[2] Like its counterparts in California, Rome and New York, Ufa was a factory - scripts were being written, scenes were being shot in big, barn-like studios, editors assembled printed footage in cuttingrooms.

There were plasterers' workshops, carpentry shops, prop stores, hair and wardrobe departments, and publicity offices planning the release of completed movies (Ufa ran 3,000 cinemas, admitting nearly a million people a day).

She watched cameraman Carl Hoffmann (who had lit big hits like Dr. Mabuse the Gambler and Die Nibelungen) and all the grips, riggers, plasterers, cable bashers, and set dressers bustling about their jobs.

She learned that acting didn't just mean showing emotions and moving about, but demanded that she concentrate on staying within chalk marks on the floor so as not to stray outside the range of the lights or the camera's focus.

At Ufa Truus was introduced to a major figure in her life, highly respected actress Olga Chekhova, who became her unofficial mentor and mother-figure in movieland.

Her claim to be related to Anton Chekhov was true, but she also loved to spin the most amazing yarns about her early life: she was close to Tsar Nicholas II, had met Rasputin and had fled the Revolution disguised as a mute peasant woman, hiding her jewellery in her mouth.

While today's Hollywood movies are typically dubbed straight into German, French, Russian and Spanish, films were originally adapted much more closely to different countries' tastes.

Local jokes and references were built into the dialogue, and audiences welcomed foreign actors into their lives with far greater affection than later when the movies became talkies.

She even found herself being asked to appear in advertisements, and earned a surprising amount of money endorsing Bubisan hair products and Marylan face cream.

Her sharply bobbed hair and uninhibited style owed a lot to American comic actress Colleen Moore, who'd appeared in her first film in 1916.

Seven years later, trapped in "little girl" roles, Moore had sought a way out of the long dresses and demure ringlets that she knew no longer represented young American women.

In quick succession, Truus worked on Six Girls and a Room for the Night, When the Guard Marches, Leontine's Husbands, The Happy Vagabonds and A Modern Casanova, all released in 1928.

It went on: "She's a young thing who's passionately wrapped up in film, and she's chasing round the Ufa lot in the Kochstrasse like a real rascal, making it a dangerous place with her tricks and happy laughter".

Her friends called her flat "The Nursery" - a cosy, ribbon-strewn, white-painted place with posters on the walls, shared with Pucki (her Airedale terrier), Didi (a Maltese dog) and a Cyprian cat (whose name has not survived).

This was an expensive sideline (she had to buy the postcards and stamps herself), but she enjoyed hearing from people all over the world, and knew that it was a vital part of building up her fanbase.

Yes, the story of a tramp who loved a blind flower-girl was sentimental and old-fashioned, but the film wove a powerful spell over audiences, and they left the cinemas exhausted from an emotional rollercoaster.

Truus determined to seek out more dramatic roles - playing dizzy teenagers wasn't enough - she wanted to speak to an audience's emotions like Chaplin did.

Spotting the Great Man and picking a moment when the crowds around him thinned, she approached him and asked (in not-very-good German), "Herr Lang - wouldn't you like to discover me?".

She married producer Alfred Zeisler (who'd overseen production on Truus' film Sajenko the Soviet) and obviously had a great future ahead of her.

[2][5] 1934 saw Truus in the Netherlands, starring in her only film in Dutch, Het Meisje met den Blauwen Hoed ("The Girl In The Blue Hat").

Hitler's Germany had few places for female actors not prepared to play adoring sweethearts or fruitful mothers, and even fewer for non-Aryan girls.

Three days later the German Wehrmacht and the rump Nazi government in Flensburg signed the complete and unconditional capitulation and surrendered to the allies all over Europe.

[6] Truus tried to find acting work in the Netherlands, then in England, but in the depressed atmosphere of post-war Britain, nobody was interested in an unknown actress with a foreign accent.

1954 found Truus in Voorhout, a town in the western Netherlands, setting up what was to become a successful business importing and exporting souvenirs and promotional items.

They'd moved on to Los Angeles where her husband had found employment as a producer, but Lien - even with her history of stardom in Europe, and with such important friends as Marlene Dietrich to help her[15][original research?]

[2][5] In 1972, Dutch TV transmitted a four-part version of "Het meisje met den blauwen Hoed" ("The Girl In The Blue Hat"), an update of Truus' 1934 film.

Watching Jenny Arean play Betsy[5] must have been a strange experience for Truus, whose film career was now almost totally forgotten by the general public.

A 1987 book by European culture expert Kathinka Dittrich, "Achter het doek" ("Behind The Screen"), brought the story of Dutch movie history of the 1920s and 1930s back to public knowledge.

Forty years after her career had been destroyed, Truus found that people were beginning to recognise her for what she'd been - a movie star who'd brought pleasure to millions.

One possible reason is that the Russian Army seized the Ufa studios in April 1945 and appropriated the contents - including copies of a huge number of German films that have never been seen since.