Maria Sebaldt(1930-2023)

A gracious and sympathetic doyenne of stage and screen, latterly often in poignant maternal or insightful roles, Maria Sebaldt's career spanned almost six decades. She was born in Berlin, the daughter of a one-time portrait painter, who, by 1930, had achieved a senior position as a department head within the German branch of Paramount (this was at a time when Hollywood money underpinned cash-strapped German film studios, such as Ufa). Sebaldt began training as an actress from the age of sixteen, beginning with private tuition and progressing from there to a Stanislavsky Academy in Weimar from where she graduated in 1950. She spent her early performing years on the stage and soon became renowned as a sophisticated boulevardier and cabaret artist with notable engagements at the Komödie am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin (founded by Max Reinhardt in 1924) and at the Kleine Komödie in Munich.

Following her screen debut in 1953, Sebaldt appeared in supporting roles or second leads in anything from operetta (Le Baron tzigane (1954)), comedy (Le Capitaine de Köpenick (1956)) and romantic melodrama (Amour sans illusion (1955)) to thrillers (L'étau (1958)) and literary adaptations from the classics (Buddenbrooks - 2. Teil (1959)). She received top billing as the heroine in the crime satire Bien joué... Mesdames! (1958) (as travel companion to the eponymous hero), in L'astucieux inspecteur Brown (1960), a murder mystery headlining Heinz Rühmann as G.K. Chesterton's famous detective Father Brown (she would later co-star with Rühmann in another crime comedy, Vorsicht Mister Dodd (1964)) and in the swinging sixties romp L'Irrésistible Célibataire (1963) (as the free-spirited Daniela, who turns the tables on a womanizing lothario played by Karl Michael Vogler). Yet another of Sebaldt's noted roles on the screen was as the beautiful heiress Carlotta Ramirez in an Austrian adaptation of the classic farce Charley's Aunt (opposite Peter Alexander). In stark contrast, she also essayed a lady rancher among an international cast in the hard-boiled Italo western Cinq mille dollars sur l'as (1965).

In later years, Sebaldt maintained her popularity with audiences as a character actress on television, particularly compelling as the caring family matriarch in Die Wicherts von nebenan (1986). Her many guest appearances on prime time series have included episodes of Tatort (1970), Inspecteur Derrick (1974) and Das Traumschiff (1981). She also made occasional forays into voice-overs, dubbing for, among others, Joan Greenwood, Joanne Woodward and Eva Marie Saint. Maria Sebaldt died in Munich on April 4 2023, aged 92. She was predeceased in 2010 by her husband of 45 years, the actor Robert Freitag, with whom she had a daughter.