Gusti Huber

Auguste "Gusti" Huber (July 27, 1914 – July 12, 1993) was an Austrian theater and film actress.

Life and career

Huber was born in Wiener Neustadt, Austria in 1914. She received training as an actress from Dr. Beer who later arranged her stage debut in Zurich. She had her first film role in 1935 in Tanzmusik, followed by Savoy-Hotel 217 (1936). One year later she achieved her career breakthrough in the film adaptation of Unentschuldigte Stunde. Among her better-known films were Der Mann, von dem man spricht (1937), Land der Liebe (1937), Kleiner Mann - ganz gross! (1938), Marguerite (1939), and Jenny und der Herr im Frack (1941), after which she worked for four years at the Viennese Burgtheater and elsewhere onstage.

Around 1946, she and her second husband, Joseph Besch, an officer in the US Army, moved to the United States. Besch boasted that his wife was "the first Austrian actress to be cleared by the American military government". She acted only occasionally thereafter, most notably appearing on Broadway three times (Flight into Egypt, Dial M for Murder as Margot Wendice, and The Diary of Anne Frank). Her last film role was Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank; 1959), in which she reprised the role of Anne Frank's mother, Edith, which caused controversy in some circles as Huber was rumoured to have been too close to the National Socialists, but Garson Kanin reportedly stood by the casting.