the history of the German movie”. He died on July 15, 1974 in Munich and was cremated on the Eastern cemetery. In his obituary it says: “28 friends gave him the last farewell in the city, to which he had a special love. A movie producer spoke to his memories, and to honour this charmer, who consciously and prudently managed his graceful talents, the triumph march of Verdi's opera 'Aida' sounded across the cemetery”. The urn was interred in a cemetery in Grünwald near Munich. Charell's partner Friedrich Zanner and Dr. Wolf Schwarz, a lawyer and friend, were appointed to manage the estate and the personal property. His collection of Lautrec-lithographs was sold by Sotheby's in 1978. The Schwules Museum Berlin dedicated an exhibition to Charell and his work from July 7 to September 27, 2010. It was curated by Kevin Clarke. On 18 November 2015, Friedrichstadt-Palast Berlin inaugurated a memorial at Friedrichstraße 107 dedicated to the theatre’s founders, Max Reinhardt, Hans Poelzig and Erik Charell. Nudity on stage When Charell visited New York for the first time, working at the Century Theatre for Max Reinhardt, he was impressed and inspired by the American revues, especially the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. He decided, upon his return to Berlin, to combine European operetta music with the music and ideas of the American music theatre, to create a more 'cosmopolitan German' style. He established a revue style in which “word, sound, image, costume, colour, the art of illumination [work together] as a single rousing burning mirror”. Charell wanted to make “modern” pieces and bring them to Germany to challenge the conservative mindset, which still prevailed in Europe after the First World War (“Germany is still suffering from the blockage. After being isolated from the rest of the world for ten years, it finally needs to breathe freely and realize what was going on in those ten long years, not only in science […], but also in things, which take a look on the bright side of life”). His way of using contemporary syncopated music – from the German charts and the USA (the first European performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue took place within Charell's first revue, An Alle) –,the risqué jokes and the inclusion of attractive boy groups (dancing and singing) in addition to the then standard heterosexual display of female nudity were all new to the Berlin theatre scene. He