Ursula Tiss is best known as the second wife of the great Hollywood actor Robert Taylor. However, before meeting with her, she managed to build a successful career as a fashion model in her homeland in Germany, to receive the title of “the most beautiful woman in the world” and even begin a career in cinema.
Biography
Ursula Tiss (nee Ursula Schmidt) was born on May 15, 1924 in Hamburg (Germany) in the family of Wilhelmina and Hans Schmidt. Ursula’s work began at the age of 15, when she passed tests in a German film studio for a voice actress. At that time, sound cinema was just beginning to gain popularity, so Ursula earned money by voicing young girls and little girls in the German dubbing of American films. In 1941, the seventeen-year-old Ursula, who did not support Nazi policies, was dismissed due to her refusal to join the German Girls Union (Giltleugend's women's division). The only jobs available to the opponents of Nazism were all kinds of service posts, so Ursula was forced to go to the farm, where she earned very little money with hard work.
In 1942, the young beauty, who stood out from the rest of the workers, was noticed by the German film producer Georg Otto Tiss, who for some reason was a passing on the farms where she worked. He was fascinated by the aristocratic beauty, contrasting sharply with the dirty farm overalls, Tiss fell in love and did not miss the opportunity to get to know Ursula. They soon got married. Georg promised the young wife a successful career in cinema, but the girl lacked skill, and even under the protection of Tissa she could not pass a single test. On this basis, the couple began regular scandals, and after five years of marriage, the Tiss spouses broke up. Their two children - Michael and Manuela - stayed with their father, as he could provide for them. Ursula left behind only her son’s sonorous name and went to conquer Berlin.
Model and actress career
Since 1948, Ursula worked as a model, achieved success in this field, and regularly appeared on the covers of German magazines. In 1949, she made her film debut. Tiss played a small role in the movie Night Watch.
In 1951, Howard Hughes, an American entrepreneur, film director, producer and admirer of beautiful women, saw a photo of Ursula Teess in one of the magazines. Struck by the sultry beauty of the German model, he arranged for her to move to Hollywood and even helped to pick up her two children from her ex-husband and transport her to the USA. Thyss signed a contract with RKO Pictures, and Hughes personally engaged in a rising star PR company, arranging her a photo shoot in LIFE magazine and placing her photo on the cover with a loud caption: "Have you already seen the most beautiful woman in the world?"
But the Ursula Tiss films made at the RKO studio, Monsoon and the Bengal Brigade failed at the box office. Critics greeted the game of Ursula with cold reviews, calling positive only the inborn beauty of the girl.
Robert Taylor
However, despite the failure, cinema brought Ursula an acquaintance with the main man of her life - the famous Hollywood actor Robert Taylor. At the premiere of "The Bengal Brigade" in 1954, Taylor could not take his eyes off the aspiring actress, at first glance he felt a great attraction to her. In the same year, Ursula and Robert got married.
After the wedding, Ursula and her two children from their first marriage moved to Taylor's ranch in California. A year later, they had a son, Terrance, and four years later, their daughter Tessa.
During this period, Ursula Tiss starred in two more films called Americano (1955) and Bandito (1956), and also took part in several episodes of the series Detectives (1960), in which Robert Taylor played the title role, and in one episode of the Sunset Strip 77 series. All the rest of the time she devoted to her husband and raising children. The marriage was happy, Ursula bathed in the love and attention of her husband, always accompanied him on the set, the couple even fished and went hunting together. However, their happiness was not destined to last forever.
The end of the tale
The misfortunes in the Ursula Tiss family began in 1969. When Michael and Manuel began their teenage years, they began to show themselves on the bad side, often having problems with the police. Michael even managed to serve a year in a German prison for trying to poison his own father. On May 26, 1969, twenty-three-year-old Michael Tiss died of a drug overdose. The unfortunate mother did not even have time to realize this tragedy, as only a few days later, on June 8, Robert Taylor died of lung cancer. The dark period began in the life of Ursula Tiss, the ranch had to be sold, together with three children she moved to a small house in a suburb of Los Angeles.
In 1973, Tiss married film producer Marshall Shaker, and 13 years later, like Robert Taylor, he died of lung cancer. Ursula spent the last years of her life in a nursing home, forgotten by almost all her former friends and her own children. She again made herself known only in 2003, issuing an autobiography "I must keep my promise: my life before, together and after Robert Taylor."
Ursula Tiss passed away on June 19, 2010 at the age of 86.