11/25/2024
Helena Grossówna was like a princess, except she didn’t sit around waiting for a knight in shining armor, and her knight’s shining armor was a 40-ton Sherman tank.
➡ And except a silver spoon. Other than that, this stunning beauty with sweet voice, charming manner, and a smile that could melt ice fit the bill. Garbo may have delighted millions with her Ninotchka’s laugh, but in 1930s Polish movie star Grossówna enchanted millions with her dazzling smile, by popular vote the most dazzling in pre-war Warsaw. Men wanted to be with her, women wanted to be her, the box office wanted her.
➡ Her life was all about upward mobility. Back in 1920s, she’d started out a salesgirl in the Toruń backwater, who graduated to a chorus girl, got married and went to polish her dancing skills in Paris. Suddenly, her career got fast-tracked: she met Pola Negri, was offered an under-five part in a Polish movie shot with Paramount Pictures, which led to a string of theatre and variety show triumphs in Warsaw and 17 movie roles by 1939.
➡ In 1939, Helena was ready to go international, but it was Adolf Hi**er who went international first; when he dropped his bombs on Poland, the star of "Forgotten Tune," "Upstairs," "Two Days in Paradise" and other blockbusters had to revise her plans. In besieged Warsaw, she started out as a medic, then graduated to a chef in the army field kitchen. She could have fled before the dragon came but didn’t.
➡ Enter the dragon; under German occupation, Helena, long divorced by then, tried to make a living, but since most theatres had been destroyed, she took up waitressing. It paid little, and Grossówna faced the same dilemma that other artists did: since the Germans banned culture and allowed only light entertainment, for the performers it was either the German way or no way. Except the German way was technically treason.
➡ Well, not in Helena’s case: while acting in German-licensed shows, she was working for the Polish resistance, keeping a dead drop in the coffeehouse, sheltering in her home people wanted by the Gestapo, and serving as a messenger between the Home Army field branches. She spoke flawless German and several times sweet-talked herself out of trouble – if you can call the death sentence all these activities carried trouble.
➡ In the Warsaw Uprising that broke out in August 1944, the former movie star got promoted again (upward mobility), and in the middle of the fight commanded a 70-woman unit of medics and messengers, which carried the rank of lieutenant. Under fire, Helena and her troops built barricades, evacuated the wounded, dressed their wounds, delivered orders, fed, and when necessary, reinforced the fighting men.
➡ In October, the Germans prevailed, but pressured by the anti-Hi**er coalition, granted the surviving Home Army men – and 3,000 women – the prisoner-of-war status (probably no other battle in modern history produced so many female POWs). Helena and others were taken to Gross-Lübars camp, and then to Oberlangen by the Dutch border. That’s where tankers of Polish 1st Armored liberated their wives in April 1945. Or would-be wives.
➡ Enter the knight: riding a tank in General Maczek’s division was 2nd Lt. Tadeusz Cieśliński, as valiant as they come, having been decorated with two Crosses of Valor. He fell for Helena, she reciprocated his feelings, and shortly after the war they got married and had a son. The couple went back to communist-ruled Poland, but for the movie star there was no going back to the fame of the olden days. She got only a handful of theatre and film jobs.
➡ Helena died at 90, having outlived Tadeusz by a few years, but both outlived the dragon by decades, as in any good fairy tale.
Except this one really happened.
