated rumors and the tabloid press, would never have revealed this to the mafia.
After the 1974 show, not only did the tabloid press pay little attention, but even “Der Spiegel” called the actress “Venus” a few days after her appearance. “She came dressed in that black that makes women look demonic.” And: “He wiped the wet shine from his lips with his tongue; there was a certain shine in his eyes.”
Romy smokes: 50 years ago this kind of thing wasn’t a problem on TV. (archive image) Image: Horst Ossinger/dpa
Romy smokes: 50 years ago this kind of thing wasn’t a problem on TV. (archive image) Image: Horst Ossinger/dpa
“No questions about my private life,” “Schneider” had agreed in advance. But the talk show didn’t need questions about the state of her marriage to German director Harry Meyen or her daily life in Paris to produce scandalous material.
Talk show host Schönherr had a good fight with Schneider
In the mostly stuffy Federal Republic, the cinema legend, often still tearfully called the former “Sissi”, irritated millions of viewers with her appearance, the glamor she brought with her from France and at the same time the his shy ways.
“I’m really nervous right now and it’s not my profession,” she said of the television medium and speech format. He didn’t say many sentences, took many pauses, and talk show host Schönherr struggled to keep the conversation going. What if he now imagined that that would be a role? “Yes, it would be easier.”
Some Romy exegetes and experts say they have recognized that Schneider’s statement is based on a quote from the “Sissi” films, when the young Elizabeth says of Emperor Franz Joseph “I love him, I even love him very much.” In the first film “Sissi” there is at least the scene with Sissi’s father asking: “Didn’t you like Franzl in the end?” And Romy Schneider, as the daughter, replies: “Yes, I actually like her very much.” (dpa)