One thing we couldn’t do in the book ‘What about the Princess?’ was let you hear Mona’s voice, not a problem on a website!
A classic rendition of a much loved song, Mona sings ‘Stormy Weather’:
Another familiar song, ‘Calypso Blues’ is one of our favourite examples of Mona’s work, no video with this one, just close your eyes and enjoy Mona’s voice:
‘Planting Rice’ is another, very charming, example of Mona’s early style (no video with this one but some nice photos):
The syncing of sound to pictures is a shade out unfortunately in the following clip but it gives a flavour of Mona’s film appearances. This song, ‘Oh Jackie Joe, comes from the film Symphonie in Gold’:
The next song, ‘Tabu’, sees Mona singing in a different style with hints of Africa and Latin America, she was a versatile lady!
The next song, ‘Be Good To Me’, sees Mona in late night smoochy mode although, to our ears, the arrangement gets a little intrusive:
Mona was a big star on German TV for several decades. She has to share the limelight in this medley with Dorthe Kollo (also a big star in Germany) and The Blue Diamonds (a duo of Dutch/Indonesian heritage); ‘Ramona’ was probably the brothers biggest hit. We may be biased (correction, we are biased!) but we think Mona’s contribution puts the others in the shade and she looks fabulous: