Jenny Jugo

A lively brunette, dimple-cheeked actress with a tom-boyish, unaffected manner who briefly flirted with stardom in a string of romantic comedies during the mid-1930's. The daughter of a factory owner, Jenny was educated at a convent school in Austria. A short-lived marriage to the Italian actor Emo Jugo brought her to Berlin where she was spotted by the distinguished film producer Erich Pommer and subsequently signed to a contract with Ufa. Her comedic talents were not fully recognised until the first of her eleven films (Wer nimmt die Liebe ernst...? (1931)) under the direction of Erich Engel, who henceforth became her mentor. Jenny's forte was playing feisty, determined characters who tended to excel at oneupmanship. Her performance as Eliza Doolittle in Engel's adaptation of Pygmalion (1935) so enthused the author George Bernard Shaw that he offered her the opportunity to act in all of his plays on the stage in England.