Maria Ney (August 6, 1890, in Kiel – April 7, 1959, or April 6, 1961[1][2][3] in West Berlin) was a German cabaret artist, film actress and accordionist.
Ney was born in Kiel in northern Germany in 1890.[2][1] Her father was a physician.[4] She first studied singing at the Kiel Conservatory.[4]
In 1933, she was reported to live in Zurich.[5] She returned to Nazi Germany by 1936, when she was in a film.[6]
She is buried in the Waldfriedhof Zehlendorf in Berlin.[4]
In 1923, Ney made her debut at the Café Gößenwahn on Kürfurstendamm in Berlin.[4] By the late 1920s, Ney was performing regularly in the "Cabaret of Comics" (Kabarett der Komiker ), the longest-running German-language cabaret.[7][4][3][8] She was famous enough to receive reviews in the American magazine Variety and was one of the most famous German women singers in the 1920s and 1930s.[9][10]
She often performed in a sailor suit, perhaps emphasizing her nautical background from the port town of Kiel, and played the accordion.[4] In the 1920s "A Sailor in Marseille" at the Cabaret of Comics, Ney performed with ten backup accordionists.[9] Her performance "Give It" (Gib ihn) with Heinrich Giesen included a scene in a gondola rowed by two masked characters who seem to be in blackface.[11]
Ney served as the master of ceremonies in several short sound films that consisted of several different acts or scenes. Terra-Melophon Magazine, No. 1 (1930), which was called a "magazine film," included the reading aloud of passages from a novel, an explanation of how a telephone call between Berlin and New York worked, a demonstration of how to make a martini, and a series of exercises led by a famous physical educator.[12]
Cabaret Program No. 6 (1931), Ufa-Cabaret Program (4th Part) (1931), Aafa Potpourri II (1932) consisted of mixtures of different cabaret acts and film studio events.[13][14] The Ufa-Cabaret was produced for the film company Universum Film AG (Ufa), while the Aafa Potpourri was about Aafa-Film.[14] These films attempted to replicate cabaret performances and atmosphere.[15]
During the Third Reich, Ney was in two feature films: The New Cabin Boy (1936), in which she played the accordion, and Shots in Cabin 7 (1937–38).[6] Shots in Cabin 7 was a mystery film set on board a cruise ship traveling from Cape Town to Amsterdam, in which a pair of detectives uncover a diamond smuggling ring.[16] Ney portrayed the wife of one of the detectives, who was played by Aribert Grimmer.[17]
Starting in 1948, Ney presented "Coffee Table" and other light programs on Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor (RIAS, Radio in the American Sector), the United States-sponsored radio station in Berlin.[3][4]