Biography
Born Agnes Bernauer in Berlin in 1923, the performer who later adopted the stage name Agnes Bernelle died on 16 February 1999 in Eire. Her father, the Hungarian-born Rudolph Bernauer, owned theatres and supplied lyrics for the stage, while family acquaintance Marlene Dietrich moved in the same circles. At seven she appeared on screen for the first time, cast as a boy. Because her father was Jewish, the family left Germany in 1936 ahead of Nazi persecution and settled in London, where Rudolph Bernauer went on to write and direct motion pictures. In the British capital she joined the Free German League of Culture and delivered propaganda broadcasts aimed at Germany under the name “Vicky the Sailor’s Sweetheart.” In 1945 she wed Desmond Leslie, an Irish Royal Air Force fighter pilot and cousin of Winston Churchill. During the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s the couple circulated among the London and Riviera set that included Claus von Bulow and Farouk, the former king of Egypt. She also appeared in a BBC radio series written and directed by Orson Welles. British theatrical precedent was set in 1956 when she became the first performer permitted to move while nude on a London stage, the Lord Chancellor’s office having ruled that stationary nudity alone was acceptable.
A one-woman programme opened at Peter Cook’s Establishment Club in 1963 and subsequently transferred to the West End, featuring songs by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht that remained central to her repertoire and were later collected on the rare LP Bernelle And Brecht And …. That same year she and her husband relocated to Eire. After their 1969 divorce and her remarriage, she based herself chiefly in Dublin, working across radio, theatre, film, television and cabaret. The television documentary I Was That Little Girl followed her return to Berlin to explore her origins and to present her cabaret material. Elvis Costello produced the mid-1980s album Father’s Lying Dead On The Ironing Board. Its successor, Mother, The Wardrobe Is Full Of Infantrymen, incorporated lyrics supplied by Tom Waits together with poets Adrian Mitchell, Roger McGough and Christopher Logue. Her autobiography appeared in 1996. Her last screen role came in the 1998 short film Still Life, in which she portrayed a bedridden woman.
A one-woman programme opened at Peter Cook’s Establishment Club in 1963 and subsequently transferred to the West End, featuring songs by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht that remained central to her repertoire and were later collected on the rare LP Bernelle And Brecht And …. That same year she and her husband relocated to Eire. After their 1969 divorce and her remarriage, she based herself chiefly in Dublin, working across radio, theatre, film, television and cabaret. The television documentary I Was That Little Girl followed her return to Berlin to explore her origins and to present her cabaret material. Elvis Costello produced the mid-1980s album Father’s Lying Dead On The Ironing Board. Its successor, Mother, The Wardrobe Is Full Of Infantrymen, incorporated lyrics supplied by Tom Waits together with poets Adrian Mitchell, Roger McGough and Christopher Logue. Her autobiography appeared in 1996. Her last screen role came in the 1998 short film Still Life, in which she portrayed a bedridden woman.
Albums