Maria managed to get to her brother-in-law, Zoltan Korda, and between the two of them, they learned where Alexander was being held in a Budapest Hotel which was notorious for having a torture chamber in its basement.

Maria went to the British Military Mission, whose Brigadier was also on the board of Korda's film company and "with all the considerable passion at her disposal", as her nephew, Michael Korda, was to write in his biography of the family, convinced him that her husband must be freed or there would be an international scandal, one that would quite likely expose the British government's role in setting Horthy up as regent.

[citation needed] Corda soon became a star of the Austrian silent screen, directed by her husband in such epic films as Samson und Delila (1922) and Michael Curtiz's Die Sklavenkönigin (1924).

Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1926) saw her take a leading role in an Italian film of a similar style.

She appeared in Korda's early productions there, most notably The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927), but none of the films were very successful.

Unfortunately, like many other silent film stars of the day, her Hollywood career came to an abrupt end in 1928 with the coming of sound, since she had learned little English and what she did know was heavily accented.