Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women
During a ten-month tour with an ensemble of 50 people Linda became acquainted with the country and with the world of American theater. She had parts in plays by Tennesse Williams, Shakespeare and Gelderhode in Washington. In Akron, Ohio she was in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. “The older generation of my god-fearing relatives in Ohio was dismayed at the rough language of the play.”
Linda and the six “Kummer boys” at the Rudi Carell TV show. (1988)
In New York Linda Geiser did not break through in theater since the parts she played on Broadway were too small. But still: she breathed “Broadway air”! As a European type the parts of emigrants, refugees, and victims of concentration camps fit her best; in them she was several times quite successful on television. Again and again Linda returned to work in Switzerland. In 1967 Franz Schnyder wanted her for the part of the mother of the Sechs Kummerbuben (The Six boys of the Kummer Family), a series that was being filmed for television.
To play Sophie Kummer she remained in the Emmental for six months. A shortened version of the story was also made into a movie; this was to be Franz Schnyder’s last film. Linda Geiser had already played in his first Gotthelf-film, Ueli der Knecht (Ulric the Farm Servant) in 1954 and in the two Annebäbi Jowäger films in 1961. In both she played rather loose farm girls. In 1957 she had portrayed the very opposite as Anna in Der 10. Mai (The 10th of May); this was Franz Schnyder’s very successful anti-war film shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 1958.