Lili Darvis was born in 1906 in Budapest. She was a major star first in Budapest, then on the German stage with Max Reinhardt’s theatre company during the 1920’s, touring Europe with plays by Goethe, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Shaw. She received her education at the Budapest Lyceum and made her acting debut at the age of 20 as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet”. In 1926, Lili married the playwright Ferenc Molnár, who wrote several plays for her, including “Olympia” and “Delilah”. The following year, she made her Broadway debut as Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
Lili, who was of Jewish background, fled Europe after the Austrian ‘Anschluss’ in 1938, using her Hungarian passport to escape to Switzerland. Later, on the advice of actor Walter Slezak, she hired a tutor to perfect her English language skills. Though she became known for her fine acting range, she never lost her European accent which limited her to playing women of continental background. In 1944, she became an American citizen and, over the next three decades, had many successes on the New York stage, including a starring role in “Waltz of the Toreadors” (1958) and as Sigmund Freud’s domineering mother Amalie in “The Far Country” (1961). She was nominated for a Tony Award in one of her last roles as Best Supporting or Featured Actress in Lorraine Hansberry’s “Les Blancs”.
On screen, she appeared in the big budget MGM musical Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956). Following her husband’s death in 1952, Lili acted increasingly in radio and early television drama. She is fondly remembered as Billy Mumy’s grandmother in “The Twilight Zone” (1959) episode “Long Distance Call” .(as per IMDB)
