La Jana

La Jana was buried in Waldfriedhof Dahlem. The grave site had been cleared, but on 25 September 1990, the City of Berlin declared it an honorary grave, and it is now marked by a simple stone with a bas relief plaque of her in profile. The stone had been kept at the Heimatmuseum in Steglitz.

In the winter of 1939/40, La Jana was engaged for a multi-city tour of Germany entertaining the troops, since her fame made her an assured draw. In February 1940, she fell ill with bilateral pneumonia, and she died on 13 March 1940 in Wilmersdorf. The premiere of her last film, Stern von Rio, took place a week later on 20 March at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo.

Movies followed and La Jana hit the big time with Truxa (1937) (dancing on a giant tambourine) and The Stars Shine (1938).

With Cochran's Streamline, La Jana toured throughout England and Scotland in 1934. In this show, she played a Spanish dancer.

She appeared as a dancer in revues in Berlin, Stockholm (1933) and London (1934/35) among other cities, performing in Herman Haller's An und Aus, Erik Charell's Casanova and Max Reinhardt's Die schöne Helena. In Casanova she was presented to the audience semi-naked on a silver platter. She became the talk of Berlin.

The sound film brought her the great breakthrough. Her dancing extras were underlined in an optimal way with the audible music and she had great successes with her appearances in "Der Schlemihl" (1931), "Truxa" (1936) and especially in the two-parter "Der Tiger von Eschnapur" (1937) and "Das indische Grabmal" (1937) where she convinced as a exotic Maharani which turned the men's heads.

Around 1926, La Jana, still known as Henny Hiebel, became engaged to the actor Ulrich Bettac. That year she moved with him to Berlin; however, the engagement was called off a few years later.

When the film business seized her dancing beauty, she made her film debut in 1925 with "Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit".

She appeared in 1924/25 as part of a two-woman act called 'The Charming Sisters'. Autographed cards exist in Sweden on which her name appears as 'Lary Jana'.

La Jana was the stage name of the brunette Viennese-born actress and exotic dancer Henriette 'Henny' Hiebel. She was trained as a ballerina for ten years and first performed at the Frankfurt Kinderoper at the age of eight. Of boyishly slim build, she appeared on stage in cabaret in 1921. Soon after, she was reputedly discovered for the screen by the director Géza von Cziffra at the Chat Noir cabaret in Paris. She received good publicity from a successful tour of Britain, during which the press alternately touted her as being Spanish or Hungarian. The build-up continued with glamour photographs for Vogue magazine.