Teddy Stauffer

Musician, big band leader, playboy, hotelier, club-owner and sometime actor, Teddy Stauffer was born Ernst Heinrich Stauffer on May 2nd, 1909 into into a Swiss middle class family in Murten, Switzerland. Teddy was to become with his "Original Teddies" the most successful big band leader in pre-war Germany of the late 1930s. They were called "Teddies" because of the bear residing in the coat of arms of the city of Bern, Switzerland. They enjoyed great popularity with their gigs during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and later at the famed Delphi Dance Hall of the same city by their interpretation of original American swing music in the style of Benny Goodman. Between 1936-1937 his hit "Goody-goody" sold over 700,000 records. Although frowned upon by the Nazi censorship of what was deemed "Negro Jazz" and music by the the "Swing Jew" Goodman, Stauffer without scruples turned the "Horst Wessel Lied" (National Socialist's anthem) into a jazz number in 1938 - something he wasn't really punished for because of his great popularity. At the outbreak of war in 1939 he returned to his native Switzerland. Some time and several failures later he emigrated to the United States and subsequently to Mexico, where the wellknown womanizer (who was also married, among others to the actress Hedy Lamarr and had love affairs with Rita Hayworth and Barbara Hutton), turned Acapulco into a holiday resort. He died there on August 27, 1991.