Nora Gregor was an operetta diva, stage and film actress. She made her debut in Graz, Austria, and from there went to the Volksbühne an das Raimund-Theater in Vienna. She also worked at the Reinhardt Bühne in Berlin. From 1930 to 1933 she lived in Hollywood and also in Berlin. She made her first silent movie in 1921 and her first talkie in 1930 . In 1937 she worked at the Burgtheater in Vienna and emigrated to Switzerland, France and Chile, where she died in Vino del Mare.
Gave birth to her only child at age 33, a son Prince Heinrich Rdiger Karl Georg Franciscus von Starhemberg (aka Heinrich Starhemberg ) on October 4, 1934. He died on January 30, 1997. Childs father is her second husband, Prince Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg.
The actress Nora Gregor started her film career at the beginning of the 20s.
Her first husband was Mitja Nikisch, a pianist and son of celebrated orchestral conductor Arthur Nikisch. They divorced circa 1934.
In 1938, the Starhembergs emigrated to France through Switzerland, and her husband joined the Free French forces; cut off from their money and eighty family estates, they were supported for a period by Starhembergs close friend Friedrich Mandl, the Austrian armaments magnate. In 1942, the Starhembergs moved to Argentina.
After a short excursion to Germany she played in the movie "But the Flesh Is Weak" (1932) in the USA again.
She was born Eleonora Hermina Gregor to Austrian Jewish parents.
In the mid 1930s Gregor became the mistress of the married vice chancellor of Austria, the Austro-fascist, nationalist politician Prince Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg, with whom she had a son, Heinrich (1934-1997). On 2 December 1937, five days after the princes marriage to his first wife, the former Countess Marie-Elisabeth von Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz, was annulled, he and Gregor wed in Vienna.
She went back to Europe and worked in Germany and Austria before she had to flee from Europe in 1938 together with her husband Ernst Rdiger Frst Starhemberg.
Reportedly depressed since the beginning of her South American exile, Gregor committed suicide in Via del Mar, Chile.
Nora Gregor was in the USA when the sound movie replaced the silent movie and she appeared at Norma Shearers and Lewis Stones side in the movie "The Trial of Mary Dugan" and played under the direction of Jacques Feyder the leading role in the German speaking movie "Olympia" (1930), afterwards she appeared together with Buster Keaton in the movie "Wir schalten um auf Hollywood".
