Elfriede "Elfi" von Dassanowsky (February 2, 1924October 2, 2007) was an Austrian-born singer, pianist and film producer. Early life Elfi von Dassanowsky (also known as Elfi Dassanowsky or Elfriede Dassanowsky) was born Elfriede Maria Elisabeth Charlotte Dassanowsky in Vienna, the daughter of Franz Leopold von Dassanowsky, a civil servant in the Austrian Trade Ministry, and Anna (née Grünwald). Her father knew writer Hermann Broch from Vienna's café society in the 1920s and was one of the inspirations for the character of Herr von Pasenow in Broch's novel The Sleepwalkers. A piano prodigy at the age of 5, Elfi attended the Vienna Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (known as the "Englische Fräuleins") and became at age 15, the youngest woman admitted to Vienna's Academy of Music and Performing Arts to that date as the protégé of concert pianist, Emil von Sauer. While a student, film director Karl Hartl chose her to instruct Curd Jürgens in piano, so that he could play the instrument on screen in Hartl's Mozart biopic and a Willi Forst musical (it served him well beyond the era, to the 1971 Hollywood film The Mephisto Waltz). But Dassanowsky's studies and early career were halted for extended labor service when she rejected membership in Nazi organizations. The powerful UFA Studio in Berlin offered her a film contract in late 1944, which she also declined. Career In 1946, von Dassanowsky made her opera debut as Susanna in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the Stadttheater St. Pölten and created in concerts for the Allied High Command. Dassanowsky remains one of the few women in film history, and at age 22 one of the youngest, to co-found a film studio—Belvedere Film—the first new studio facility in postwar Vienna. With senior partners August Diglas and Emmerich Hanus, the studio created such German-language classics as Die Glücksmühle (The Mill of Happiness, 1946), Dr. Rosin (1949), and Märchen vom Glück (Kiss Me, Casanova, 1949), and gave Gunther Philipp and Nadja Tiller their first screen roles. Dassanowsky starred in operas, operettas, theatrical dramas and comedies, helped initiate several theater groups, was announcer for Allied Forces Broadcasting and the BBC, toured West Germany in a one-woman-show and gave master classes in voice and piano. During this period, Dassanowsky also modeled exclusively for famous Austrian painter Franz Xaver Wolf (1896 – 1990), whose work featuring her image is now in museum and private collections. Through art