Lili Berky

Biography

March frost still clung to the streets of Raab when Lili Berky drew her first breath on 15 March 1886; the town, now the modern city of Győr, could not have guessed that its tiny daughter would one day light up Hungarian cinema. Between the wars she spun words into scripts and emotions into screen performances, lighting up scenes in *Süt a nap* (1939), charging through *A királyné huszárja* (1935) and dancing through *I Can’t Live Without Music* (1935). Off-screen she shared her life—and its dramas—with actor-director Gyula Gózon as his wife. Six weeks after the 1958 carnival season began, Berky closed her final act, dying in Budapest on 5 February 1958.