Biography
Salka Viertel, born Salomea Sara Steuermann on 15 June 1889 in Sambor, Galicia (then Austria-Hungary), was an Austrian actress and Hollywood screenwriter. She trained and worked as a stage actress in Vienna and Berlin, appearing with companies including Neue Wiener Bühne and Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater. In 1918 she married writer and director Berthold Viertel; the couple had three sons, including writer Peter Viertel. They moved to Hollywood in 1928.
Viertel became a screenwriter under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1933 to 1937. She co-wrote the screenplay and story for Queen Christina (1933) and the screenplay for Anna Karenina (1935), both starring her friend Greta Garbo, as well as scripts for The Painted Veil (1934), Conquest (1937) and Two-Faced Woman (1941). She also appeared in the German-language version of Anna Christie (1930). In her later years she lived in Klosters, Switzerland, where she died on 20 October 1978.
