Oliver Tobias has an international film and television career. He was born in Switzerland and came to live in Britain at the age of eight. In 1968 he starred in the London production of “Hair”. His first film role was in “Romance of a Horse Thief” with Yul Brynner. He scored a big success as King Arthur in 1972 in “Arthur of the Britons”. He made “Luke’s Kingdom” in Australia directed by Peter Weir. Another successful series was “Smuggler” set in Cornwall.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
A remote and rather prevailing sullenness has only enhanced the mystique and charisma found in dashingly handsome Oliver Tobias, who has enjoyed over a three decade-long career on stage, screen and TV. Born Oliver Tobias Freitag in Zurich, Switzerland on August 6, 1947, he was the son of Swiss actor Robert Freitag and German actress Maria Becker, who subsequently divorced when he was young. Living in England from age 8, he was sent to boarding school and was later encouraged by his mother to study at the East 15 Acting School (1965-1968) which coincided with dance training at the Ecole de Dance in Zurich. In 1968 he appeared in the original London production of “Hair” playing the prime rebel role of Berger. The following year he starred, staged and choreographed the rock opera in Amsterdam and again helmed a production in 1970 in Tel Aviv. Oliver continued his shaggy-haired, counterculture musical career with the role of Judas in a German touring company of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
Around this time he started making an impression in films with the international productions of Romance of a Horsethief (1971), _Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1971)_, which co-starred Charlotte Rampling, and The God King (1974) in a Mephistophelean-styled role. On TV he enhanced a number of classic, age-old stories from Sherlock Holmes to Robin Hood. He earned TV stardom as King Arthur in the series Arthur of the Britons(1972), then again played the youthful ruler of Camelot in King Arthur, the Young Warlord (1975) on film. From there he graced a number of colorful costumers, includingArabian Adventure (1979) and on TV portrayed composer Johann Strauss in an equally colorful outing. Despite this attention he did not give up his musical roots, showing his prowess in the title role of the rock opera “Peer Gynt” in Zurich, and in the role of The Pirate King in “The Pirates of Penzance” at London’s Drury Lane Theatre.
As a stretch he also appeared as Bassa Selim in the Mozart opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” in 1988 and 1989, then appeared in a non-musical, the powerful AIDS drama “The Normal Heart,” shortly after. Oliver’s taste in movies have been eclectic to say the least, and not always tasteful. He appeared in Joan Collins‘ scurrilous, soft-core flick The Stud (1978) as an amorous waiter who sleeps his way to the top, and was part of the cast in the costumed romp Mata Hari (1985) which focused more on the disrobing of its star Sylvia Kristel than anything else.
For variety he portrayed a Vietnam veteran in Operation Nam(1986), a galactic dictator in Nexus 2.431 (1994), and a U-boat captain in The Brylcreem Boys (1998). In 1999 he again returned to musical limelight, this time in London as King Roderick in “La Cava,” based on the Dana Broccoli novel. He returned to the role a second time in 2001. In 2003 he was Percival Brown in the 50th anniversary production of “The Boyfriend” and the very next year toured in the rock musical “Footloose.”
Divorced from Camilla Ravenshear, he has two daughters, Angelika and Celeste. In 2001 he married Polish-born Arabella Zamoyska. The rugged charmer is in the process of writing a tell-all autobiography.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Hardy Kruger first came to international notice with his leading role in the British film “The One that Got Away” in 1957. This was the story of the only German prisioner-of-war to escape from Britain and return to Germany during World War Two. He went to Hollywood in 1965 to make “The Flight of the Phoenix”. He has featured in several major films including “Barry Lyndon”, “A Bridge Too Far” and “The Wild Geese”. His daughter and son are both actors.
Hardy Kruger
TCM Overview:
Rugged, blond and blue-eyed, Hardy Kruger ideally reflected the archetypal German revered in the Third Reich and frequently portrayed German soldiers over the course of his long international acting career.
As a teenager in Berlin in 1944, Kruger appeared in the film “Young Eagles” at the age of 15 before being drafted into military service the following year.
In 1949, Kruger returned to film and worked steadily in West Germany in a variety of films including the 1952 drama “Illusion in Moll,” with Hildegard Knef, and in the 1953 Otto Preminger comedy, “Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach.” Proficiency in English and French made Kruger extremely marketable and in 1957 he broke out onto the world stage in the first of three notable British productions, “The One That Got Away,” as an arrogant German flight officer shot down over England.
Hardy Kruger
After the equally successful romantic comedy “Bachelor of Hearts” in 1958, Krugerâ¿¿s popularity spread to America with his co-starring role with John Wayne in “Hatari!,” directed by Howard Hawks. Kruger then appeared in the French dark romance “Sundays and Cybele” and “Le Gros Coup” in 1964, before returning to Hollywood in 1965 with “The Flight of the Phoenix,” co-starring alongside Jimmy Stewart in 1965. Kruger worked in Germany, France and the U.S. throughout the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in “Barry Lyndon” in 1975 and the American 1989 television series “War and Remebrance.”
Hardy Kruger
At the age of 82, Kruger appeared in the 2011 German television series “Libe, Shuld und Tod.”
2555606 Jugement a Nuremberg: JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, top l-r: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, bottom l-r: Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, 1961.; (add.info.: l Affiche du film Jugement a Nuremberg JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG de StanleyKramer avec top l-r: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, bottom l-r: Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, 1961.); Everett Collection.
Maximilian Schell was born in Vienna and raised in Switzerland and is the younger brother of the actress Maria Schell. He made his Hollywood debut in 1959 in “The Young Lions” and won surprisingly the Best Actor Oscar in 1961 for his performance in “Judgement at Nuremberg”, arole which he had recreated earlier on U.S. television. He has continued to act on stage and in film both in the U.S. and Europe. He died in 2014.
Chris Maume’s obituary in “The Independent”:
Apart from being a fine actor, Maximilian Schell was a respected director, screenwriter and musician. A fugitive from Hitler, he became a Hollywood favourite and won an Oscar for his role as a defence lawyer in Stanley Kramer’s star-studded film Judgment at Nuremberg. He died in hospital in Innsbruck following a short illness. The German lawyer Hans Rolfe was only his second Hollywood role, but Schell’s impassioned but unsuccessful defence of four Nazi judges on trial for sentencing innocent victims to death – on the grounds that all Germans bore a collective guilt – won him the 1961 Academy Award for best actor.
Based on the third Nuremberg trial, the film had begun life on television in 1959 as an episode of Playhouse 90. An all-star cast, including Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland, was drafted in for the big-screen version – all on nominal wages, such was their desire to see the film made – but Schell’s performance had been so compelling that he was one of only two actors – Werner Klemperer was the other – asked to reprise their roles.
Far from being a straightforward account of Nazi thugs meeting their come-uppance, it was a morally complex piece of work. Three of the four judges defended by Rolfe were clearly culpable, but one of them, Lancaster’s Ernst Janning, was a distinguished legal scholar who had hated the Nazis. Rolfe argued that had he left his post he would have been replaced by a more brutal Nazi apparatchik.
Thanks to his passionate performance, Schell became Hollywood’s go-to man in numerous films dealing with the Nazi era or its legacy – Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron, for example, in which he played an army captain, and Ronald Neame’s The Odessa File, in which he was an SS officer. He earned a best actor Oscar nomination for The Man in the Glass Booth, in which he played a Jewish businessman with a shadowy past in a film inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and a supporting actor nomination for his performance as a man who assists the German underground in Julia, which also starred alongside Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Robards.
“There does seem to be a pattern,” he acknowledged of his CV. “I think there’s an area of subject matter here that has to be faced and seriously dealt with.”
He did manage to play some roles without a Nazi element. In 1992 he received a Golden Globe for his supporting role as Lenin alongside Robert Duvall in the 1992 HBO miniseries Stalin. He was an ageing cardinal in the 1996 sequel to The Thorn Birds, and a Swiss master-criminal in Jules Dassin’s Topkapi (1964), about a jewel theft in Turkey; more recently he was in The Freshman, a 1990 Mafia comedy, and the disaster movie Deep Impact (1998).
The son of a Swiss playwright and an Austrian stage actress, he was born in Vienna and raised in Switzerland after his family fled the Anschluss. He followed his older sister Maria and brother Carl into acting, making his stage debut in 1952. He appeared in several German films before moving to Hollywood in 1958. By then, Maria Schell was an international star, having won the best actress award at Cannes in 1954 for The Last Bridge.
Maximilian made his Hollywood debut as a German soldier in Edward Dmytryk’s The Young Lions (1958) a Second World War drama starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin. In 1960 he returned to Germany to play Hamlet on television, a role he would later play twice on stage. He recalled that playing Hamlet for the first time, “was like falling in love with a woman … not until I acted the part of Hamlet did I have a moment when I knew I was in love with acting.”
He later worked as a producer, starting with an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Castle, and as a director. Adapted from the Ivan Turgenev novella, First Love, which Schell wrote, produced, directed and starred in, was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film in 1970. Three years later his film The Pedestrian, in which a car crash causes a German businessman to consider his wartime past, was nominated in the same category.
Perhaps Schell’s most significant film as a director was his 1984 documentary about Marlene Dietrich, Marlene, which was nominated for a best documentary Oscar. Dietrich allowed herself to be recorded but refused to be filmed, bringing out the most in Schell’s talent to penetrate images and uncover reality. In a documentary entitled My Sister Maria, Schell portrayed his loving relationship with his sister, who died in 2005.
A man of remarkable all-round talents, Schell was a successful concert pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. He also directed and produced operas.
In 1985 Schell married the actress Natalya Andrejchenko, who he met when they were making the NBC mini-series Peter the Great, in which he played the Russian Tsar. They divorced in 2005, and last year he married the German-Croatian opera singer Iva Mihanovic.
Maximilian Schell, actor, director, producer, screenwriter, pianist and conductor: born Vienna 8 December 1930; married 1985 Natalya Andrejchenko (divorced 2005; one daughter), 2013 Iva Mihanovic; died 1 February 2014.
This review can be accessed in “The Indpendent” website here.
Annabella was born Suzanne Charpentier in France in 1907. She made her first film in her native country in 1927. In the late 1930’s she came to the UK to make the first British colour film “Wings of the Morning” with Henry Fonda and the Irish tenor Count John McCormack. Annabella then went to Hollywood where she made many fims including “Suez” with her future husband Tyrone Power. In the late 40;s she returned to France to resume her career there after her divorce from Power. She retired from film making in 1962. Annabella died in 1996.
Kevin Brownlow’s Independent newspaper obituary:One of the best-loved stars of French films of the 1930s, Annabella was also celebrated for her work in Hollywood in films like Suez (1938), with Tyrone Power, whom she married.
Born Suzanne Charpentier on 14 July – Bastille Day – 1909 at La Varenne- Saint-Hilaire, near Paris, she grew up with a fascination for the cinema. She was particularly passionate about Lillian Gish. “I always talked about movies. When I was 12, I wrote Studio on the chicken-shed in the back garden and acted scenes from the movies I had seen. I was the director, cameraman, everything. I used to sell my books to buy film magazines!
“My father was the publisher of a magazine. He spent all his time with writers and painters, and he was a keen photographer. I remember two phrases from that time that used to bother me: `Come along, darling, it’s time for your piano lesson’ and `Come along, darling, Daddy wants to take some photos.’ And one day, Daddy, who always had photos of his family in his pocket, went to a painter’s house, and met the famous writer t’Serstevens, a close friend of director Abel Gance. Daddy showed his photos, and t’Serstevens said, `I know that Gance is looking for a girl . . .’ So Daddy came back and said, `You know what? I’ve made a date for you.’ “
Gance was embarking on his monumental Napoleon, production of which began in 1925, when Suzanne was 15. Apart from Josephine, there were few parts for women, but Gance invented a little family which would follow Bonaparte throughout his career. The daughter, Violine, was to represent those young women who worshipped Napoleon as their counterparts later worshipped Valentino. The part had been assigned to the English actress Mabel Poulton, and Suzanne was sent to Corsica to play one of Bonaparte’s sisters. When he saw how beautifully she photographed, Gance dropped Mabel Poulton and gave the role to Suzanne. As an admirer of D.W. Griffith, he regarded Suzanne as his Lillian Gish. He renamed her Annabella, after a poem, “Annabel Lee”, by Edgar Allan Poe.
Gance expanded the part until her screen time rivalled that of Josephine (Gina Manes). But when, after months of work, Annabella attended the Paris Opera for the premiere, she had the experience all actresses dread; virtually all her scenes had been cut. Gance explained that this was a specially shortened version; her scenes would reappear in the full-length version. But Annabella never went near the film again until she attended the restoration in 1983 at the Barbican, when she saw herself as Violine for the first time. (Ironically, when the restoration was presented in America, by Francis Ford Coppola, it was reduced from five to four hours – and all Annabella’s scenes were cut once again.)
After the presentation at the Barbican, and an interview with David Shipman, Annabella wanted to see something of London, and we strolled around the West End. Her energy was extraordinary, as was her enthusiasm and humour; it was impossible to believe she was 73.
“I loved filming,” she said, “not to become a star but to continue playing like when I was little. You know when you see children with an old box – for them it’s a carriage. So, for me, to be in a film of Gance – I was that character. I was no longer me. So it was funny, on growing up, I continued to play as when I was little. It wasn’t serious work. Heartfelt, yet, I had to give my all.”
Her father managed her early career; when sound arrived he had the good fortune to secure her a role in Rene Clair’s Le Million (1931).
“Rene Clair was a strange character. For months he would stay at home working on the scenario. His wife said, `He won’t answer the telephone. He won’t even speak to me.’ But when Rene had written the word FIN at the end of a scenario, for him the work was over and the fun started.”
Practical jokes staged by Clair included a call from Berlin asking for Annabella. Clair said she was not free. A representative from Berlin arrived at the studio. Annabella despatched an assistant to report on what he was like. He was hideous – pock-marked, bearded, enormous. Clair encouraged her to leave the studio by a window to avoid him. “It was an extra he had made up like that. All the studio was in on it. One day, I thought I’d get back at him. Between scenes, Clair would play with a yo-yo. He would even delay us with this yo-yo, doing the same annoying tricks. We hid a camera and we filmed Rene Clair at the back of a set. We said, `Tonight we’ll look at the rushes and we’ll show this – what a laugh.’ As soon as we went into the projection room, there arrived an important producer. We looked at each other: `It can’t be cut. What are we going to do? My God, he’s going to be angry.’ But no, to show you Rene’s personality, he got up and said, `You will have noticed, my friends, that I did it with my left hand?’ “
Her favourite director, however, was the Hungarian Paul Fejos, for whom she made Marie, legende hongroise (1931) in Budapest. “I adored him. He was sincerity personified. I mean, if the scene required me to have tears in my eyes, he’d be behind the camera, with tears in his eyes as well. I thought Marie was a beautiful picture, the way Fejos told the old legend.” For Vieille d’armes, Annabella won the best actress award at Venice in 1934 – the European equivalent of an Oscar. Thanks to such triumphs, she was soon in demand by Europe’s top leading men. She married one of them – Jean Murat. She admired Louis Jouvet, but felt he didn’t enjoy working in films. He was accustomed to directing on the stage, and it was hard for him to accept orders. Jean Gabin she adored, and she had nothing but praise for Henry Fonda, with whom she played in Wings of the Morning in 1937. The first Technicolor feature to be made this side of the Atlantic, it was shot on location in England and in Ireland. Annabella was particularly fond of it because she had what amounted to three parts: Maria, a gipsy who escapes from the war in Spain – she played her both as a girl and in disguise as a boy – and Maria’s grandmother.
Also in England, she made Dinner at the Ritz (1937) with David Niven and Under the Red Robe (1937) with Conrad Veidt. She returned to France to star in Marcel Carne’s classic Hotel du Nord (1938). Under contract to Fox, she went to Hollywood. Annabella had dreamed of Hollywood since childhood. She fell in love with the place. And she fell in love with Tyrone Power. She divorced Jean Murat in 1938 and married Power in 1939. According to her, the head of the studio, Darryl F. Zanuck, was so incensed by the marriage that he put her on a blacklist.
Zanuck was further angered by her refusal to return to Britain to make three films she owed 20th Century-Fox British. “He thought I was a crazy woman who despised success, money, pictures. The last straw was when I did a play with Tyrone.” The play, Liliom, was intended to be a quiet little affair in Westport, where not too much notice would be taken of them. But Elsa Maxwell gave a huge party, the notices were excellent and the couple were hailed as the next sensation for Broadway. Not a prospect that pleased Mr Zanuck. She did one more film for Fox, 13 Rue Madeleine (1943), with James Cagney, but only because the director, Henry Hathaway, insisted on having her.
Her proudest memory as an actress occurred on Broadway in 1944, during her stage career. “It was a very successful play, Jacobovsky and the Colonel, and in the middle of a big scene, the safety curtain dropped. I said to myself, `My God, there’s a fire!’ I went backstage. `Paris has been liberated. Yes, it’s just been on the radio. We’ll take the curtain up – go and tell the audience.’ I thought of my parents, my family, my friends, France, I went back on the stage all by myself and I said to them, `Paris is free.’ And you know the whole audience stood and sang La Marseillaise. It was thrilling.”
Now an American citizen, Annabella toured North Africa and Italy, entertaining the troops with plays like Blithe Spirit. The separation did her marriage no good. Power, who had been in the marines, returned to Hollywood, where his name was linked with other stars. Annabella wrote to him “It is like seeing a beautiful black swan surrounded by geese.”
They separated and Annabella returned to Europe. She had lost her young brother, killed while trying to escape the Nazis, her father had died just after the war and the family’s two houses had been ransacked by the Germans. She worked in Spain and she worked in France. She made Dernier amour, an experience she hated. After a final film in Spain, she decided to end her career. “I finally had freedom. I hadn’t had any since I was a kid; I’d always been famous. And one day I walked out and no one stared at me. I loved it.”
Annabella remained loyal to Tyrone Power. They may have divorced in 1948, but she retained his name for the rest of her life. His portrait held pride of place in her home and they remained friends. “I was with him four days before he died,” she told David Shipman, “making Solomon and Sheba, and he said, `You know, the worst mistake I ever made was letting you go.’ Wasn’t that nice?”
Suzanne Georgette Charpentier (Annabella), actress: born La Varenne- Saint-Hillaire, France 14 July 1909; married 1932 Jean Murat (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1938), 1939 Tyrone Power (marriage dissolved 1948); died Neuilly-sur-Seine, France 18 September 1996.
Born Suzanne Georgette Charpentier, the daughter of a magazine publisher, in La Varenne Saint Hilaire, France, on July 14, 1909 (although sources vary the years from 1904 to 1913), Annabella appeared in Abel Gance‘s legendary silent epic Napoleon(1927). Director René Clair immediately recognized her gamine appeal and photogenic allure, casting her in his classic Le Million (1931). European stardom was hers.
Although only in her 20s, she was already a widow (due to the death of husband Albert Sorre, a writer) with a young daughter, Anne, to support. She pursued her career with ardent dedication and passion. She appeared on the stages of Berlin and Vienna and continued her professional association with director Clair by giving a superb performance in July 14 (1933) [July 14th]. She continued to shine working alongside the likes ofCharles Boyer, Jean Gabin, Albert Préjean and Jean Murat. Her popularity was further heightened by a successful association with writer/director Pál Fejös.
She first arrived in America to shoot a French-language version of a Hollywood film and began mastering English from that point on. Instead of settling in Hollywood, however, she headed to London and away from the Hollywood glitz. She had appeared earlier with Jean Murat in Companion Wanted (1932) and Mademoiselle Josette, ma femme (1933), and the couple married in 1934. She won the Venice Film Festival Award for her glorious performance in Sacrifice d’honneur (1935) [Sacrifice of Honor] and went on to appear with Murat in two other pictures — Anatole Litvak‘s Flight Into Darkness (1935) [Flight Into Darkness] and Anne-Marie (1936).
Hollywood beckoned again, this time courtesy of 20th Century-Fox, but the open-faced, ash-blonde beauty continued to resist. They finally arrived on a settlement of sorts — she would agree to make English-speaking films with the studio but only if they were made in England. Her English-speaking debut was opposite Henry Fonda in Wings of the Morning (1937), which was quite successful. It was the first Technicolor feature ever shot in England and Annabella looked every inch the star.
As her following American movies were given their release, such as Under the Red Robe(1937) with Conrad Veidt and Raymond Massey and Dinner at the Ritz (1937) with Paul Lukas and David Niven, Annabella was drawn into the Hollywood maelstrom despite her desire for privacy. This privacy would be shattered dramatically after the still-married French actress met and fell hard for the studio’s main attraction, Tyrone Power. From that time forward, the soon-to-be-divorced Annabella and Power became prime objects of tabloid frenzy. They finally married on April 23, 1939. Hounded by an ever-curious public, the couple soon began having marital troubles, complicated by their inevitable time apart for filming and his war service. His numerous affairs only compounded their problems. She bravely kept a strong front and continued filming, but her vehicles were not up to par. The Baroness and the Butler (1938) with William Powell, Suez (1938), which she filmed with her husband, and Bridal Suite (1939) with Robert Young did little to bolster her American career. After Tonight We Raid Calais (1943) and Bomber’s Moon (1943), she ended her contract with 13 Rue Madeleine (1947), and then she was gone.
Divorcing Power in January of 1948, she returned to Europe. Her last French film was released in 1952. Her only child Anne would find love and heartbreak married to the Austrian actor Oskar Werner who self-destructed from depression and chronic alcoholism. Annabella’s last years were spent quietly, volunteering at one point in prison welfare. She died of a heart attack at Neuilly sur Seine on September 18, 1996, at the age of 87.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Krabbé was born into an artistic family in Amsterdam. Both his father Maarten Krabbéand grandfather Hendrik Maarten Krabbé were well-known painters, while his mother Margreet, née Reiss (1914–2002), was a film translator. His brother Tim is a writer and top level chess player, and his half-brother nl:Mirko Krabbé is an artist. Only later in life did he learn that his mother was Jewish and that her family had been killed in the Holocaust.
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However, it was his roles as villains in a string of international films from the late 1980s and early 1990s which brought him international stardom, with notable roles such as Losado in No Mercy (1986), General Georgi Koskov in the James Bond film The Living Daylights (1987), Gianni Franco in The Punisher (1989), Herbert Woodruff (Lowenstein’s husband) in The Prince of Tides (1991), and Dr. Charles Nichols in The Fugitive (1993). He has also appeared in numerous TV productions, and as Satan in the TV production Jesus.
His television work included playing an uncanny psychic in the Midsomer Murders series 11 episode “Talking to the Dead”. Krabbé also had an exhibition about his paintings in Museum de Fundatie(Zwolle), in 2008.
Giovanna Ralli was born in Rome in 1935. She began making films in Italy in 1951 and by the mid 60’s had achieved an international reputation. She made one movie in 1966 in Hollywood “What Did You Do in the War Daddy” with fellow Italian Sergio Fantoni. Ms Ralli is still acting in movies.
Gerard Depardieu was born in France in 1948. He made his first film”Maitresse” directed by Barbet Schroeder in 1973. He has made films with most of the renowned French directors of the recent past e.g. Bertrand Blier, Claude Sautet, Bernardo Bertolucci, Alain Resnais, Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. In 1990 he went to the US to make “Green Card” with Andie McDowell. Despite it’s huge success, he choose to return to filmmaking in France. Article on Moviemail, please click here.
Pier Angeli was born in 1932 and was an Italian-born television and film actress. Her American cinematographic debut was in the starring role of the 1951 film Teresa, for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Young Star of the Year – Actress. She had one son with Vic Damone, her first husband, and another son with Armando Trovajoli, her second husband. Her twin sister is the actress Marisa Pavan.
During the 1960s and until 1970, Angeli lived and worked in Britain and Europe, and was often screen-credited under her birth name, Anna Maria Pierangeli. Her performance in The Angry Silence (1960) was nominated for a Best Foreign Actress BAFTA, and she was reunited with Stewart Granger for Sodom and Gomorrah (1963), in which she played Lot’s wife. She had a brief role in the war epic Battle of the Bulge (1965). 1968 found Angeli in Israel, top billed in Every Bastard a King, about events during that nation’s recent war.
According to Kirk Douglas‘ autobiography, he and Angeli were engaged in the 1950s after meeting on the set of the film The Story of Three Loves (1953). Angeli also had a brief romantic relationship with James Dean. She broke it off because her mother was not happy with their relationship as he was not Catholic.
Angeli was married to singer and actor Vic Damone from 1954 to 1958. During their marriage, they appeared as guests on the June 17, 1956 episode of What’s My Line?. Their divorce was followed by highly publicized court battles for the custody of their only child, son Perry (1955–2014).
Angeli next married Italian composer Armando Trovajoli in 1962. She had another son, Howard, in 1963. She and Trovajoli were separated in 1969.
In 1971, at the age of 39, Angeli was found dead of a barbiturate overdose at her home in Beverly Hills. She is interred in the Cimetière des Bulvis in Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
Marisa Pavan was born in Sardinia in 1932 and is the twin sister of the actress Pier Angeli. Pavan’s breaktrough role came in 1955 as the daughter of Anna Magnani in “The Rose Tattoo” based on the play by Tennessee Williams.
Pavan was nominated foran Oscar for her performance. She was married to the late French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont.
TCM Overview:
The twin sister of actress Pier Angeli, Marisa Pavan was generally cast in gentle roles during her brief career as a leading lady of 1950s films. The attractive, Italian-born brunette made her motion picture debut in John Ford’s 1952 remake of “What Price Glory?”, playing a sweet village girl, and followed as a doomed Native American in love with Indian fighter Alan Ladd in Delmar Daves’ “Drum Beat” (1954).
Pavan won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Oscar nomination for her performance as the sensitive teenaged daughter of the formidable Anna Magnani in “The Rose Tattoo” (1955).
She held her own in the costume epic “Diane” (also 1955), in which she competed with Lana Turner for the affections of Roger Moore.
In Nunnally Johnson’s “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit” (1956), Pavan brought warmth and believability to her role as the war-time love of Gregory Peck.
After appearing opposite Tony Curtis in the taut mystery “The Midnight Story” (1957) and two more costume epics, “John Paul Jones” and “Solomon and Sheba” (1959), the actress retired from the big screen for more than a decade.
A mini-biography on Marisa Pavan can be viewed on the TCM website here.
Marisa Pavan died at her home in France in 2023 at the age of 91.
The Hollywood Reporter obituary in 2023:
Maria Luisa Pierangeli and her sister (birth name Anna Maria Pierangeli, who was older by a few minutes) were born on June 19, 1932, in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. Their father, Luigi, was an architect and construction engineer, and their mother, Enrica, was a homemaker who once dreamed of being an actress.
“My mother adored Shirley Temple and took us to see all her movies,” Pavan said in Jane Allen’s 2002 book, Pier Angeli: A Fragile Life. “She even dressed us like Shirley Temple, hence the big bows in our hair.”
The family moved to Rome in the mid-1930s and was threatened when the Nazis occupied the city.
When she was 16, Anna was strolling along the Via Veneto on the way home from art school when she was discovered by Vittorio De Sica, and she portrayed a teenager on the verge of a sexual awakening opposite him in Tomorrow Is Too Late (1950). That brought her to the attention of MGM, which cast her in Teresa (1951), signed her to a seven-year contract and gave her the stage name Pier Angeli.
Angeli and her sister then moved to Los Angeles, and Maria, with no acting experience, was signed by Fox. Newly christened Marisa Pavan, she made her big-screen debut as a French girl in John Ford’s World War I-set What Price Glory (1952), starring James Cagney and Dan Dailey.
Pavan then appeared in 1954 in the film noir Down Three Dark Streetsand in the Western Drum Beat, starring Broderick Crawford and Alan Ladd, respectively, before she broke out in The Rose Tattoo.
Pavan also co-starred in a pair of epic adventures released in 1959, playing Robert Stack’s love interest in John Farrow’s John Paul Jones(1959) and the servant Abishag in King Vidor’s Solomon and Sheba(1959). In the latter, she worked alongside Yul Brynner, who joined the film in Spain after the sudden death of Tyrone Power.
Pavan worked mainly in television after that, with stints on such shows as The United States Steel Hour, Naked City, 77 Sunset Strip, Combat!, The F.B.I., Wonder Woman, Hawaii Five-O and The Rockford Files.
Marisa Pavan and Tony Curtis on the set of 1957’s ‘The Midnight Story’ COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION
In 1976, she appeared as Kirk Douglas‘ mentally ill wife in the Arthur Hailey NBC miniseries The Moneychangers, and she played Chantal Dubujak, mother of crime lord Max DuBujak (Daniel Pilon), in 1985 on the ABC soap opera Ryan’s Hope.
Angeli, who dated James Dean before she married singer Vic Damone and portrayed the wife of champion boxer Rocky Marciano (played by Paul Newman) in 1956’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, died in 1971 at age 39 of a barbiturate overdose at a Beverly Hills apartment. It was never firmly established whether she died by suicide or suffered a reaction to prescribed medication.
Pavan was married to French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont (her castmate in John Paul Jones) from 1956 until his 2001 death. Survivors include her sons, Jean-Claude (a cinematographer) and Patrick, and her younger sister, Patrizia Pierangeli, also an actress
