Signe hasso biography for kids

A Swedish actress, born in Stockholm, Sweden, as Signe Eleonora Cecilia Larsson. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1994. Signe Hasso married the German director...Read more Harry Hasso (1933-1941) and gave birth to a child before they separated in divorce. She married the actor William Langford and remained with him until he died in 1955. Hasso's most important works include The House on 92nd Street (1945), Heaven Can Wait (1943), A Scandal in Paris (1946), and The Seventh Cross (1944). Hasso's father and grandfather died when she was 4 years old, and she lived with her mother, grandmother, and two of her siblings in a one-room apartment. Her mother was trying to make her way to become an actress, but she was forced to cook pies and sell them to support the family. Hasso began standing on stage when she was 12 at the famous Royal Dramatic Theatre. She became one of the youngest students studying drama in the theater when she was 16. Her liberal education led her to appear in cinema for the first time in 1933 in the film Tystnadens hus (1933), and within 7 years, she moved between cinema and theater. In the late 1930s, when the harbingers of Nazi war loomed, Hasso left Sweden by rail across the Russian lands of Siberia to China, and from there to Singapore, where she sailed to San Francisco and from there by train to Los Angeles, on a trip that took 6 months. She signed a contract with RKO Pictures. She did not perform anything with RKO, so she headed to New York, where she performed 5 shows in Broadway theaters before signing a contract with MGM and making her first film in Hollywood, Heaven Can Wait (1943). She began her television career in 1951 and stopped acting in Hollywood following the death of her only son in a car accident. During that period, she presented some European films, and she returned to Hollywood in the mid-sixties with the movie Picture Mommy Dead (1966) and others while conti

Signe Eleonora Cecilia Hasso (néeLarsson; 15 August 1915 – 7 June 2002) was a Swedish actress, writer, and composer.

Biography

Hasso was born in the Kungsholmen parish of Stockholm, Sweden in 1915. Her father and grandfather died when she was four, and her mother, grandmother, two siblings, and she shared a single room. Her mother, a former aspiring actress herself, worked as a waffle cook.

Hasso attended Matteusskolan, Kungsholms elementarskola för flickor (elementary school for girls) and Norrmalms enskilda läroverk.

Her acting career began by accident. When a young actress fell ill, her mother was asked if she knew of any little girl who could act. Signe Hasso later recalled, "I was 12 then and didn't want to go and neither did my sister, so my mother flipped a coin. I lost." Her audition for a Molière play was successful, and she started earning money as an actress. She performed in Royal Dramatic Theatre productions, beginning in 1927 at the age of 12, and enrolled as the youngest acting student in its history at the age of 16.

She performed on stage and in film in Sweden. In 1933, Signe Larsson made her first film, Tystnadens hus, with Germanfilm director/cameraman Harry Hasso, whom she married the same year. They had a son by the time she was 19. They divorced in 1942.

In Sweden, Signe was approached by Hollywood's Howard Hughes to move to the United States, where she signed a contract with RKO Pictures (which he would later control). With only a few RKO roles forthcoming, she turned to the stage to make a living. According to the Internet Broadway Datab

Signe Hasso (born Signe Eleonora Cecilia Larsson, 15 August 1915 – 7 June 2002) was a Swedish actress, writer and composer.

Spouses

Harry Hasso (1933–1941; divorce); 1 child
William Langford (19??–1955; his death)

Background

Hasso was born in the Kungsholmen parish of Stockholm, Sweden in 1915. She debuted at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1927 at the age of 12.

Career

In 1933, she made her first film, Tystnadens hus, with German film director/cameraman Harry Hasso, whom she subsequently married. In 1940, she moved to the United States, where she was signed to a contract by RKO Studios, who promoted her as "the next Garbo". She and Hasso divorced in 1941.

Her first role of note was in Heaven Can Wait (1943). During the 1940s, she appeared in The Seventh Cross (1944), Johnny Angel (1945), The House on 92nd Street (1945), A Scandal in Paris (1946), and A Double Life (1947).

By the 1950s, her Hollywood career had stalled. In 1957, her son and only child was killed in a car accident. From then on, she divided her time between making films in Sweden and acting on stage in New York until she returned to Hollywood in the mid-1960s.

In her later years, Hasso worked as a songwriter and writer and translated Swedish folk songs into English. Her debut novel, Momo (1977), depicts her childhood in interwar Stockholm while Hasso's second album, Where the Sun Meets the Moon (1979) consists of her own versions of Swedish folk tunes.

She continued to act until late in her life, her last film being One Hell of a Guy (2000).

Hasso received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the motion picture industry. Her star ceremony was held on February 1, 1994 with the star located at 7080 Hollywood Blvd.

Death

She died in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2002, aged 86—or 91 depending on source—of undisclosed causes.

Cause of Death: Pneumonia brought on by lung cancer. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/

Swedish actress. Born Signe Larsson on August 15, 1910, in Stockholm, Sweden.

Selected films:

House of Silence (Sweden, 1933); Witches' Night (Sw., 1937); Career (Sw., 1938); Geld fällt vom Himmel (Ger./Sw., 1938); Us Two (Sw., 1939); Steel (Sw., 1940); Journey for Margaret (U.S., 1942); Assignment in Brittany (U.S., 1943); Heaven Can Wait (U.S., 1943); The Story of Dr. Wassell (U.S., 1944); The Seventh Cross (U.S., 1944); Dangerous Partners (U.S., 1945); Johnny Angel (U.S., 1945); The House on 92nd Street (U.S., 1945); Strange Triangle (U.S., 1946); A Scandal in Paris (U.S., 1946); Where There's Life (U.S., 1947); To the Ends of the Earth (U.S., 1948); A Double Life (U.S., 1948); This Can't Happen Here/High Tension (Sw., 1950); Outside the Wall (1950); Crisis (1950); Maria Johanna (Sw., 1953); Taxi 13 (Ger./Sw., 1954); The True and the False (U.S., 1955); Picture Mommy Dead (U.S., 1966); The Black Bird (U.S., 1975); I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (U.S., 1977).

A stage actress while still in her teens, Swedish actress Signe Hasso made the transition to starring roles in films during the 1930s. Discovered by Hollywood in 1942, she appeared in American movies throughout the next decade, most often playing strong-willed women. Notable among her American films are The House on 92nd Street (1945), a spy drama made in documentary style with William Eythe and Lloyd Nolan, and To the Ends of the Earth (1948), a well-crafted thriller with Dick Powell. Her later career included stage, screen, and television appearances in the United States and Europe. She also wrote the lyrics for several Swedish songs.