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Ilse Bois

queen of the KaDeKo

Surprisingly little is known about the life of the comedian and actress Ilse Bois, possibly due to being overshadowed by the stellar career of her younger brother, Curt Bois.

She was born in Berlin around 1900, and from an early age was acting in children’s theatre to assist her mother, who was left to bring up four children on her own after their father deserted them. Her mother re-married in 1907, to the playwright and librettist Albert Bernstein-Sawersky.

In 1911, Ilse appeared alongside her brother in Shakespeare’s Richard II at the Circus Busch in Berlin, and from 1913 to 1918 she appeared in eleven films, alone and with Curt. Most notably, she had roles in two dramatic fantasy-action films directed by Joseph Delmont; Das Rechts aufs Dasein and Der Geheimnisvolle Klub.

(image: film.virtual-history.com)

She spent part of the First World War touring in a cabaret troupe performing in military hospitals. By the mid 1920s, she was a regular performer at the Kadeko, and appeared in revues by Friedrich Hollaendar, such as Es Kommt jeder dran in 1928.

Ilse Bois as a Chicago Moll in “Achtung Aufnahme” at the Kadeko (image: Galerie Bodo Niemann Berlin)

In 1927, she appeared as Miss Bourne in the Anglo-German film adaptation of Arnold Ridley’s classic play The Ghost Train (Der Geisterzug), which premiered in Berlin in October of that year.

(image: venyoo.de)

She continued performing at the Kadeko right up to 1933, when she fled Germany for Austria. She later moved to Paris and then to London.

She was seen on stage in New York during the 1940s, in the Kabarett der Komiker in 1942, the Kleine Bühne in 1945 and at the Carnegie Hall in a memorial show for writer Karl Kraus in 1947.

She died in London on March 5th 1961.