Gaby Rodgers (née Gabrielle Rosenberg; born March 29, 1928
in
Frankfurt-am-Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its nam ...
,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
) is a German-born American actress, theater director, and journalist.
Biography
Rodgers is the daughter of Jewish art dealer Saemy Rosenberg, the niece of art historian
Jakob Rosenberg and the great-niece of the philosopher
Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
. Rodgers was born in Germany but emigrated with her family to Amsterdam, London and finally into the United States as refugees from the National Socialist regime in Germany. In Amsterdam, she played marbles with
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...
as her family knew the Franks.
Although she worked extensively as a television actress in the 1950s, Rodgers is perhaps best remembered as Lily Carver in the 1955 film ''
Kiss Me Deadly
''Kiss Me Deadly'' is a 1955 American film noir produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez, and Wesley Addy. It also features Maxine Cooper and Cloris Leachman appearing in ...
''. Her only other film role was in the 1953 New York indie ''The Big Break''. She appeared on the cover of the January 1957 issue of ''Cosmopolitan'', representing "The New Face of Broadway". Rodgers continued to work as a stage actress and director into the new century.
Private life
Rodgers was married for many years to lyricist
Jerry Leiber
Lyricist Jerome Leiber (April 25, 1933 – August 22, 2011) and composer Michael Stoller (born March 13, 1933) were American songwriting and record producing partners. They found success as the writers of such crossover hit songs as " Hound Dog" ( ...
, half of the songwriting team of
Leiber & Stoller
Lyricist Jerome Leiber (April 25, 1933 – August 22, 2011) and composer Michael Stoller (born March 13, 1933) were American songwriting and record producing partners. They found success as the writers of such crossover hit songs as " Hound Dog" ...
, who wrote "
Hound Dog", "
Jailhouse Rock", and other songs. Rodgers frequently is cited as co-author of the song "
Jackson" with
Billy Edd Wheeler, but this is untrue; Leiber wrote the song with Wheeler, using his then-wife's name as a pseudonym.
References
External links
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Actresses from Amsterdam
American film actresses
American television actresses
German emigrants to the United States
Living people
21st-century American women
1928 births
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