A real queen, not by birth, just by her beauty and by marrying the king of a small state somewhere in the south;

Growing up in a low-income district in the north of Munich and known in her youth as "the hottest panties from Hasenbergl", Kathi I., ruler of Mandalia, has returned to her hometown and is now standing in her suite in the "Bayerischer Hof" in a thin negligee , next to her the arms dealer with whom she wants to do important business;

he shows her the newest rapid-fire rifle, she picks it up.

And then she pulls the trigger and roars with delight and doesn't know how to get her finger off the trigger again.

The noise and damage is tremendous.

Claudius Seidl

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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This is the climax of the episode "Königliche Hoheit" from Helmut Dietl's series "Kir Royal" and one of the best moments of the whole series.

And when you see that again today, you also think you can understand that Helmut Dietl made the actress Michaela May a promise – one that German film and German television unfortunately could not keep.

Too much noise, too much sex.

Too much action, too much ambivalence: no, very few dared to cast Michaela May against her type (or what they thought was her type).

She was and is soft and feminine, has beautiful eyes, an irrefutable smile and even in films in which she has to speak High German, the melodic Munich undertone in her voice.

Almost everyone likes her - and so most of the filmmakers with whom she worked avoided the question that Dietl answered so convincingly: whether one could expect more and more difficult things from her than just the beautiful, charming Munich woman to play.

The most sensual letters

In her very readable memoirs, which have just been published (by Piper), she reports on a successful childhood in the middle-class and educated middle-class milieu of the western suburb of Laim.

It tells of three siblings who tragically failed in life.

She writes about how, as a little girl, she earned her pocket money as a model and, as a child, practically slipped into the film business without realizing what was happening.

In Géza von Radványi's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" she played alongside Juliette Gréco, Eartha Kitt, Herbert Lom - and had no idea who these people were.

Gertraud Mittermayr was the name that was on the cast list - and when she, slowly growing up, came up with a stage name, you can imagine it like Norma Jean Baker, who, according to legend, looked at her lips in the mirror , how they formed the name Marilyn Monroe.

In Neonstadt, a Munich anthology that attempted to capture the vibes of punk and new wave, she clearly took immense pleasure in treating the pale 80's kids to a delightfully sensual travesty of I Wanna Be Loved By You frighten.

It was Dietl's "Munich Stories" in the early 1970s that shaped her decidedly feminine image - except that this series was about her being stronger, more determined and more mature than Günther Maria Halmer, who played the male lead played.

And when Lars Kraume brought the two together again a few years ago in the film "Family Festival", it was actually a celebration.

And it was all the sadder too: because it reminded you of all the films in which the two unfortunately didn't act together.

Today Michaela May turns seventy.

You wish her that smile for her birthday.