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Ilona Massey (born Ilona Hajmássy; June 16, 1910 – August 20, 1974) was a film, stage and radio performer. She was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Hungary). Billed as "the new Dietrich", she starred in three films with Nelson Eddy, including Rosalie (1937), and with Lon Chaney, Jr. in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) as Baroness Frankenstein. In 1943, she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies. In 1947, she starred with Eddy in Northwest Outpost, a musical film composed by Rudolf Friml. In 1949, she starred in Love Happy with the Marx Brothers. She played Madame Egelichi,... MORE

Ilona Massey (born Ilona Hajmássy; June 16, 1910 – August 20, 1974) was a film, stage and radio performer. She was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Hungary). Billed as "the new Dietrich", she starred in three films with Nelson Eddy, including Rosalie (1937), and with Lon Chaney, Jr. in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) as Baroness Frankenstein. In 1943, she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies. In 1947, she starred with Eddy in Northwest Outpost, a musical film composed by Rudolf Friml. In 1949, she starred in Love Happy with the Marx Brothers. She played Madame Egelichi, a femme fatale spy, and her performance inspired Milton Caniff in the creation of his femme fatale spy, Madame Lynx, in the comic strip "Steve Canyon". Caniff hired Massey to pose for him. From 1 November 1954, she hosted DuMont's The Ilona Massey Show, a weekly musical variety show in which she sang songs with guests in a nightclub stage set, with music provided by the Irving Fields Trio. The series lasted through 1955. Becoming an American citizen in 1946, she remained strongly anti-communist for what she saw as the destruction of her native country, at one point picketing the United Nations LESS