Alexandra Isles

Alexandra Isles (née Moltke; born February 11, 1945) is a former actress and a documentary filmmaker. She is best known for her role as the original Victoria Winters from 1966 to 1968 on the gothic TV serial Dark Shadows.

Background[]

Moltke was born in Uppsala, Sweden February 11, 1945, of Danish and American parentage, the elder of two daughters, to Count Carl Adam Moltke, son of Count Carl Moltke, and Countess Mab Moltke (née Wilson; formerly Wright). Count Carl Adam Moltke was a permanent member of the Danish Mission to the United Nations, and Countess Moltke was an editor at Vogue. In 1945, three months after her birth, Alexandra was smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Denmark in a laundry basket by her parents.^[1] Through her American grandmother, Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer, Alexandra and her younger sister, Victoria, are descended from the Livingston, Schuyler, Bayard and Van Rensselaer families.^[2] She attended the Chapin School in New York.^[3]

Career[]

In 1985, she began work at the Museum of Television & Radio where she became a curator specializing in arts, drama and children's programming.^[4] In 1991, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities launched her on a career as a producer and director of the award-winning documentaries The Power of Conscience: The Danish Resistance and Rescue of the Jews (1995); Scandalize My Name: Stories from the Blacklist (1999); Porraimos: Europe's Gypsies in the Holocaust (2002); The Healing Gardens of New York (2006); Hidden Treasures: Stories from a Great Museum (2011).^[4] Her films have been seen at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC), Museum of Modern Art (NY), and numerous film festivals including the Human Rights Watch and Margaret Mead Film Festivals, and all have aired on PBS. Currently she works at the Metropolitan Museum as a Volunteer Educator.

Personal life[]

In 1967, she married Philip Henry Isles II of the Lehman banking family^[5] at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.^[6] She left Dark Shadows in 1968 because she was pregnant. In 1969, she gave birth to a son, Adam.

In the 1980s, she was called to testify against her former lover, Claus von Bülow, in the sensational attempted murder trials of his wife. Isles was reported to have had very little interest in money or an extravagant lifestyle, however, von Bülow was entirely unwilling to accept any future that did not involve his wife's fortune and position.

In 1985 she began work at the Museum of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center for Media), and became an Assistant Curator, working on exhibitions and screening series on the arts and children's programming. In 1991, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she produced and directed, Scandalize My Name, Stories from the Blacklist, introduced by Morgan Freeman and featuring Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis and Rosetta LeNoire. That same year she married, Alfred Jaretzki III, MD.

Her subsequent documentary films were The Power of Conscience: The Danish Resistance and Rescue of the Jews, Porraimos, Europe's Gypsies in the Holocaust, The Healing Gardens of New York, Hidden Treasures: Stories from a Great Museum and Harry's Gift: A New York Story.^[7]

References[]