Norwegian silent star Greta Nissen in this glamorous image from 1925.

She was born Greta Ruzt-Nissen in Oslo, Norway, on January 30, 1905. As a young girl she studied dance and had intended to make a career out of it. In early 1924, she came as a member of a Danish ballet troupe to New York, where she was soon hired to do a larger dance numbers for George S. Kaufman in the musical “Beggar on Horseback”. Nissen was discovered by film producer Jesse L. Lasky of Paramount Pictures, and would appear in more than twenty films, including “The Wanderer” (1925), “Lost: A Wife” (1925), “The King on Main Street” (1925), “The Love Thief” (1926), and “The Lucky Lady” (1926). Afterwards she made several more films, but she was one of those who lost much work due to the advent of sound films. One setback for her was when she was chosen for the lead in “Hell’s Angels” (1930) by Howard Hughes but then replaced by Jean Harlow because of her heavy Norwegian accent. The film shot Harlow to stardom. Throughout the 1930s Nissen stayed fairly busy but she never got the breakout role she wanted so badly. After “Danger in Paris” (1937), she left the screen forever. In the autumn of 1941, she married industrialist Stuart D. Eckert, with whom she had one son. On May 17, 1988, Greta Nissen passed away of Parkinson’s disease, aged 83 years old