Harry Cort

Stanisław Józef Bielski, performing as Harry Cort (19 March 1908, Trzeszczany - 30 January 1979, Phoenix, Arizona) was a Polish film and theater actor, criminal, and subject of scandal.

[1] At the end of World War I, he supposedly (according to his own accounts) travelled with his father Jan Edward Bielski, covering the south of Europe, Africa and Asia.

Soon afterwards, Bielski was involved in a moral scandal, seducing the wife of a bank director in 1930 and stealing her jewelry, which he then pawned (eventually escaping punishment).

He returned to acting after a month, appearing in revues and vaudevilles in Ciechocinek, Vilnius, Lviv and Kraków (collaborating with Jerzy Marr).

It was the reason for Bielski's arrest in 1935 in Paris - pressed by the French police who found trace amounts of cocaine and heroin on him, the artist gave names of his dealers, receiving only a fine of 300 francs.

[1] It also impeded Witold Zdzitowiecki's planned film adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, where Cort was to play the main role.

[3] Over the next years Stanisław Bielski traveled around Europe, moving in social elite circles, where he used his princely title as a claim to higher spheres.

In 1968, he got involved in another court dispute, this time over a share in the inheritance of his late father (who disinherited Stanisław), eventually receiving a small amount from the sale of an estate in San Remo.