The most infectious laugh

Laughter as the elixir of life: Liselotte Pulver turns 95

Liselotte Pulver

(Bild: picturedesk.com/Jens Kalaene / dpa)

It is considered the most infectious laugh in German film history: Swiss actress Liselotte Pulver has been charming audiences with her deep-throated chuckles since the 1950s. In the 1980s, she enchanted children with her infectious humor on Sesame Street. On October 11, she turned 95 years old. 

"A lot of people say I have such a thunderous laugh," she said mischievously in a TV interview when she was young. "But I can't help it!" For decades, Pulver was seen as the personification of good humor. Yet she had completely different plans in her early days: "I wanted to be a tragedienne. I wanted to play very serious roles and make people cry," she said in another interview.

How fortunate for the audience that she took a different path. Pulver showed her versatility in numerous films in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, she appeared in front of the camera as a charming Hungarian woman in "Ich denke oft an Piroschka" (1955) or as disguised handyman Felix in "Das Wirtshaus im Spessart" (1958).

Cult status 25 years late
And then came Billy Wilder's "Eins, zwei drei" (1961), for many people the best Lilo Pulver film, in which the Bernese actress dances provocatively on the table as "Fräulein Ingeborg" in Marilyn Monroe style in a polka dot dress. The Berlin comedy was overshadowed by the building of the Berlin Wall, when nobody felt like laughing, and initially flopped. It was only when the film was revived 25 years later that it achieved cult status.

Lilo Pulver in "One, two, three" by Billy Wilder from 1961

(Bild: picturedesk.com/akg-images)

Pulver showed her serious side in literary adaptations. She appeared as Zaza in "Die Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull" in 1957, in "Buddenbrooks" (1959) she played daughter Antonie, and in the French Diderot adaptation "Die Nonne" (1966) she was seen as an unhappy nun who flees and fails.

Last seen on television in 2021
Pulver has lived in seclusion in a retirement home in Bern for many years. She was last seen on television in Switzerland in 2021, when she was honored at the Film Awards ceremony. The SRF broadcaster visited her in Bern. Of course she was delighted, she said at the time, laughing, of course. "It's proof that I'm still here."

A tabloid magazine, which fills its columns with all kinds of stories about celebrities and aristocrats, recently wrote that Pulver is happy and content, wants to live to be over 100 and even dreams of a new partner: "He would have to be beautiful, rich and funny," she is quoted as saying. That would suit her.

Pulver appeared in front of the camera with film greats such as Hans Albers, Gustaf Gründgens, Heinz Rühmann, Curd Jürgens, O. W. Fischer and Hardy Krüger, and in French productions with Jean Gabin, among others.

Biggest mistake
Pulver dreamed of a global career and also filmed in Hollywood at the end of the 1950s. But in order to remain loyal to her German-speaking audience, she turned down roles alongside Charlton Heston in "Ben Hur" or "El Cid", for example, because they had already been agreed. The films became global successes.

Pulver later described canceling the film "El Cid" - then starring Sophia Loren - as her biggest mistake, but it brought her personal happiness. Instead, she shot the film "Gustav Adolf's Page" (1960) in Germany, where she met her future husband, the German actor and director Helmut Schmid. She also shot "Kohlhiesel's Daughters" with him in 1962. In it, she plays the dual role of twin sisters, one simple and usually angry, the other stunningly charming.

Pulver was married to Schmid for more than 30 years, her greatest happiness, as she always emphasized. Son Marc-Tell (62) still lives with his family in the family home on Lake Geneva. Daughter Mélisande committed suicide in 1989. Schmid died in 1992. How did she cope with the blows of fate? "You have no other choice," she told Swiss television. "You just have to get on with life and make the best of it." "Life Laughed in the Face" was the title of one of her books, which was published in 2016.

Liselotte Pulver with her husband, actor and director Helmut Schmid (undated photo).

(Bild: picturedesk.com/Rauchwetter / dpa)

When the German film industry was more about social criticism than entertainment, things became difficult for Pulver. "Difficult times began for me. I wasn't the first choice for the makers of the New German Cinema," she wrote bluntly in a book in 2019, in which she published photos and letters from her private archive. Her last film was "Das Superweib" in 1996 with Veronica Ferres.