Early years[edit]
Born Margaretha Keller in Vienna, Austria, she studied dance from the age of 8, followed by acting. Her début was in Pavillon in Vienna. She also appeared on stage with Marlene Dietrich in Broadway, in which she sang and danced.
A recording contract with Ultraphon in 1929 took her from Vienna to Prague and Berlin, where she enjoyed great success with Peter Igelhoff and Peter Kreuder. For over 45 years, her voice was familiar worldwide in radio shows, films, revues, concerts and musicals, and above all in recordings. First called "The Great Lady Of Chanson" in her native Vienna, the nickname followed her to London and the United States.
Personal life[edit]
Greta Keller's first marriage to the singer Joe Sargent in 1928 did not last; he turned out to be an alcoholic. Her second marriage started and ended in Hollywood, where she met and married Gaspar Griswold Bacon, Jr. son of Gaspar G. Bacon from a prominent family in Boston. The elder Bacon was a member of the board of Harvard University, had been a close associate of J. P. Morgan, and later served as Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt and ambassador to France under William Howard Taft.
Her husband, known in film and theater as David Bacon, was murdered in 1943, two weeks after finishing a major role in the Republic serial The Masked Marvel. Speculation involved affairs with Howard Hughes and another actor, but the murder investigations ceased without a result, and the files later disappeared. Due to that shock and a counter-indicated dose of morphine administered by Bacon's brother, a physician, Greta's child with Bacon was stillborn. It took some time for her to recover from these events, but she restarted her career in Switzerland, then on to Vienna, Berlin and New York City.
From 1973 until her death in November 1977, Keller lived, worked, and traveled with her partner Wolfgang Nebmaier.[2]