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Vilma Bánky

Personal Profile

Vilma Bánky
  • Birth Name:
    Koncsics Bánky Vilma
  • Nickname:
    Vilma Lonchit
  • Date of Birth:
    January 9, 1898
  • Place of Birth:
    Nagydorog, Austria-Hungary
  • Place of Death:
    Los Angeles, California
  • Date of Death:
    March 18, 1991
  • Sex:
    Female
  • Nationality:
    American

Family

Vilma Bánky
  • Father:
    Franz Josef
  • Brother:
    Gyula
  • Sister:
    Gisella
  • Spouse:
    Rod La Rocque

Career

Vilma Bánky

Trivia

Vilma Bánky
  • Was an avid golfer who was still teeing off well into her 80s.
  • When Ms. Banky became ill in late 80s, she was upset with the lack of attention from the media and the public. So there was no offical mention of her death until late 1992.
  • Banky spoke no English when first discovered by Samuel Goldwyn, who taught her to answer "Lamp chops and pineapple" to all reporters' questions.
  • Rudolph Valentino personally picked Vilma Banky as his leading lady in what would be his final film "The Son Of The Sheik".
  • Vilma's first talking picture, "This Is Heaven," proved an awful experience for the almost inaudible Hungarian actress. Therefore, her illustrious silent film career did not survive the change to talkies. She made her very last film only four years later, in 1933.
  • Her first talking movie was This Is Heaven (1929).
  • Vilma Bánky appeared in Hungarian, Austrian and French movies between 1920 and 1925, the year in which Samuel Goldwyn signed her, in Budapest, to a Hollywood contract.
  • In Hollywood she was billed as the "The Hungarian Rhapsody"
  • In the mid and late 1920s she was Goldwyn's biggest money maker, especially playing with Ronald Colman.
  • Her best-known works were with Rudolph Valentino: daughter of a Russian aristocrat in The Eagle (1925) and an Arab dancer in The Son of the Sheik (1926).

Biography

Vilma Bánky
Last Updated: Thursday, July 30, 2009

She was born Vilma Koncsics to János Koncsics and Katalin Ulbert in Nagydorog, Austria-Hungary. Her father was a bureau chief under Franz Josef's Austro-Hungarian Empire. Shortly after she was born, her father was transferred to Budapest, and the family relocated. Vilma had two other siblings - an older brother, Gyula (who would later go on to work in Berlin as a writer and cinematographer), and a younger sister, Gisella. After graduation from secondary (high) school, Vilma took courses to work as a stenographer, but was offered a role in a film. Acting had been her interest since she was a young girl.

Vilma's first appearance was in the lost film Im Letzten Augenblick, directed by Carl Boese in Germany in 1919. On a trip to Budapest in 1925, Hollywood film producer Samuel Goldwyn discovered the violet-eyed, blonde beauty and signed her to a contract. Both her mother and father were vehemently against Vilma's acting career as was her fiancé. Regardless of their feelings on the subject, she left for the United States in March 1925, arriving to a great deal of fanfare.

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