Albach-Retty made her first film appearance in 1930, in Georg Jacoby's Money on the Street, and made her last appearance in the 1955 remake The Congress Dances directed by Franz Antel. She died in 1980 at the age of 105, not long after she had published her autobiography So kurz sind 100 Jahre for her hundredth birthday. Her grave of honour and that of her son is located in the Vienna Central Cemetery (group 32 C, number 50).[5]
Ties to the Nazis
The proximity of Rosa Albach-Retty to the NS Regime is well documented. The annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938 was celebrated by her in the Kleine Volks-Zeitung. Rosa Albach-Retty's membership in the NSDAP is not proven, but she and her husband were supporting members of the SS. As a celebrity of the public and a self-confessed admirer of Hitler, Rosa Albach-Retty was courted by the Nazi cultural policy and included in the so-called "God-privileged List" of the National Socialists.
None of this did anything to diminish the esteem in which Albach-Retty was held after the end of the Nazi regime, as the awards she received after 1945 prove. Even a Viennese municipal building was named after her: the Rosa-Albach-Retty-Hof in the 19th district, built in the 1970s.
Robert Kittler: Rosa Albach-Retty. Ein Leben für das Theater. Diss. University Vienna, Vienna 1958
Oliver Rathkolb: Führertreu und gottbegnadet. Künstlereliten im Dritten Reich. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1991, ISBN3-215-07490-7
Robert Teichl: Österreicher der Gegenwart. Lexikon schöpferischer und schaffender Zeitgenossen. Verlag der Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1951
Jürgen Trimborn: Romy und ihre Familie. Droemer, Munich 2008, ISBN3-426-27451-5