Vera Voronina(1904-1942)

Vera Voronina, born in Odessa 1904, was a Russian model, dancer and actress. Her family left their homeland for Austria when the Russian revolution spread across the country. In 1925 Vera Voronina headed for the exuberant Berlin in the Weimar republic. She supported herself as a model and chorus girl. Her beauty eventually caught the eye of a Swedish film unit shooting in Berlin, who cast her in one of their productions, "Hon, den enda/She, The Only One" (1926) directed by Gustaf Molander. In 1927 Paramount Picture signed her to a contract and brought her to Hollywood. She lived at 1954 North Argyle Avenue with her husband Nikolaus Awramow, a lawyer from Kyiv. At that time, the studio already had German director Ernst Lubitsch and film star Emil Jannings under contract. Hoping to bolster its foreign talent pool, Paramount groomed Vera Voronina for stardom by promoting her as an exotic Russian exile. But the timing was bad. The talking pictures became increasingly popular and Vera didn't speak English at all. In the summer of 1928 the Voronina-Awramow couple returned to Europe and Berlin, where she appeared in four feature films before fading into obscurity in 1929. Vera Voronina believed to have died in 1942, 38 years old, location and cause unknown.