European Actors Archives - Page 28 of 28

Alain Delon

Alain Delon TCM Overview

His website here. Alain Delon is regarded as a giant of French cinema. In the sixties he attempted Hollywood but by the end of the decade he resumed his career in Europe. He was born in 1935 in Sceaux, France. At a young age he joined the military and spent some time in Indochina. He was noticed by a talent scout in Cannes and in 1957 in “Sois Belle et Tais-toi”. In 1960 he made an international breakthrough with Rene Clement’s “Purple Noon”. Luchino Visconti cast him in “Rocco and His Brothers” and “The Leopard”. In 1964 he went to Hollywood to make “Once A Thief” opposite Ann-Margret. In 1970 he had a major hit with “Borsalino”

TCM overview:

One of the great cinematic anti-heroes of the 1960s and 1970s, French actor Alain Delon brought a sense of daring and insouciant charm to his portrayals of gangsters, hired guns and men of mystery in such international hits as “Purple Noon” (1961), “Le Samourai” (1967), “The Sicilian Clan” (1969) and “Monsieur Klein” (1976). That he appeared, at least in part, to live an outlaw life off the screen as well, with multiple high-profile affairs and alleged connections to organized crime, only furthered his appeal to moviegoers on both sides of the Atlantic, who were drawn to his icy, implacable calm and Gallic bravado. On occasion, he ventured to Hollywood, but the results were frequently subpar; viewers were not interested in seeing Delon play for laughs opposite Dean Martin in “Texas Across the River” (1964) or as a cardboard hero in “Concorde Airport ’79” (1979). He was best served in his native country, where he dominated the box office well into the 1980s before pulling in the reins to focus on marketing his name through a variety of products. On occasion, the lure of the silver screen proved too strong to resist, and he would return to acting on several occasions during the ’90s and early 2000s. Though his famous mane of hair was silvered and the smoothness of his face marked by time, Delon’s extraordinary magnetism remained untouched by the decades – irrefutable proof of his status as one of France’s most enduring leading men.

Born Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon on Nov. 8, 1935 in the town of Sceaux, outside of Paris, France, he was the son of Fabien Delon, and his wife, Edith. His parents divorced when Delon was four, and subsequently remarried. The turmoil in his home was reflected in his schooling. An unruly student, Delon was expelled from six schools by the time he was a teenager. He eventually left school altogether at age 14 to work at his stepfather’s butcher shop before enlisting in the French Navy, where he served in the First Indochina War. Again, his rebellious nature got the better of him, and he spent 11 months of his four-year stint in a military prison for lack of discipline. Delon was dishonorably discharged in 1956 and returned to France to work a series of menial jobs. While in Marseilles, he became friendly with actor Jean-Claude Brialy, who invited Delon to join him at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. There, his striking good looks attracted the attention of numerous producers and talent scouts, among them allegedly a representative of “Gone with the Wind” (1939) producer David O. Selznick, who offered a multi-picture deal, provided that he learn English. Delon returned to Paris, where he met director Yves Allégret, who gave him his first screen role in “Quand la femme s’en mêle” (“When the Woman Butts In”) (1957) as a young hit man hired to kill the rival of a club owner (Jean Servais), a felicitous bit of casting that would echo throughout Delon’s career. Delon earned his first leading role in “Christine” (1958), as a young soldier who fell in love with an innocent (Romy Schneider) while involved in a scandalous affair with the wife of a commanding officer. Delon and Schneider became an off-screen couple as well, going on to announce their engagement in 1959.

The following year, Delon earned his star-making role as Patricia Highsmith’s murderous anti-hero, Tom Ripley, in René Clément’s “Purple Noon” (1960). His cool performance as an amoral young man who murdered and assumed his friend’s identity to advance his social standing won favor from critics as well as Highsmith herself, and soon established Delon as a major European star. A richer, more sensitive turn as a young Italian in love with a prostitute (Annie Giradot) in Luchino Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers” (1961) followed, as did his stage debut that same year opposite Schneider in a production of “Tis Pity She’s a Whore,” directed by Visconti. Delon was soon the leading man of choice for many of Europe’s most acclaimed directors, including Michaelangelo Antonioni for “Eclipse” (1962), Julien Duvivier for “The Devil and the Ten Commandments” (1963), and Henri Verneuil, who cast him as a reckless criminal opposite French screen legend Jean Gabin in “Any Number Can Win” (1963). Delon also garnered a reputation as a rogue off-screen as well when Schneider called off their engagement in 1963 upon discovering that he had fathered a son, Christian, with the German singer-actress Nico. The following year, he married actress Nathalie Barthélemy, with whom he had a son, actor Anthony Delon. I

A 1963 Golden Globe nomination for his turn as the headstrong nephew of Italian prince Burt Lancaster in Visconti’s celebrated “The Leopard” increased Delon’s international visibility, leading to offers from Hollywood. Save for the gritty neo-noir “Once a Thief” (1965), with Delon as a reformed criminal dogged by the law (Van Heflin) and the mob (Jack Palance), his Hollywood efforts were largely glossy, empty affairs like the all-star “Yellow Rolls-Royce” (1965) and the truly dreadful Western comedy “Texas Across the River” (1966) with Dean Martin and Joey Bishop. He returned to France the following year to appear in his iconic role as an icy, meticulous hit man in Jean-Pierre Melville’s New Wave cult favorite “Le Samourai” (“The Samurai”) (1967). His carefully controlled performance as a moody loner who lived and died by a strict code of personal conduct would come to dominate his screen persona, and Delon would play variations on the role in subsequent films like “Le Motocyclette” (“Girl on a Motorcycle”) (1968), which increased his standing among both French and international audiences. His marriage to Barthélemy ended during this period, due to his affair with actress Mireille Darc.

Delon’s ascent to fame was severely threatened by a 1969 scandal involving the murder of his former bodyguard, Stefan Markovic. Investigations into the killing unearthed links between the actor and numerous members of the European underworld, as well as scandalous connections to political figures like the wife of French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. Delon was repeatedly held for questioning in regard to the case, but was eventually acquitted. However, many industry figures believed that his association with Markovic would ruin his career. To the surprise of many, Delon became even more popular with French moviegoers, who felt that his connections to criminal elements lent a note of veritas to his numerous gangster roles. He quickly capitalized on the notoriety by starring in a string of popular crime films, including “The Sicilian Clan” (1969) and Jacques Deray’s “Borsolino” (1970), which teamed him with enduring French movie idol Jean-Paul Belmondo. Delon also produced many of these films through his company, Delbeau Productions, and even enjoyed a continental pop hit with a 1973 duet with Dalida of the ballad “Paroles, paroles.”

Delon again attempted to break into the American market with Michael Winner’s political thriller “Scorpio” (1973), which reunited him with Burt Lancaster. But he was soon back in France, where he ruled the box office through crime pictures like “Two Men in Town” (1973) with Gabin, and “Flic Story” (1975), based on French police detective Roger Borniche’s nine-year pursuit of escaped killer Emile Buisson (Jean-Louis Trintignant). He stepped briefly away from police procedurals to play the masked hero “Zorro” (1975), a choice made largely to please his young son. The following year, he received a Cesar nomination for Best Actor as “Monsieur Klein” (1976), a French art dealer who is mistaken by the Nazis for a wanted Jewish fugitive. A second Cesar acting nod came the following year for the police drama “Mort d’un pourri” (“Death of a Corrupt Man”) (1977). This again led him back to the United States to play an airline captain in “Concorde Airport ’79,” but its abysmal failure nixed any further ventures to Hollywood.

In 1981, Delon made his directorial debut with “Pour la peau d’un flic” (1981), a modest crime picture that he fashioned as a tribute to Jean-Pierre Melville. He would direct two additional, entirely minor thrillers before balancing his time between producing and occasional acting appearances. By the 1980s, his famously aquiline features had grown craggy, and he was no longer the actor of choice for romantic leading men, though his personal appeal remained untouched, as evidenced by his 1987 romance with the much-younger model Rosalie van Breemen. Delon gave a critically acclaimed turn as a haughty but miserable royal in Volker Schlondorff’s “Swann in Love” (1982) and finally earned a Cesar for “Notre Histoire” (“Our History”) (1984), starring as a dissolute middle-aged man who became fixated on a disinterested prostitute and single mother (Nathalie Baye). These triumphs were compounded by the blockbuster hit “Parole de flic” (1985), an action-packed crime picture that featured the 50-year-old Delon performing his own stunts.

But advancing age, as well as the expensive failure of “The Passage” in 1986, forced Delon to consider his future projects with greater care. He directed his focus toward a popular line of products that bore his name – from perfume and cigarettes to sunglasses – that became the epitome of cinematic cool after Chow Yun-fat wore a pair in John Woo’s epic crime drama “A Better Tomorrow” (1986). There were still film projects, most notably Jean-Luc Godard’s “Nouvelle Vague” (“New Wave”) (1990) with Delon as a hitchhiker taken in by Domiziana Giordano’s mystery woman. The thriller “L’ours en peluche” (“Teddy Bear”) (1994), with Delon stalked by an anonymous caller, was a return to form, but he announced his retirement from acting after Patrice LeCompte’s “Un chance sur deux” (1998), an action film that reunited him with Belmondo, fizzled at the box office.

He did return sporadically over the next decade, most notably as a vain Julius Caesar in the smash European hit “Asterix at the Olympic Games” (2008). Between 1991 and 1995, he also reaped numerous honors for his lifetime of film work, including an Honorary Golden Bear in 1991 from the 45th Berlin International Film Festival, as well knighthood from the Legion of Honor that same year. In 1995, he was made an Officer of the National Order of Merit, while in 2005, his knighthood was promoted to the next highest class, that of Officer.

By Paul GaitaThe above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Ulla Jacobsson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1929. She started her film career working for the great Ingmar Bergman in such films as “Smiles of a Summer Night”. She came on the international scene in the early 60’s and appeared opposite Glenn Ford in “Love is a Ball”, with Stanley Baker and Michael Caine in “Zulu” and Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris in “The Heroes of Telemark”. She came to the U.S. in the early 60’s to guest star in an episode of the classic series “Naked City”. She died in Vienna at the age of 53.

Her obituary in “The New York Times”:

Ulla Jacobsson, a Swedish-born film and stage actress, died of bone cancer Aug. 22 in a hospital in Vienna. She was 53 years old. Mrs. Jacobsson began her career in her native Gothenberg and appeared in classical and modern theater roles before turning to film.

She won international acclaim in the Swedish film ”One Summer of Happiness,” which took the top prize at the Cannes film festival in 1951. She was featured in Ingmar Bergman’s Swedish classic, ”Smiles of a Summer Night.”

”Ulla Jacobsson as the farm girl is a sensitive and expressive young thing who stunningly portrays the capricesand the terrors of an innocent maid in love,” wrote Bosley Crowther in The New York Times of her performance in ”One Summer of Happiness.” Among her other films were ”All the Joy of Earth,” ”Eternal Love” and ”Zulu.”

Ms. Jacobsson, who was married to an Austrian scientist, lived in Vienna.

From blog: European Film Stars:

Ulla Jacobsson was born in Mölndal, a part of the Göteborg (Gothenburg) urban area on the west-coast of Sweden in 1929. After her stage debut in Göteborg’s Stadsteater in 1947, she appeared in plays by Kaj Munk,Bertolt Brecht, Jean Anouilh, and William Shakespeare. She made her first film appearance in Bärande hav/The seas we travel (1951, Arne Mattsson) with Alf Kjellin. Her second film with the same director, Hon dansade en sommar/One Summer of Happiness (1951, Arne Mattsson), was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951. Based on the novel by Per Olof Ekstrom, the story revolves around the romance between 19 year old student Goran (Folke Sundquist) and the 17 year old farmer’s daughter Kerstin (Ulla Jacobsson). A scene where Goran and Kerstin swim and embrace in the nude caused a sensation and made Jacobsson world-famous. In Cannes the film won a prize for the music and at the Berlin Film Festival the film was awarded with the Golden Bear. Next Jacobsson appeared in such Swedish productions as All jordens fröjd/All the World’s Delights (1953, Rolf Husberg), the August Strindberg adaptation Karin Månsdotter (1954, Alf Sjöberg), and Herr Arnes penningar/Sir Arne’s Treasure (1954, Gustaf Molander). In Germany she also appeared in films, includingDie Heilige Lüge/Pious Lies (1954, Wolfgang Liebeneiner) with Karlheinz Böhm, and Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld/The Priest from Kirchfeld (1955, Hans Deppe) with Claus Holm. Another international hit was the comedy of mannersSommarnattens leende/Smiles of a Summer Night (1955, Ingmar Bergman). Bergman’s comic masterpiece opens with middle-aged lawyer Frederik Egerman (Gunnar Bjornstrand) again failing to consummate his marriage with the much younger Anne (Ulla Jacobsson). At IMDb, reviewer Clavallie writes: “Charming, light-hearted, delicate, and romantic are not the terms most people think to use when describing Bergman films, and yet Smiles of a Summer Night is all of these. This is one of the most sophisticated romantic movies ever filmed, and a pure delight. It is a clever and witty romance based on the classic elements of French farce. Simply wonderful.” The film’s success started Jacobsson’s international career. In France she starred in Crime et châtiment/Crime and punishment (1956, Georges Lampin), an updated version of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s story about the Nietzchean student Raskolnikov (Bernard Blier). In Germany she appeared with O.E. Hasse and Maximilian Schell in Die Letzten werden die Ersten sein/The Last Ones Shall Be First (1957, Rolf Hansen). That year she moved to Vienna, where she was offered an engagement at the Theater in der Josefstadt.

In the early 1960’s, Ulla Jacobsson started appearing in English language films. She made one American film, the light romantic comedy Love Is a Ball (1963, David Swift) starring Charles Boyer. At AllMovie, Hal Ericksonwrites: “the graceful and talented Jacobsson had to withstand an idiotic ad campaign which tried to redefine her as a Swedish ‘sex symbol’.” Normally she tended to play serious and anxious looking characters. In Great Britain she became better known for her part of the daughter of a missionary (played by Jack Hawkins) in Zulu (1964, Cy Endfield). Filmed on a grand scale, Zulu is a rousing recreation of the 1879 siege of Rorke’s Drift in Natal, Africa. An army of 4,000 Zulu warriors had already decimated a huge British garrison; and now threatened the much smaller Rorke’s Drift with less than 100 British soldiers. After this film, Jacobsson started hopscotching between Europe and England for the balance of her career. Other notable films include the war film The Heroes of Telemark (1965, Anthony Mann) with Kirk Douglas, and La Servante/The Servant (1970, Jacques-Paul Bertrand) with France Anglade. She won the Deutschen Filmpreis (German Film Award) for Supporting Actress in Alle Jahre wieder/Next Year, Same Time (1967, Ulrich Schamoni) with Sabine Sinjen. She reunited with her first director, Arne Matsson for Bamse/My Father’s Mistress (1970, Arne Mattsson). Her last films were Wolfgang Petersen’s thriller Einer Von Uns Beiden/One or the Other (1975, Wolfgang Petersen) with Elke Sommer, andFassbinder’s Faustrecht der Freiheit/Fox and His Friends (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder). The latter was the interesting and heartbreaking story of Fox, a gay sideshow worker (played by Fassbinder himself) who wins the lottery, only to be exploited to the hilt by his upper-class lover (Peter Chatel). Jacobsson played Chatel’s mother. Later she only made a few more TV-films, including the miniseries Das Ding/The Thing (1978, Uli Edel). The reason for her retirement was that she had fallen ill. In 1982 she died from bone cancer in a hospital in her hometown Vienna. She was 53. Ulla Jacobsson was married three times. Her first marriage was to the Viennese engineer Josef Kornfeld, with whom she had a daughter, Ditte. Then she was married to Dutch painter Frank Lodeizen, with whom she had a son, Martin. Lodeizen’s daughter Rifka Lodeizen from a later marriage is now a well known film actress in the Netherlands. Jacobsson finally married Austrian ethnologist Hans Winfried Rohsmann.

Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin in 1901. She began her career in German silent film and then won international acclaim as Lola-Lola in “The Blue Angel” with Emil Jannings. The popularity of the film led to offers from Hollywood and Dietrich went to the U.S. in 1930. She had a contract with Paramount Studios and her first Hollywood film was “Morocco” opposite Gary Cooper. Her most famous movies include “Shangai Express” with Anna May Wong, “The Garden of Allah” with Charles Boyer and “Knights Without Armour” with Robert Donat. In later life she had a very successful career as a concert performer. She had a late career movie success with “Witness for the Prosecution” with Tyrone Power. On retirement she went to live in Paris and became reclusive in her later years. Marlene Dietrich died in 1992 at the age of 90. Her website can be accessed here.

Daily Telegraph obituary in 1992.

Celebrated for her roles in The Blue Angel and Destry Rides Again, she appeared in 50 films between 1923 and 1964. She was the last well-known survivor of the Kaiser’s Germany.

Her theme tunes – Falling in Love Again, Johnny, The Boys in the Back Room and Where Have All the Flowers Gone? – haunted generations; her rendering of Lilli Marlene became as popular as that of Lile Andersen which was the favourite of British and German troops in the Second World War.

Husky-voiced and fair-haired, with heavily-lidded eyes, she displayed a cool ‘don’t care’ expression of world-weary disillusion. In an age when stardom is transitory, she proved enduring.

Marlene Dietrich was a postmistress at dispensing her own dangerous blend of glamour and carried through life the aura of Berlin’s smoky decadence.

Blonde, Teutonic, with high-chiselled cheekbones, she mesmerised her audiences by innuendo, letting her vacant eyes drift over the room, pulling in her heavily magenta-ed lower lip, displaying all the artifice of languor.

Famed for playing prostitutes in films, her world was never one of convention. She yearned for all that was artificial.

As a singer she was a polished performer, alternatively lazy in mood and powerfully aggressive, almost paramilitary. Her delivery of Johnny was both breathy and erotic and she manipulated the microphone in a manner nothing less than sexual.

No one who saw her spectacular entrance down the winding staircase of London’s Café de Paris in the 1950s is ever likely to forget it. Sparkling from head to foot with no shortage of white mink, she did not so much descend as glide down like a serpent, disdainful, glamorous, a little threatening.

Far from modest, Dietrich relished a record of the applause at these performances. One evening she played this to Noël Coward, explaining: ‘This is where I turn to the right . . . Now I turn to the left.’ When the first side ended, she threatened to turn the record over. Coward erupted: ‘Marlene, cease at once this mental masturbation]’ Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin on Dec 27, 1901, the younger daughter of a Prussian officer, Louis Dietrich, and his wife, Josephine Felsing, who came from a family of jewellers. She spent part of her childhood in Weimar.

Her father died in 1911 and her mother, who then married Eduard von Losch, a Grenadier colonel, played a big part in her life. She was brought up in the Germanic tradition of duty and discipline. The theatre was in her blood from the start; she worshipped Rilke, read Lagerlof and Hofmannsthal and knew Erich Kästner by heart.

She was keenly musical and learned the violin. From 1906 to 1918, she attended the Auguste Viktoria School for Girls in Berlin. At the end of the First World War, she was enrolled in the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik but stayed only for a few months.

The family soon fled to the country, where her stepfather died. In 1919, she entered the Weimar Konservatorium to study the violin. She hoped to become a professional violinist but a damaged wrist destroyed this hope.

In 1920, Marlene was back in Berlin. The next year she auditioned for the Max Reinhardt Drama School and played the widow in The Taming of the Shrew.

A string of minor parts followed. Marlene lived in virtual penury, worked in a glove factory and acted and danced. It was a depressing way of life.

In 1923, she played Lucie in The Tragedy of Love, on the set of which she met her husband, Rudi Sieber. It was by no means love at first sight but Marlene began by being in great awe of him. They married and had a daughter, Maria (born in 1925).

The marriage did not last. Sieber was overshadowed by Dietrich, who described him as a ‘very, very sensitive person’. She bought him a farm in California where he dwelt with his animals, a mistress (until she went mad), her blessing and her financial support; he died in 1976.

In the late 1920s, Dietrich acted and filmed in various productions in Berlin, including I Kiss Your Hand, Madame.

In 1930, she was discovered by the Viennese director, Josef von Sternberg, who detected in her the raw sexuality of a seductive vamp and brought her to fame in his film The Blue Angel. Von Sternberg transformed her from a rather brawny girl with the slight air of a female impersonator into a creature of glamour.

Even in The Blue Angel, as she sits on the barstool as the seductive temptress Lola-Lola, luring the salivating professor to his doom, her legs appear more well covered than is now considered fashionable. Von Sternberg recognised the conflict within her: ‘Her personality was one of extreme sophistication and of an almost childish simplicity,’ he wrote.

Originally Dietrich had been rejected for the part as ‘not at all bad from the rear but do we not also need a face?’ But then von Sternberg saw her by chance in the Georg Kaiser play ZweiKrawatten. She was gazing bored at the action on stage and he was drawn to her disdain and poise.

Despite her success, UFA did nor renew her contract and so she signed with Paramount and emigrated to Hollywood. There she made several memorable films for von Sternberg.

Morocco, in which she played a cabaret star in love with a French legionnaire (Gary Cooper), included a scene in which Dietrich, dressed as a man, plants an unchaste kiss on a girl’s mouth in a café. The film brought massive fame and Marlene contrasted the adulation she received off camera to the virtual martyrdom she endured under von Sternberg’s precise and relentless direction.

Dishonoured followed, in which she played an Austrian spy, who fixed her make-up in the reflection of an officer’s sabre and applied her lipstick while a German officer ranted at her. The firing squad then shot her dead.

She was described as a ‘vamp with brains and humour’ and was paid pounds 50,000.

Von Sternberg was harshly criticised in his later films for presenting Dietrich in a series of lavish films in which she was little more than a clothes-horse, bedecked in black lace, feathers and jewels – Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress and The Devil is a Woman.

These criticisms von Sternberg repudiated. Dietrich displayed a mixture of self-love and outward tenderness, her egoism and Germanic ruthlessness belied by a sweetly feminine mouth and high, serene forehead. In 1933, at von Sternberg’s suggestion, she played Lily Czepanek in Song of Songs for Reuben Mamoulian. Von Sternberg ended his association in 1935 (following which his career floundered).

He concluded: ‘When we first met, her pay was lower than that of a bricklayer and, had she remained where she was, she might have had to endure the fate of a Germany under Hitler.’ Whatever the pains of the association, it had been a rewarding one.

Dietrich’s association with von Sternberg was the subject of an analytic study, In the Realm of Pleasure, concerning von Sternberg, Dietrich and the ‘masochistic aesthetic’.

The author, Gaylyn Studlar, concluded: ‘Dietrich is frequently mentioned as an actress whose screen presence raises questions about women’s representation in Hollywood cinema. She has also acquired her own cult following of male and female, straight and gay admirers.

‘The diverse nature of this group suggests that many possible paths of pleasure can be charted across Dietrich as a signifying star image and across von Sternberg’s films as star vehicles.’

Kenneth Tynan also pursued this theme in a celebrated profile of the star: ‘She has sex but no particular gender. Her ways are mannish: the characters she played loved power and wore slacks and they never had headaches or hysterics. They were also quite undomesticated. Dietrich’s masculinity appeals to women and her sexuality to men.’

Inevitably, the arrival of Dietrich was seen in Hollywood as that of a blonde Venus in the vanguard of Garbo, the Sphinx. There was some similarity in the style of the films (Mata Hari then Dishonoured, Queen Christina in comparison to The Scarlet Empress).

It was generally accepted that if any rivalry existed, Garbo won without effort. A remarkable composite photograph by Steichen exists portraying Dietrich and Garbo together but, if they ever met, it was an unsatisfactory encounter.

At the behest of Mercedes de Acosta, with whom both were romantically linked, they made the wearing of slacks by females fashionable. In 1936, Dietrich starred opposite Cary Grant in Desire and then played in The Garden of Allah, Knight Without Armour and Angel. In 1939, came her energetic portrayal of Frenchy, the Wild West saloon keeper in Destry Rides Again.

This classic included Dietrich’s spirited wrestling with James Stewart, and she gave tongue to the evocative song The Boys in the Back Room, while bestriding the bar.

In the early years of the Second World War, there were more films for more directors. Meanwhile, in Germany Hitler destroyed all but one copy of The Blue Angel and went to great lengths to try to lure Dietrich to his cause.

But in 1943 she assumed the honorary rank of Colonel in the American Army and made radio broadcasts and personal appearances on behalf of the American war effort. In 1944, she joined the United States Overseas Tour and paid extensive visits to the Allied troops in Europe.

Dressed in an elegant version of military uniform, her blonde hair as flowing and feminine as ever, her mission was to boost morale, to entertain and to encourage Allied victory. There is film footage of Dietrich greeting the Fifth Army with a jaunty ‘Hello, Boys]’ and congratulating them on their singing.

Jean-Pierre Aumont was a fellow actor she met in wartime Italy and who was destined to become a lifelong friend. He summed up her role: ‘In the eyes of the Germans, she is a renegade who serves against them on behalf of the American Army. They wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her.

‘Under the veneer of her legendary image, Marlene Dietrich is a strong and courageous woman. There are no tears. No panic. In deciding to go sing on the field of battle, she knew the risks she was taking and assumed them courageously, without bragging and without regrets.’

Dietrich’s line was that her former countrymen had fallen under the tyranny of Hitler and that this evil must be removed. Jean Cocteau was sad that in the early post-war years she never sang Falling in Love Again in the original German in fear of being associated with the Germany of 1940.

Of her war-work, she said: ‘This is the only important work I’ve ever done.’

The elder sister Dietrich never mentioned (Elisabeth) was incarcerated in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany and her mother died in 1945. Marlene returned to America after the cessation of fire. She was awarded the Legion of Honour and the American Medal of Freedom.

Dietrich made many further films, including Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair, Hitchcock’s Stage Fright, and Witness for the Prosecution for Wilder. In this she played two roles, one a Cockney, her unlikely accent coaxed by a despairing Noël Coward.

She also appeared in Touch of Evil for Orson Welles and Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg opposite Spencer Tracy. In 1956, she contributed a memorable cameo to Mike Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days, perched on a stool Destry-style.

Dietrich also ran her own radio spy series, Café Istanbul, on America’s ABC Network. But it was as a singer that her later career blossomed.

By now in her early 50s, she began by compèring a Madison Square benefit arranged by her daughter. Out of a wish not to sit on an elephant, she took the role of ringmaster in top hat, tailcoat and tights. This white tie look was to be a lasting trademark.

Dietrich made her debut at the Sahara, Las Vegas, in 1953 and the next year took London by storm at the Café de Paris. She was always glamorously dressed and accompanied by an orchestra of 22 men.

Thereafter she made long tours all over the world, invariably accompanied by Burt Bacharach. Though she relied heavily on Bacharach, whom she described as her ‘arranger, accompanist and conductor’, she was always her own agent.

In 1960, Dietrich made a controversial return to Germany where she was greeted by a bomb on one side and Willy Brandt on the other. She toured Israel the same year and visited Russia in 1964.

In 1967, she made her debut on Broadway. Dietrich’s one-woman show carried on until the late 1970s when accidents recurred with startling frequency.

She broke so many bones that comedians used to mimic her, singing ‘Falling off stage again . . .’ Finally, she broke her thigh in Sydney in 1976 and gave up.

As Dietrich grew older, she seemed to defy the passing years. Cecil Beaton watched her 1973 Drury Lane performance on the television and dissected her ruthlessly: ‘Somehow she has evolved an agelessness.

‘The camera picked up aged hands, a lined neck and the surgeon had not be able to cut away some little folds that formed at the corners of her mouth.

He had, however, sewn up her mouth to be so tight that her days of laughing are over . . .’

Beaton admired her dress, her ‘huge, canary yellow wig’ and her showmanship: ‘She has become a mechanical doll, a life-size mannequin. The doll can show surprise, it can walk, it can swish into place the train of its white fur coat. The audience applauds each movement, each gesture, the doll smiles incredulously – can it really be for me that you applaud? ‘Again a very simple gesture – maybe the hands flap – and again the applause, and not just from old people who remembered her tawdry films but the young find her sexy.

She is louche and not averse to giving a slight wink, yet somehow avoids vulgarity.

‘Marlene is certainly a great star, not without talent, but with a genius for believing in her self-fabricated beauty, for knowing that she is the most alluring fantastic idol, an out-of-this-world goddess or mythological animal, a sacred unicorn.’

Beaton attributed her success entirely to perseverance and an ability to magnetise audiences into believing she was a phenomenon, just as she has mesmerised herself into believing in her own beauty. An experienced critic of such creatures, Beaton could find no chink in her armour.

Despite himself, he sat enraptured. He almost concluded that she was ‘a virtuoso in the art of legerdemain’ but then he wrote: ‘ ‘You know me,’ Marlene is fond of saying. Nobody does because she’s a real phoney. She’s a liar, an egomaniac, a bore.’

It was to the music of Falling in Love Again that Dietrich bade the world a spirited farewell in Paris: ‘Je dois vous dire adieu, parce que c’est fini.’

Sparkling in sequins and surrounded by flowers, she glided off stage, bowing low, clenching and unclenching her hands as though casting a spell over the audience, returning for more applause and, finally, clinging to the curtain.

At length, she disappeared behind it by degrees with a parting wave to the besotted audience.

Her last film appearance was in 1978 as the glamorously veiled Baroness von Semering in Just a Gigolo with David Bowie, in which she intoned the title song. She was still high cheekboned but the power had gone from her voice.

The myth of Marlene lived on and the rumours of her loves – with Jean Gabin, Ernest Hemingway and others – were long discussed. She moved between her apartment in the Avenue Montaigne and a flat at 993 Park Avenue. In her ABC book, she declared: ‘A man at the sink, a woman’s apron tied around his waist, is the most miserable sight on earth.’

As for pouting, she wrote: ‘I hate it but men fall for it, so go on and pout.’

Dietrich was not only a star. She was a nurse to many friends, a cook to her grandchildren and, in reality, there was much about her that was hausfrau-ish. Kenneth Tynan described her as ‘a small eater, sticking to steaks and greenery but a great devourer of applause’.

She was the author of an unforthcoming book of memoirs, in which she finally rejected the world: ‘What remains is solitude.’

In the years of her retirement, there were rumours that Dietrich was drinking or in a home. Ginette Spanier, the directrice of Balmain, suggested that she dine in a neighbouring restaurant and that they have a tame photographer on hand to record her evening out to show that all was well.

Spanier worried that Dietrich might not be equal to the challenge but, on the night in question, the Teuton emerged from her building as glamorous as ever. When the photographer approached, she pushed Spanier firmly out of the picture to ensure she was portrayed alone.

Every time the world thought they had heard the last of her, she was either photographed at an airport or issued a curious statement to the press.

Then, in 1984, she agreed to make a documentary film with Maximillian Schell (her co-star in Judgment at Nuremberg), without appearing on camera, her voice overriding the visual images in a mixture of German and English, ‘three days this and three days that,’ as she put it.

In that film, she was dismissive of many of her old films, judging them ‘kitsch’; she rejected women’s lib as ‘penis envy’; maintained that women’s brains weighed only half a man’s and declared: ‘Well, I’m patient and I’m disciplined and I’m good.’

In extreme old age, she remained in her Paris apartment and many friends from the past were bitter when their telephone calls were answered by Dietrich pretending to be the maid.

Jean-Pierre Aumont was a favoured friend, who submitted to many hours of telephone conversation, and occasionally took her out to tea at the Plaza Athenee opposite her apartment.

She rose at six, could sometimes be seen early in the morning, draped in Indian shawls, walking a tiny dog, accompanied by a minder. But officially she was never seen and, after Garbo’s death, became the world’s most celebrated recluse, existing on a diet of champagne, autographs, reading and the telephone.

Yet the lingering image must forever be her descent of the Café de Paris staircase, the club specially adorned with cloth of gold on the walls and purple marmosets swinging on the chandeliers and Noël Coward intoning his gracious, if clipped, introduction: Though we might all enjoy Seeing Helen of Troy As a gay cabaret entertainer, I doubt that she could Be one quarter as good As our lovely, legendary Marlene

Jacques Sernas was born in Lithuania in 1925. He has had an international career with many French films to his credit. He was educated in Frances and during the Second World War was a Resistance Fighter. He was captured and imprisioned for a year in the concentration camp at Buchenwald. His first film was “Miroir” in 1947. His most famous film is “Helen of Troy” which was released in 1956. He had a supporting part in “La Dolca Vita” in 1960.

With eye-catching good looks, blond Lithuanian-born actor Jacques Sernas (A.K.A. Jack Sernas) is best known for cutting a fine figure in European spectacles in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in 1925 he was raised and schooled in Paris before joining as a French Resistance fighter during W.W.II. Captivated by German forces and imprisoned for over a year in Buchenwald, he was eventually freed and began studying medicine in his early postwar years. Acting soon caught his fancy, however, and he made his unbilled debut in the French film Miroir (1947). He would dominant both French and Italian pictures in the ensuing years with such action films as The Red Falcon (1949), in the title role, and in such costumed romancers as Anita Garibaldi (1952). He hit major international attention after being cast as Paris opposite sex sirens Rosanna Podesta and Brigitte Bardot in Helen of Troy (1956). Hollywood took brief notice but nothing much came of it. He was relegated for the most part to supporting characters, making one lasting impression as a fading matinee idol in Fellini’s masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Jacques Sernas died in 2015 in Rome.

Alexander Godunov was born in Sakhalin, Russia in 1949. He joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1971 and soon became it’s premier dancer. He also began acting in Russian films and played Count Vronsky in “Anna Karenina” in 1974. Whilst touring with the Bolshoi in New York in 1979, he defected and was granted political asylum. He joined the American Ballet and danced with them until 1982. In the mid 80’s he turned to acting. He wa seen with Harrison Ford in “Witness” where he played an Amish farmer. In “Die Hard” with Bruce Willis, Godunov played a violent German terrorist. His last film was “The Zone” in 1995. He died the same year at the age of 45.

“Independent” obituary:

Alexander Godunov was a dancer of handsome stature and blond good looks. He possessed a virtuoso technique and enjoyed a career of glamorous highlights in ballet and film; but his triumphs were short-lived.

From Igor Moiseyev’s Young Dancers Company, to Bolshoi Ballet, to American Ballet Theatre, to Hollywood, he brought a glossy trail of spectacular appearances that glowed brightly in the limelight of the moment.

Born in Riga in 1949, Godunov first studied ballet in his native city where he was a classmate of Mikhail Baryshnikov. In 1964 the Wonder-Boy Baryshnikov joined the Vaganova Choreographic Academy in Leningrad. A year later Godunov endeavoured to follow him but could not obtain a permit. Much dismayed, he resorted to Moscow and continued his studies at the Bolshoi Choreographic School where he was fortunate enough to be taught by that consummate artist Sergei Koren.

After graduating in 1967 he spent three years with Moiseyev’s Young Dancers Company before returning to the Bolshoi fold as a soloist. He made his debut as the youth in Chopiniana and appeared in a number of classical roles in such ballets as Swan Lake, Giselle, The Nutcracker and Don Quixote.

His fame soared when Maya Plisetskaya gave him the role of Karenin in her ballet Anna Karenina (1972). He succeeded Nicolai Fadeyechev as her regular partner and danced a flamboyant Jose to her Carmen in the Alberto Alonso production of that name. He brought a panache to everything he did. He won a gold medal in the Moscow International Ballet Competition in 1973. His future with the Bolshoi seemed assured.

He married Ludmilla Vlasova, a dancer renowned for spectacular lifts. She was considerably older than him. He was a man who needed mothering. In August 1979, during the Bolshoi season in New York, Godunov decided to defect. There were dramatic scenes, with his wife sitting for three days on a plane at Kennedy airport while Soviet officials debated her freedom of choice to stay with her husband or to separate. In the end she elected to return to the Soviet Union.

It was a curious stroke of fate that Godunov’s path should cross again with that of his old class-mate Baryshnikov; or was Baryshnikov, who had become the idol of American ballet, the crucial spur for his defection? At any rate, Godunov defected in order to join American Ballet Theatre of which Baryshnikov was the star and was due to be appointed its artistic director the following year.

Godunov’s career with ABT was loaded with publicity: he was the golden boy, the talk of the town. His every appearance in the repertoire was hailed by press and public with eulogies amounting almost to hysteria, but after three years he was told there were no new roles for him. He did some guest appearances in South America under the banner Godunov and Friends and danced Swan Lake with Eva Evdokimova at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin.

During this time he built up a very close friendship with the film star Jacqueline Bisset, with whom he went to live in Los Angeles. She introduced him to movie agents and a new career in film and television opened up for him.

Godunov loved the United States and took a great interest in politics. He settled permanently in Hollywood and spent much time at the studio of Tatiana Riabouchinska, widow of David Lichine, who had been a star of de Basil’s Ballet Russe in the 1930s. Recently he had found time to visit his mother in Riga and only a month ago was filming in Budapest.

Playing in turn a kindly farmer, a tempestuous orchestral conductor and a vicious terrorist, Alexander Godunov displayed a remarkable range of characterisation in his first three film roles, and it can only have been his apparently tenuous grasp and pronunciation of the English language that impeded his movie career, writes Tom Vallance.

His debut, in Peter Weir’s Witness (1985), was particularly well received. In this popular thriller he plays an Amish farmer in love with a young widow (Kelly McGillis) whose son has witnessed a murder in New York City. Godunov makes clear (with a minimum of dialogue) the farmer’s unease as he senses a rival in the tough cop (Harrison Ford) who joins the non-violent community to trap the killers; and he retains audience sympathy with an engaging portrait of rustic equanimity.

In Richard Benjamin’s hyperactive comedy The Money Pit (1986), Godunov prudently underplayed his role as a tempestuous conductor, self-described as “shallow and self-centred”, lending droll understatement to expressions of his temperament (“The union forces me to allow you to go to lunch,” he tells his orchestra, “in spite of the way you played”) and conceit – when his ex-wife splits with her new boyfriend he comments, “He’s lost a wonderful woman and I know what it’s like – I’ve lost many.” Some of his lines, though, were less easily discerned behind his thick accent.

John McTiernan’s Die Hard (1988) was one of the best thrillers of the decade, and as the most sinister of the arch- villain Alan Rickman’s team of lethal terrorists, Godunov uses his blond athleticism to menacing effect as he stalks the hero (Bruce Willis) through the high-rise building that has been commandeered by the killers. Their encounter culminated in a particularly ferocious hand-to- hand struggle, with Godunov ultimately the vanquished.

It is surprising that after this telling role in a cinematic blockbuster, Godunov made only two further screen appearances and in horror films that had only limited release: Willard Carroll’s The Runestone (1992), in which an archaeologist is turned into a monster by a piece of rock, and Waxwork 2: Lost in Time.

Boris Alexander Godunov, dancer, actor: born Riga 28 November 1949; married 1971 Ludmilla Vlasova (marriage dissolved 1982); died Los Angeles c18 May 1995.

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Brigitte Auber was born in 1928 in Paris. She has an impressive list of credits on film and television in her native country. She has only one major international film to her credit, “Th Catch A Thief” with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. She had a major role in this movie and it is puzzling that she did not make more British or U.S. films.

Auber began her film career with the leading role in Jacques Becker‘s Rendezvous in July (1949) and was known for roles in numerous French films of the 1950s, including Julien Duvivier‘s Romance Under the Sky of Paris (1951). Auber’s best-known role, and one of her few English-speaking parts, was opposite Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock‘s To Catch a Thief, released in 1955. Auber plays the role of Danielle Foussard. Nearly a decade and a half later, she played the part of elder Françoise in Claude de Givrays miniseries Mauregard (1969) while the young Françoise has been played by another French Hitchcock-actress, Claude Jade from Topaz. She also had a supporting role in film adaptation of The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later(1988) from the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Leonardo DiCaprio played Louis XIV of France and the Man in the Iron Mask, while Auber played the Queen mother’s attendant.

Lilian Montevecchi appeared in some of the popular films in the 1950’s. Among her films are “Moonfleet”, “Me and the Colonel” and “King Creole”. In te 1980’s and 90’s she had a spectacular run on Broadway in a series of musicals. She was born in Paris in 1931 and began her career as a ballet dancer.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Paris-born entertainer Liliane Montevecchi first put on ballet shoes at the age of 9. Nine years later, she became prima ballerina in Roland Petit’s ballet company. Hollywood took a sudden interest in her in the early 1950s along with other foreign-born ballet dancers such as Leslie Caron, Zizi Jeanmaire, and Moira Shearer. Liliane was signed to a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and began appearing in their musicals. However, for the most part, the roles were small and only mildly flavorful, and did nothing to not enough to distinguish her roles which did nothing to abet her film career. Such cinematic ventures as The Glass Slipper (1955) (starring Caron), Daddy Long Legs (1955) (also starring Caron), Moonfleet (1955), Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956), The Sad Sack (1957), Me and the Colonel (1958), and the Elvis Presley vehicle King Creole (1958) came and went without much fanfare for Liliane personally.

It was the live stage that would raise her to legendary status. First, she starred with the Folies Bergere for nine years, traveling all over the world. She then conquered Broadway in the 1980s, winning both Tony and Drama Desk awards for her flashy role in the musical “Nine”, based on Fellini’s art-house film 8½ (1963). She earned a Tony Award nomination several years later with an equally flashy role in the musical “Grand Hotel”. The entertainer, beloved for her delightful mangling of the English language, has appeared in concert at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and has vamped and camped with the best of them in her acclaimed cabaret shows and niteries from here to Timbuktu. These include the semi-autobiographical shows “On the Boulevard” and “Back On the Boulvards.” Still going strong at age 70+, Lilliane Montelecchi has shown time and time again that she is a one-of-a-kind diva who knows no limit.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Interview on “Stylelikeu”, please click here.

2016 Concert Review in “The New York Times” in 2016:

If any entertainer could be described as “Paris incarnate,” it might be Liliane Montevecchi, a quintessential French gamine from another age whose autobiographical one-woman show, “Be My Valentine,” opened on Thursday night at Feinstein’s/54 Below.

Ms. Montevecchi, 83, was a model of proud self-containment in her opening-night performance. Every gesture, from her fingertips to her toes to her bright, metallic smile was a carefully choreographed display of phenomenal agility and disciplined movement. You could spend an entire night studying her hands, which she opened and closed as though wielding fans.

Ms. Montevecchi, who was a star of the Folies Bergère for nine years and before that a prima ballerina with Roland Petit’s Ballets de Paris, can bow all the way to the floor and kick almost to the ceiling. Beyond her specific talents as a dancer and singer, she is an imperial presence.

She spoke of her Hollywood career — she appeared in “The Young Lions”opposite Marlon Brando, the only film star she name-checked, but didn’t like the movies, she said. Most of the other luminaries to whom she paid tribute were music-hall legends like Josephine Baker, Édith Piaf and Mistinguett, whose signature song, “Mon Homme,” (popularized in America by Fanny Brice as “My Man”) she performed in French.

Ms. Montevecchi’s American show business career reached a peak with her performance in the Tommy Tune musical “Nine” (1982) — for which she won a Tony Award for best featured actress in a musical — and continued with “Grand Hotel,” which had a Gallic-flavored score by Maury Yeston. Accompanied on piano by Ian Herman, she sang one song from each of those shows.

The musical part of the program was a disappointingly predictable rundown of European cabaret songs, including the Mistinguett favorite “Je Cherche un Millionnaire,” later popularized by Eartha Kitt; “Ne Me Quitte Pas”; and the inevitable “La Vie en Rose.” American songs included “It Might as Well Be Spring,” “But Beautiful” and a Cole Porter suite. Acting out Stephen Sondheim’s “I Never Do Anything Twice,” she overemphasized the song’s running double entendre. But her vocals lacked the stamina and confidence of her dancing.

All she really had to do to take command was simply to move.

The above “New York Times” review can also be accessed online here.

New York Times obituary in 2018:

Liliane Montevecchi, the French-born actress, singer and dancer who won a Tony Award for her showstopping role as the producer in “Nine,” died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.

Her friend Marc Rosen, who confirmed the death, said the cause was colon cancer.

Ms. Montevecchi was 50 and a runaway from American film and television when she was cast in “Nine,” the 1982 Broadway musical drama about a film director’s midlife crisis, based on the Federico Fellini film “8½.”

The role of the movie producer had been written for a man, but the character was reworked so that Ms. Montevecchi, who didn’t fit anywhere else in the show, could be cast. In “Folies Bergère,” her big number, she reveled in the joys of the good old days of show business, stopped to chat flirtatiously with audience members and ended up gloriously wrapped in a 30-foot-long black feather boa.

Frank Rich’s review in The New York Times described her as “a knockout — a glorious amalgam of music-hall feistiness and balletic grace, with Toulouse-Lautrec shadows about the eyes.” She received the Tony for best featured actress in a musical, beating two of her own “Nine” co-stars, Karen Akers and Anita Morris.

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“Nine” was neither Ms. Montevecchi’s first Broadway show — although the earlier ones had been revues (“La Plume de Ma Tante” in 1958, “Folies Bergère” in 1964) — nor her last. She earned another Tony nomination, for a 1989 musical adaptation of “Grand Hotel,” in which she was Grushinskaya, the high-strung ballerina, nostalgic for her glory days, played by Greta Garbo in the 1932 film.

Later, when she worked in cabaret, Stephen Holden of The Times called her “an imperial presence.”

Liliane Dina Montevecchi was born on Oct. 13, 1932, in Paris, the only child of Franco Montevecchi, an Italian-born painter, and Janine Trinquet Montevecchi, a French-born hat designer. The couple soon divorced.

Liliane began taking ballet lessons when she was 9 or so and appearing onstage soon afterward. At 18, she was in Roland Petit’s company Les Ballets de Paris, where she became a prima ballerina. After she made her film debut in a small role in “Femmes de Paris” (1953), Hollywood called. She did two 1955 films, “The Glass Slipper” and “Daddy Long Legs,” both starring her countrywoman Leslie Caron and featuring Mr. Petit’s choreography.

MGM signed her to a seven-year contract, but American movies largely wasted her. Over the next three years, she appeared in an odd assortment of small roles in seven films, including the war drama “The Young Lions” (1958), with Marlon Brando, in which she played a French escort with strong views about Nazis; the Jerry Lewis comedy “The Sad Sack” (1957), as a saucy, skimpily clad club performer in Morocco; and the Elvis Presley musical drama “King Creole” (1958), as a saucy, skimpily clad club performer in New Orleans.

After a few television roles in series like “77 Sunset Strip” and “Playhouse 90,” she returned to dancing, her first love, joining the Folies-Bergère in Las Vegas in 1964. She worked with that troupe and the Paris company for nine years.

Basking in her new Broadway acclaim, she began her cabaret career in 1982. John S. Wilson of The Times called her first engagement, at Les Mouches in New York, a “brilliant, breathlessly fast-moving act.”

In her solo shows, she sang in both English and French, exuding confidence and style and nailed the double-entendres for decades. She also appeared in an acclaimed 1998 all-star revival of “Follies” at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey; it seemed to be Broadway bound but never transferred.

Ms. Montevecchi, who was said never to have married, is survived by her longtime companion, Claudio Borin, who lives in Italy. “I’m set in my ways, and I’ve lived all my life alone,” she said in a 1982 television-news interview. “I don’t trust people a lot.”

She sometimes told friends about an impulsive wedding in Las Vegas and a marriage that lasted two weeks, but she never revealed the man’s name or provided evidence, they said.

She eventually returned to motion pictures, this time as a character actress. Her last film was “4 Days in France” (2016), as a rural Frenchwoman who gives advice to a lovelorn young gay man. (“Don’t run after people.”) Before that, she appeared in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” (2003) as a diamond magnate’s wife who flirts shamelessly with an advertising executive played by Matthew McConaughey.

Ms. Montevecchi never retired from cabaret performances, appearing at Feinstein’s 54/Below for the last time in 2016. “She didn’t know it was her last engagement,” Steven Minichiello, a close friend, recalled. “She expected to heal and go on forever. She was the master class in stage presence.”

In 2016, Ms. Montevecchi told the Woman Around Town website: “After all these years, it’s not O.K. to just do a show. Because you know more, you want to give more.”

Jacques Bergerac (Wikipedia)

Jacques Bergerac was born in 1927 and was a French actor who later became a business executive with Revlon.

Jacques Bergerac was born in 1927 in Biarritz, France. He was recruited by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios while a law student in Paris at the age of 25.

Bergerac met and married Ginger Rogers with whom he appeared in Twist of Fate(1954) (also known as Beautiful Stranger). He then appeared as Armand Duval in a television production of Camille for Kraft Television Theatre, opposite Signe Hasso. He played the Comte de Provence in Jean Delannoy‘s film, Marie Antoinette Queen of France.

In Strange Intruder (1956), he shared the screen with Edmund Purdom and Ida Lupinoand in Les Girls (1957), he played the second male lead. He also appeared in Gigi(1958), Thunder in the Sun (1959), the cult horror film The Hypnotic Eye (1960) and A Global Affair (1964). In 1957, he received the Golden Globe Award for Foreign Newcomer.

He appeared in a few more films and on television including Batman, 77 Sunset Strip, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (3 episodes), The Lucy Show, Get Smart, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Perry Mason (Season 7, Episode 19).

His last appearance was on an episode of The Doris Day Show in 1969, after which he left show business and became the head of Revlon‘s Paris office and of the Perfumes Balmain company. His younger brother Michel became CEO of Revlon six years later.

He also managed the rugby club Biarritz Olympique from 1980 until 1981.

Bergerac married screen star Ginger Rogers in February 1953, and they divorced in July 1957. In June 1959, he married actress Dorothy Malone in Hong Kong, where she was on location for her 1960 film The Last Voyage. They had daughters Mimi and Diane together, and divorced in December 1964.

He died June 15, 2014, at his home in Anglet, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France.

Marie-France Pisier obituary in “The Guardian” in 2011.

Marie-France Pisier

Marie-France Pisier was born in Vietnam in 1944 and died in 2011. At the age of twelve she came to live in Paris. Her breakthrough role came in 1968 in Francois Truffaut’s “Stolen Kisses”. In 1973 she had a critical and popular success with “Celine and Julie Go Boating”. “Cousin, Cousine” in 1975 was another very popular international success. She attempted a Hollywood career with “The Other Side of Midnight” and the television series “Scruples” amongst others . Her U.S. career was not particularly successful and she returned to work in France. She died in 2011.

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:

Those who followed the adventures of Antoine Doinel (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) in a series of lyrical and semi-autobiographical films directed by François Truffaut – incorporating adolescence, marriage, fatherhood and divorce – will know that Doinel’s first and (perhaps) last love, Colette Tazzi, was played by the stunningly beautiful Marie-France Pisier, who has been found dead aged 66 in the swimming pool of her house near Toulon, in southern France.

Doinel and audiences first caught sight of Pisier in Antoine et Colette, Truffaut’s enchanting 32-minute contribution to the omnibus film L’Amour à Vingt Ans (Love at Twenty, 1962), during a concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. She is conscious of Antoine’s stares, and pulls down her skirt. We soon realise that Colette is going to break Antoine’s heart.

Léaud and Pisier were born in the same month and were both 18 when they appeared in the film. Pisier was discovered by a casting director, who had been instructed by Truffaut that: “Jean-Pierre Léaud’s partner must be a real young girl, not a Lolita, not a biker type, nor a little woman. She must be fresh and cheerful. Not too sexy.”

Colette, who treats Antoine like a “buddy”, much to his frustration, runs into him again briefly in Baisers Volés (Stolen Kisses, 1968) and, finally, in the last film of the series, L’Amour en Fuite (Love On the Run, 1979), which she co-wrote. By then Colette was a lawyer, divorced like Antoine, but far more emotionally mature. The film contained what Truffaut called “real flashbacks”, when we see the differences between Pisier in her screen debut and Pisier 17 years and more than 20 films later, when she was midway through a prestigious career. She worked with such auteurs as Luis Buñuel, Jacques Rivette and Raúl Ruiz, appearing in quality French mainstream movies, with a short and unhappy detour to Hollywood.

Pisier was born in French Indochina, now Vietnam, where her father served as colonial governor. She moved to Paris with her family when she was 12. While starting out in films, she completed degrees in jurisprudence and political science at Paris University.

After she had appeared in several mediocre genre films, including thrillers directed by the actor Robert Hossein, Pisier’s career took a more interesting turn. In 1974, she appeared in the most outrageous and amusing sequence in Buñuel’s penultimate film, Le Fantôme de la Liberté (The Phantom of Liberty), where she is among the elegant guests seated on individual lavatories around a table from which they excuse themselves to go and eat in a little room behind a locked door. In the same year, in Céline et Julie Vont en Bateau (Céline and Julie Go Boating), Rivette’s brilliantly allusive comic meditation on the nature of fiction, she and Bulle Ogier act out, in a stylised and exquisite manner, a creaky melodrama in a mysterious housePisier was cast by the director André Téchiné in several of his early films, including Barocco (1976), for which she won a César award for her supporting role as a prostitute with a baby in tow. She later played Charlotte Brontë, alongside Isabelle Adjani (as Emily) and Isabelle Huppert (as Anne) in Téchiné’s Les Soeurs Brontë (1979).

Her performance as a frivolous, neurotic wife in Jean-Charles Tacchella’s Cousin Cousine (1975), a hit in the US, led to her starring role in The Other Side of Midnight (1977), a Hollywood soap opera in which she almost overcame the cliches as a naive French girl who, betrayed by an American pilot, begins to use men for their money and power.

But subsequently, apart from French Postcards (1979), in which, according to the critic Roger Ebert, “Marie-France Pisier, her jet-black hair framing her startling red lipstick, is the kind of dark Gallic woman-of-a-certain-age who knocks your socks off”, she was little seen in English-language movies. Among the rare exceptions was Chanel Solitaire (1981), in which she portrayed the designer Coco Chanel with her usual elegance. She made a splendid Madame Verdurin in Ruiz’s Proust adaptation, Le Temps Retrouvé (Time Regained, 1999), and was ethereal in the same director’s magical Combat d’Amour en Songe (2000).

More recently, she was an iconic presence in Christophe Honoré’s homage to the French new wave, Dans Paris (2006). Pisier also directed two films, Le Bal du Gouverneur (The Governor’s Party, 1990), starring Kristin Scott Thomas and adapted from Pisier’s own novel about some of her childhood spent in New Caledonia in the Pacific, and Comme un Avion (Like an Airplane, 2002), a family drama based on the death of her own parents.

Pisier was an outspoken defender of women’s rights and legal abortion. She overcame breast cancer in the 1990s. Her first husband was the lawyer Georges Kiejman, with whom she had a son. She is survived by her second husband, Thierry Funck-Brentano, a businessman; her brother, Gilles; and her sister, Evelyne.

• Marie-France Pisier, actor, writer, director, born 10 May 1944; died 24 April 2011

The above “Guaredian” obituary can also be accessed online here.