Josephine Brandell
Josephine Mary Brandell (September 1887–27 June 1977) was an Austrian-Jewish musical actress and actress notable for surviving the torpedoing of the RMS Lusitania in 1915. Following her marriage in 1945 to Beresford Cecil Bingham, 8th Earl Annesley she became Josephine, Countess of Annesley. Early life According to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census and the 1905 New York State Census, Josephine Brandell was actually born as Janetta Kleinberg in Austria in 1887 into a Jewish family, the daughter of Fishel 'Phillip' Kleinberg (born 1848) and Yetta née Goldstein (1857-1953). Her siblings included Samuel Lasker Kleinberg, Sadie Zehring Kleinberg and William Kleinberg. Later in applications for passports and American citizenship she claimed that she was a British citizen born on 26 November 1891 or 1892 in Bucharest in Romania, the daughter of Phillip Brandell. Her father, a tailor by profession, immigrated to the United States of America, settling in New York City in 1895, with the rest of the family following him in 1897 and 1898. Josephine Brandell had ambitions of becoming an actress and attempted to break into show business on the New York stage while in her early teens but this was temporarily put on hold when in 1907 at