Melissa arrived in Los Angeles in 1936 because her mother, Miliza Korjus, had been hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to be the lead singer in a major film production, The Great Waltz, which came out two years later. The movie, which still can be seen today, is about Austrian composer Johann Strauss.
For more information about Miliza Korjus, click here.
The musical was a tremendous success. It won an Academy Award, commonly known as an Oscar. Miliza Korjus was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress (Academy Awards weren’t given for singing). The family was catapulted into the world of Hollywood movie stars and European intellectuals who had fled Nazi Germany. They lived in the fancy neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, on D’Este Drive. Melissa, who arrived at age four, went to the Brentwood Town and Country school, where she quickly learned English and played with the children of movie stars – and some children who later would become famous, such as Jane Fonda.
This was the happiest part of her childhood. Her parents lived together in peace.
One night in May 1940, Melissa woke up in her room because she heard her mother scream. She looked around and her mother was nowhere near her. She went to her nanny, Lia, who she had known since being a baby in Berlin, and told her about the scream. Lia said Melissa’s parents had gone out and that everything was alright. Yet Melissa could not go back to sleep. Then the phone rang, and Lia answered it. She switched from speaking German, which is what the family spoke at home, to Russian, which Melissa could not understand well. The phone call was from Melissa’s father to tell Lia that he and Miliza had been in a serious car accident on Sunset Boulevard and that the movie star was in the hospital. One of Miliza’s legs had been torn apart. The surgeons managed to stitch it together, but this meant that she could not do any more Hollywood movies.
From then on, Miliza’s career was centered around performing at opera houses.
Years later, in her Oral History, Melissa said “It wasn’t until I grew up and was an adult myself that I realized what this must have meant to my mother. (…) She [had been] dancing and whirling [in the Great Waltz] and here she has to come out with a cane on stage. (…) She had a chance to do a series of personal appearances in Mexico, and then go to Cuba, and supposedly down to Rio and Buenos Aires as well. And she took that, because she said, ‘I’ll get my confidence back.’”
In 1941, her mother signed a contract with a Mexican radio station to sing at opera houses around that country. That year, the family moved to Mexico City.