La Jana

La Jana was the stage name of the brunette Viennese-born actress and exotic dancer Henriette 'Henny' Hiebel. She was trained as a ballerina for ten years and first performed at the Frankfurt Kinderoper at the age of eight. Of boyishly slim build, she appeared on stage in cabaret in 1921. Soon after, she was reputedly discovered for the screen by the director Géza von Cziffra at the Chat Noir cabaret in Paris. She received good publicity from a successful tour of Britain, during which the press alternately touted her as being Spanish or Hungarian. The build-up continued with glamour photographs for Vogue magazine. Movies followed and La Jana hit the big time with Truxa (1937) (dancing on a giant tambourine) and Es leuchten die Sterne (1938). Propelled to instant stardom, she came to represent oriental or Latin mystery and allure as the scantily-clad heroines of Der Tiger von Eschnapur (1938), Das indische Grabmal (1938) (as the high priestess of a cult) and Stern von Rio (1940).