German-born actress and breathtaking beauty Ursula Thiess will celebrate her 83rd birthday tomorrow, May 15th.  Although her Hollywood credits are sparse, hopes were high in the early fifties when Howard Hughes brought her over from her native Hamburg to seek stardom in America.

The incredibly gorgeous Miss Thiess had been a budding actress in her native country.  She was married to a director, had two children, modeled, appeared on stage and worked dubbing American films into German for her home market.  Divorced from her husband in 1947, Thiess made her way to the U.S. and thanks to Hughes and his publicity machine immediately started getting national press, including a Life magazine cover in June of 1951.  She made her screen debut in 1952’s Monsoon, a romantic adventure set in India, co-starring George Nader and Diana Douglas, Kirk Douglas’ ex-wife (and mother of Michael Douglas).  Though this was a grade B movie at best, her publicity agents put the pedal to the metal and got her a Foreign Press Award and a “Most Promising Star” nod from Modern Screen Magazine, an honor she shared with Marilyn Monroe. 

Ursula’s next film was 1954’s The Iron Glove, a William Castle-directed 18th century-set costume drama about royal complications in Scotland, starring Robert Stack.  The year also saw the release of another Thiess film, Bengal Brigade with Rock Hudson and Arlene Dahl, another India-set actioner.  The next year she would star with Glenn Ford in another William Castle directorial effort The Americano, kind of a Brazilian Western, where Ursula plays a rancher.  Co-stars included Frank Lovejoy, Cesar Romero and the equally sultry Abbe Lane.  1956 brought Bandido, a Mexican revolution adventure starring Robert Mitchum and Gilbert Roland.  Thiess was lovely window-dressing in the films, providing pulchritudinous support to her leading men but not getting the kind of roles that would establish her either as a genuine star or first class legitimate dramatic actress in Hollywood.     

Although no doubt she could have gone on making movies indefinitely, Ursula Thiess’ personal life took precedence when she met the still-notable movie star Robert Taylor, who had ended his twelve-year first marriage to fellow movie star Barbara Stanwyck in 1951.  That had been an interesting match-up, made in Hollywood heaven and studio-blessed, the almost-too-handsome Taylor paired with the ballsy and independent Stanwyck, who some said acted towards him more like a bossy mother than a sweetheart, leading him to reportedly indulge in several sexual indiscretions with fellow stars like Ava Gardner and Lana Turner.  Intimates told of separate bedrooms and separate lives lived, yet they were a popular couple in Hollywood society circles and shared a love of the outdoors.  After an affair while he was filming the Roman epic Quo Vadis (1951) became known, Stanwyck asked for a divorce, perhaps more as a scare tactic than anything else, but Taylor, obviously grown unhappy with the marriage, took the opportunity and they ended their marriage.  Though many doubt that Stanwyck ever really fell out of love with Taylor, she was far from a creampuff, relentless pursuing and negotiating a 15% cut of his salary for the rest of his life, except if she remarried – which she never did.  (And some say that she even tried to collect back payments from Ursula Thiess Taylor after Taylor's death….)

When the beautiful Thiess met the handsome Taylor, it was true love.  They married on May 24, 1954 and eventually had a son and a daughter together.  Ursula stopped making movies but her husband continued his varied career at MGM, and in 1960 he dipped his toe into TV work with a detective series on which Ursula made several appearances opposite her husband.  This indisputably happy Hollywood marriage was cut short in 1969 when the heavy-smoking Taylor died of lung cancer at the prematurely young age of 57.  Ursula remarried later and moved to Hawaii, but was widowed again.  In 2006 she documented her exciting and romantic life with Robert Taylor, among other experiences, in her autobiography …but I have promises to keep:  My Life Before, With, and After Robert Taylor.