Rita Corita born 24 November 1917

Hendrika Sturm, best known as Rita Corita (24 November 1917 – 24 December 1998) was a Dutch singer, actress and comedian. 

Hendrika (Rita) Sturm was born in Amsterdam, the eldest of three: she had a brother (Lambertus, 1920) and a sister (Helena Catharina, 1925). Rita spent her early childhood in Arnhem, the place where her mother came from – her parents didn't marry until 1924 and divorced in 1933. 

From a young age Rita loved to play the artist and acrobat. When Rita was twelve years old, the family returned to Amsterdam, where her father took over a café on the Rembrandtplein. Live music could often be heard in the café, with the accordion in the lead role. Father Sturm also liked to play a tune at home, while mother and daughters sang. Young Rita decided to take accordion lessons. At the age of fourteen she entered the dance school of Frans Muriloff, where she learned tap dancing. In her father's café, Rita acted as a contortionist. 

In the mid-1930s, Sturm joined the accordion orchestra the Four Serenaders (later The Broadway Serenaders), which often played in her father's café Played. The group was led by Coen Ooms. Rita sang, played accordion and tap danced. She had an affair with Coen Ooms and in 1937 they got married. Three years later, they started the duo the Corita's, an amalgamation of both their names. They lived in an upstairs apartment in the Amsterdam Sawmill Street. During the war years, their two sons were born, of whom the eldest contracted polio in 1943 and died, for lack of medicine, but The Coritas continued to play during those difficult times, because they had to put food on the table. After the war, they performed for the Canadian and American occupying forces in Germany. 

                                   

Thanks to the expressive Rita Sturm, the Coritas stood out among all the others Schnabbel artists who were active in the post-war years. With her powerful contralto, she said she could have become a classical singer, but she preferred gospels, jazz, and popular songs. Her big break came in 1958: record executive Johnny Hoes asked Rita to record the  song Koffie, koffie, lekker bakkie koffie by Johnny Woodhouse. It became an instant hit and would last for the rest of her life. Now known as Rita Corita, the song was never in the charts, but there are more than two hundred thousand copies of it sold. 

In Castricum, close to the beach, she bought a house from the royalties, which she moved to with her family in 1959. In 1962 she participated in the National Song Contest: with the song Carnaval and finished in fourth place (out of seven). The now corpulent Rita, blessed with a great comic talent, also went on to work in television and film. In the 1960s, she performed with Bueno de Mesquita and also played the giantess in Kun Can you tell me the way to Hamelin, sir? (1972-1973). Corita played with Jenny Arean in There Falls a Star (1963), a television musical by Willy van Hemert, and in the feature films Geen Panic (1964) and Peter and the Flying Bus (1976). In the seventies she was also a panel member of the Berend Boudewijn Kwis and in the late 1970s seventies, early eighties in the Willem Ruisshow. 

Rita Corita continued to perform well into her old age. In In 1979 she had a small hit with the song Kant aan m'n broek and a year later with Ik heb geen vrijer. She performed a lot in the country and was regularly seen in the TROS music program Op volle toeren. In 1984 her husband Coen died in Aerdt, Gelderland, where they had lived. Three years later, together with other Dutch artists, she made a tour of colonies of Dutch emigrants in Canada and the United States.  In 1987 whilst in southern California, the van in which she was travelling with a number of colleagues was struck by a truck: three of them were killed. Rita Corita, Eddy Christiani and Manke Nelis  managed to survive, but she didn't perform again.

After her husband's death, Rita Corita had moved, first in 1993 to Vlijmen and three years later to Beekbergen, a municipality of Apeldoorn. There she died on December 23, 1998.

(edited from Resources Huygens (translation) & Wikipedia)