Austrian actress and singer Lotte Lenya was BOTD in 1898. Born Karoline Blamauer in Vienna, she studied ballet and drama in Zurich, and moved to Berlin in the 1920s to pursue acting. In 1928, she won the role of Jenny in Bertolt Brecht’s play The Threepenny Opera, with songs written by Kurt Weill, whom she later married. The play became a sensation, and she became a star of Weimar Germany, raising her profile by recording Mack the Knife and other Weill songs. Lenya moved to Paris in 1933, where she sang the leading role in Brecht and Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, before emigrating to New York in 1935 with Weill. She made her Broadway debut the following year, withdrawing from live performance in 1945 after negative reviews. Her star rose again in the 1950s as Brecht’s plays became more fashionable, and she won a Tony Award for a 1956 off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera. She continued to perform and promote Brecht and Weill’s work, recording a now famous cover version of Mack the Knife with Louis Armstrong. She originated the role of Fräulein Schneider in the original 1966 Broadway production of John Kander and Fred Ebb‘s musical Cabaret, and had vivid supporting roles in the film of Tennessee Williams‘ play The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone and as a Bond villain in From Russia With Love. Married four times, at least two of her husbands (George Davis and Russell Detwiler) were notorious homosexuals. She also had a number of affairs with men and women, including Max Ernst and dancer Tilly Losch. In 1979, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. She died in 1981, aged 83.