Fall of DEATH into a Boiling Furnace - actress Sirkka Sari, FINLAND

(born Sirkka Linnea Jahnsson, 1 May 1920 – 30 July 1939) was a Finnish actress.

Sirkka died when she fell down a chimney. She was at a party with the rest of the cast and crew of Rikas tyttö, her third and last film, while shooting at the Aulanko Hotel in Hämeenlinna; the party had been her idea. She and one of the men in the group (she was engaged, but the man was not her fiance) went up to the roof of the hotel; on the flat roof, there was a chimney several feet high, with a ladder leading up to the top. Sari mistook this chimney for a scenery balcony, climbed up, and fell down inside it into a heating boiler's furnace, where she died instantly.

Because of Sari's death, the end of the movie had to be altered; the crew shot further away, and so another woman had to replace Sari on these final shots.

Sirkka, it has been said, was known to love heights and was not afraid of them. 


As one can see, it was probably easy, at night, to mistake this chimney for a balcony.  One will never really know what happened that night as to why she went up there in the first place.











Did You Know?

• Alfred Hitchcock visited the Aulanko Hotel in August 1968 looking for filming locations for his movie 'The Short Night'?

Remembering Sirkka Linnea Johnsson...