Ruta Lee was born in 1932 in Montreal, Canada. Among her films are “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” in 1954, “Funny Face” with Audrey Hepburn in 1957 and “Witness for the Prosecution” with Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich. In 1995 she was featured in the wonderful “Funny Bones”.
IMDB entry:
Ruta Lee was born on May 30, 1935 in Montréal, Québec, Canada as Ruta Mary Kilmonis. She is an actress, known for Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Funny Face (1957). She has been married to Webster B. Lowe Jr. since February 13, 1976. Speaks Lithuanian fluently.
Lee is chairman of The Thalians, an organization for the treatment of mental health at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Debbie Reynolds is the president. Both have been actively involved in building this celebrity run organization for over 30 years.
She and her husband own several houses scattered across the US. In her acting travels, she stays at these different houses for varied periods of time. About her house-hopping travels she jokes, “I sleep around.”.
1957 Deb Star.
Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on October 10, 2006 in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, where she once worked as an usher and candy girl. Her friends Debbie Reynolds and Alex Trebek were in attendance.
Katharine Ross was born in 1940 in Hollywood. In the 1960’s she had iconic roles in “The Graduate” with Dustin Hoffman and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in 1969. Her film appearances became intermittent from the mid-1970’s. She is married to actor Sam Elliott since 1984.
TCM overview:
A promising star of the mid-to-late 1960s, Katharine Ross first attracted attention as Anne Bancroft’s daughter in Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” (1967). With her luxuriously long hair and delicate features, she perfectly embodied the dream girl image the role required.
Ross added impressive credits to her resume as the female lead in George Roy Hill’s blockbuster “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969). As Etta Place, the woman in love with Redford’s Sundance Kid, she skillfully negotiated the film’s seriocomic tone.
She and Redford worked together in “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here” (also 1969), Abraham Polonsky’s period drama about an American Indian (Robert Blake) who kidnaps his white lover (Ross) and is reluctantly pursued by the local sheriff (Redford). While her character was perhaps the least defined in the piece, Ross delivered a fine performance. avoiding cliche. While much of her subsequent film work was in sub-standard features, she gave strong performances in the modern whodunit “They Only Kill Their Masters” (1972) and the scary “The Stepford Wives” (1975).
Perhaps her most notable performance may have been her award-winning supporting turn as the hooker daughter of Jewish refugees in “Voyage of the Damned” (1976). She was paired with future husband Sam Elliott in the misfire “The Legacy” (1979), after which her big screen career seemed to peter out. More recently, Ross was cast as the overly proper, somewhat fragile aunt of a young girl whose mother has attempted suicide in “Home Before Dark” (1997).
After reprising one of her best feature roles in the above average TV-movie “Wanted: The Sundance Woman” (ABC, 1976), Ross accepted the regular role of the much married socialite Francesca Scott Colby Hamilton on the ABC primetime soap opera “The Colbys” (1985-87).
She has frequently worked on the small screen opposite her husband, notably as the second wife of a Houston plastic surgeon (Elliott) who may have been involved in the death of his first wife in “Murder in Texas” (NBC, 1981).
The pair have also starred together in the likable Western “Louis L’Amour’s ‘The Shadow Riders'” (CBS, 1982) and the biopic “Houston: The Legend of Texas” (CBS, 1986). Most recently, they co-wrote and co-starred in the 1991 TNT movie “Conagher”, based on another Louis L’Amour novel.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here
Don Burnett was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1929.His film career was based in the U.S. His movie debut was in 1955 in “Hell’s Horizon”. His other film credits include”Gaby”, “Untamed Youth”, “Tea and Sympathy” and “Jailhouse Rock”. He was married for a time to the lovely actress Gia Scala. Since 1971 he has been married to actress Barbara Anderson of “Ironside” fame.
IMDB entry:
Delivered the eulogy at the 1989 memorial service for his friend and Damon and Pythias(1962) (aka “Damon and Pythias”) co-star, Guy Williams. Married actress Gia Scala (whom he met while filming Don’t Go Near the Water (1957)) in 1957. They divorced in 1970. In 1971, he married actress Barbara Anderson who played the blonde cop on TV’s Ironside (1967) series. After his ex-wife Gia Scala committed suicide with a drug overdose in 1972, he attended the funeral with his parents but left quickly before being spotted by photographers. Later became a successful stockbroker. Appeared in Italian pictures. He starred as the legendary hero in Il trionfo di Robin Hood(1962) [The Triumph of Robin Hood] and later co-starred with actor and good friend Guy Williams in Damon and Pythias (1962) [Damon and Pythias] as Pythias. His actress/wife Gia was originally set for a co-starring role in the film but was replaced.
After several separations and reconciliations, he broke up with actress wife Gia Scala on grounds of incompatibility and divorced her in September of 1970.
Singer and actor Tommy Sands was born in Chicago in 1937. His films include “Mardi Gras” in 1958, “Babes in Toyland” with Annette Funicello and “Ensign Pulver” in 1964.
IMDB entry:
Always a country music fan, Tommy Sands’ mother gave him a guitar for Christmas when he was seven. He taught himself to play and, at age eight, got a job at radio station KWKH in Shreveport, Louisiana, performing twice a week. Later, he and his mother moved to Houston where, in 1951, he cut his first record for Freedom Records. By 1952,Tom Parker, Elvis Presley‘s manager, signed Sands with RCA Records, where he recorded seven forgettable songs between 1953 and 1955. In January of 1957, he landed the lead in Kraft Theatre: The Singin’ Idol (1957), an episode of Kraft Theatre (1947). A song he sang in that production, “Teenage Crush”, shot to #3 on the Billboard and Cashbox charts, and Sands’ career as a teen idol was off and running. He sang the Oscar-nominated song, “Friendly Persuasion”, at the 1957 Academy Award ceremonies and, the next year, played the lead in a thinly-disguised biography of his career, Sing Boy Sing(1958). Several years later, he appeared with his former father-in-law, Frank Sinatra (he had married Sinatra’s daughter Nancy Sinatra), in None But the Brave (1965). Sands later moved to Hawaii, where he had a nightclub and a clothing business. He sang in a rock festival in England in 1990.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: S. Salazar, Salazar@ix.netcom.com
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here:
Barbara Luna was born in New York City in 1939. She was a child actress on the Broadway stage and appeared as the daughter of Ezio Pinza in “South Pacific” in 1949. She made her film debut as Frank Sinatra’s love interest in “The Devil at 4 O’Clock” in 1961. Other films include “Five Weeks in a Balloon” and “Ship of Fools”. She has had an extensive career on television including guest starring roles on “Star Trek”, “Hawaii-5-0” and “Charlie’s Angels”.
IMDB entry: Barbara Ann Luna was born on March 2, 1939 in Manhattan and virtually grew up on Broadway. Her Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese and Filipino background has led her to portray a variety of roles. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II cast her in the Broadway hit musical “South Pacific”, as Ngana, which was spoken entirely in French. When she outgrew her sarong, Luna, as she prefers to be called, was cast again by Rodgers and Hammerstein in “The King and I”. When the show was closing after many years, Luna auditioned for the understudy role of Lotus Blossom in “Teahouse of the August Moon”. Not only was she hired, but she was given the starring role–which was spoken entirely in Japanese–in the first national touring company for three years. While she was appearing with “Teahouse” in Los Angeles, she was seen by producer/directorMervyn LeRoy, who cast her as Camille, a blind girl who was the love interest for Frank Sinatra in The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1961), also starring Spencer Tracy.
Luna continued to keep one foot on Broadway; in between film commitments, she appeared in a revival of “West Side Story” as Anita, at Lincoln Center in New York City. This was followed by the role of Morales in “A Chorus Line”, where she got to sing the beautiful Marvin Hamlisch tune, “What I Did For Love”. This inspired the multi-talented Luna to meet with Oscar nominee Marc Shaiman to have him write a nightclub act for her, and that he did: “An Evening with BarBara Luna”. A New York reviewer, after her first engagement, said, “Ms. Luna can take the cabaret scene by storm”. This review was noticed by agent Lee Solomon of the William Morris Agency office. He called and booked Luna to open for Bill Cosby at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills and Caesars Palace in Atlantic City, New Jersey. While she was singing at Freddies in New York City, she was offered a role in a soap opera.
After a six-month stint as Anna Ryder (a role she created) on Search for Tomorrow(1951), she was then offered a two-year contract to play Maria Roberts on One Life to Live (1968). This character very quickly became notorious and extremely popular as the “character everyone loved to hate”. Spelling then hired Luna for her to play Sydney Jacobs, a jewelry fence, on Sunset Beach (1997). Luna loves to travel, so she co-hosted “The Alpen Tour”, a television special for the Travel Channel sponsored by TWA airlines that was filmed throughout Europe. When she returned to Los Angeles, Luna performed her club act to sold-out crowds at Tom Rolla’s Gardenia Cabaret and the Cine-grill at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Recently, Luna made her first trip to the Philippines to film a movie for Showtime, Noriega: God’s Favorite (2000), starring Bob Hoskins. Luna is a member of “The Thalians”, a charity foundation at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. She is an avid sports fan, loves playing golf, tennis and dancing on roller skates.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: A. Nonymous
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Mickey Hargitay was born in 1926 in Budapest, Hungary. He was an underground fighter during World War Two. He came to the U.S. after the end of the war. He won the “Mr Universe” bodybuilding title in 1955. Mae West used him in her nightclub act. His first major film role was “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter” in 1957. The film starred his future wife Jayne Mansfield. His other film credits include “The Love of Hercules” in 1960 and “Promises, Promises” in 1963. He died in Los Angeles in 2006. The actress Mariska Hargitay is the daughter of Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield.
Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary:
A champion body-builder, the Hungarian-born Mickey Hargitay won the Mr Universe title in 1955, and became one of the muscle-men backing Mae West in her renowned night-club act, but he is best remembered as the actor husband of Jayne Mansfield.
Mansfield was the buxom blonde who made a career out of parodying Marilyn Monroe, notably in the George Axelrod’s Broadway satire on Hollywood Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? The year after her sensational début in the play, she married Hargitay, who appeared with her in the film version.
The son of an acrobat, he was born Miklos Hargitay in Budapest in 1926. Raised as an athlete, he took part in his father’s stage act, and also became a fine soccer player and a champion speed-skater. After fighting with the resistance in the Second World War, he emigrated to the United States and settled in Indianapolis, working as a plumber and carpenter while attending gym and pursuing his body-building activities. He also performed an adagio act in night-clubs with his first wife, Mary Birge, from whom he was divorced in 1956.
He started competing in “body beautiful” competitions at the start of the Fifties, and won local events (Mr Indianapolis, Mr Eastern America) before becoming “Mr Universe”. His victory in the competition was described by Arnold Schwarzenegger as inspirational:
Body-building was dominated by American champions; there was no hope for anyone else.
That someone from central Europe became Mr Universe gave hope for someone like myself and others to dream about.
Hargitay is credited with stimulating the enormous interest in physical culture prevalent in the US of the Fifties. He became a pin-up in fitness magazines, and, shortly after he won the title, Hargitay’s photograph was noticed by the ageing, legendary vamp Mae West on the cover of Strength and Health magazine, and she asked him to join her troupe of muscle-men in her Las Vegas night-club act, The Mae West Revue.
The act, in which West was backed by a line of muscular young men clothed only in leopard-skin loincloths, provoked derision from many critics, but the public loved it. It went on to break attendance records at the Latin Quarter in New York, Variety commenting,
The femme ringsiders give blushing gasps of admiration to the muscle-men, while their paunchy
and/or anaemic escorts cringe before the displays of physical excellence.
Hargitay was spotted in the show by Jayne Mansfield, who, when asked what she would like to have, reputedly answered, “I’ll have a steak and the man on the left.” Their subsequent romance attracted publicity when Hargitay claimed that West had jealously taken away his lines of dialogue in the show, and a fist fight between Hargitay and one of West’s other muscle-men ensued. Hargitay and Mansfield were married in 1958, lived in a Beverly Hills mansion with a heart-shaped swimming pool and 13 bathrooms, and had three children before divorcing in 1964.
The couple also appeared in four films together, notably the sparkling screen version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), substantially rewritten by the director Frank Tashlin, in which Hargitay was Mansfield’s boyfriend, a television star of jungle adventures. When Mansfield’s career was fading, they appeared in less distinguished films, including a witless comedy about wife-swapping on a cruise, Promises! Promises! (1963). Several films that they made in Italy included two in which they appeared together, The Loves of Hercules (1960) and Primitive Love (1966), while Hargitay alone starred as the sadistic owner of a castle complete with torture chamber in Bloody Pit of Horror (1965), supposedly based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Hargitay made over a dozen more films – westerns and horror movies – in Italy until 1973.
Mansfield died in a car crash in 1967, and in 1980 the couple were the subject of a television movie, The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980), with Loni Anderson as Mansfield and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Hargitay. Now Governor of California, Schwarzenegger said this week:
Mickey was such an inspiration and always had such a positive attitude. He was a role model of mine for being a successful immigrant who came to this country and pursued his dreams.
In recent years Hargitay had a new career in real estate. His actress daughter Mariska received an Emmy Award last month for her recurring role as Detective Olivia Benson in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and in 2003 Hargitay acted with her in an episode of the show.
“I enjoyed my career,” he recently said. “I never wanted to be any more than what I was, and I had fun doing it.”
Tom Vallance
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Ian Hunter was born in 1900 in Cape Town, South Africa. He began his acting career in British silent films with “A Girl of London” in 1925. He pursued his film career in Hollywood and among his more notable movies are “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” in 1935, “Ziegfeld Girl” in 1941 and “Strange Cargo”. In the 1950’s he returned to Britain where he appeared in many films inclunding “North West Frontier” in 1959 with Kenneth More and Lauren Bacall and in 1961, “Dr Blood’s Coffin” with Kieron Moore and Hazel Court. He died in London in 1975.
IMDB entry:
Ian Hunter was born in the Kenilworth area of Cape Town, South Africa where he spent his childhood. In his teen years he and his parents returned to the family origins in England to live. Sometime between that arrival and the early years of World War I, Hunter began exploring acting. But in 1917 – and being only 17 – he joined the army to serve in France for the year of war still remaining. Within two years he did indeed make his stage-acting debut. Hunter would never forget that the stage was the thing when the lure of moving making called – he would always return through his career. With a jovial face perpetually on the verge of smiling and a friendly and mildly British accent, Hunter had good guy lead written all over him. He decided to sample the relatively young British silent film industry by taking a part in Not for Sale (1924) for British director W.P. Kellinowho had started out writing and acting for the theater. Hunter then made his first trip to the U.S. – Broadway, not Hollywood – because Basil Dean, well known British actor, director, and producer, was producing Sheridan’s “The School for Scandal” at the Knickerbocker Theater – unfortunately folding after one performance. It was a more concerted effort with film the next year back in Britain, again with Kellino. He then met up-and-coming mystery and suspense director Alfred Hitchcock in 1927. He did Hitch’sThe Ring (1927) – about the boxing game, not suspense – and stayed for the director’sWhen Boys Leave Home (1927). And with a few more films into the next year he was back with Hitchcock once more for Easy Virtue (1928), the Noel Coward play. By late 1928 he returned to Broadway for only a months run in the original comedy “Olympia” but stayed on in America via his first connection with Hollywood. The film was Syncopation(1929), his first sound film and that for RKO, that is, one of the early mono efforts, sound mix with the usual silent acting. As if restless to keep ever cycling back and forth across the Atlantic – fairly typical of Hunter’s career – he returned to London for Dean’s mono thriller Escape! (1930). There was an interval of fifteen films in toto before Hunter returned to Hollywood and by then he was well established as a leading man. With The Girl from 10th Avenue (1935) with Bette Davis, Hunter made his connection with Warner Bros. But before settling in with them through much of the 1930s, he did three pictures in succession with another gifted and promising British director, Michael Powell. He then began the films he is most remembered from Hollywood’s Golden Era. Although a small part, he is completely engaging and in command as the Duke in the Shakespearean extravaganza of Austrian theater master Max Reinhardt, A Midsummer Night’s Dream(1935) for Warner’s. It marked the start of a string of nearly thirty films for WB. Among the best remembered was his jovial King Richard in the rollicking The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Hunter was playing the field as well – he was at Twentieth Century as everybody’s favorite father-hero – including Shirley Temple – in the The Little Princess(1939). And he was the unforgettable benign guardian angel-like Cambreau in Loew’sStrange Cargo (1940) with Clark Gable. He was staying regularly busy in Hollywood until into 1942 when he returned to Britain to serve in the war effort. After the war Hunter stayed on in London, making films and doing stage work. He appeared once more on Broadway in 1948 and made Edward, My Son (1949) for George Cukor. Although there was some American playhouse theater in the mid-1950s, Hunter was bound to England, working once more for Powell in 1961 before retiring in the middle of that decade after nearly a hundred outings before the camera.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: William McPeak
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Henry Wilcoxon was born in 1905 in the British West Indies. He began his acting career on the stage in Birmingham in the U.K. In 1933 he was spotted by a film talent scout and wnet to Hollywood to pursue a career in films. He had a long professional association with Cecil B. De Mille and appeared in many of his films including “Cleopatra”, “The Crusades” and “Unconquered” in 1947 with Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard. He was particularly effective as the vicar in “Mrs Miniver” with Greer Garson and Teresa Wright. His last film was “Caddyshack” in 1980. He died in 1984.
IMDB entry:
Henry Wilcoxon was given the lead role of Marc Antony in Cecil B. DeMille‘s Cleopatra(1934). It would prove to be the beginning of a long relationship with DeMille he would become a familiar DeMille character actor and DeMille’s associate producer in the later years of DeMille’s career. However, after DeMille died, he worked sporadically and accepted minor acting roles.
Haya Harareet was born in 1931 in Haifa, Palestine and was one of Israel’s best known actresses in the 1950’s. She came to international fame in 1956 with the movie “Hill 24 Doesnt Answer”. Her best known role came in 1959 as the lading lady of William Wyler’s “Ben-Hur”.
She starred opposite Stewart Granger in “The Secret Partner” which was made in England. In 1962 she went to the U.S, to make “The Interns”. She stopped making movies in 1964. She was long married to the great English director Jack Clayton who died in 1995.
IMDB entry:
Born in Palestine before the inception of the Israeli state in the city of Haifa, she first distinguished herself by winning one of the first beauty contests in the nascent Israel. Haya Harareet (also spelled Hararit) made her debut in Thorold Dickinson‘s film Giv’a 24 Eina Ona (1955) (“Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer”).
The landmark Israeli film, mostly in English, is also the first feature-length production to be shot and processed entirely in Israel, and made for international distribution.
The film was an official selection at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival and Harareet won an award for her role in the film. She plays Miriam Mizrahi, a fourth generation, dark-eyed and beautiful Sabra, working for the underground.
Ms. Harareet was also credited as a presenter for ‘Best Special Effects’ at the 32nd Annual Academy Awards in 1960.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
She was married to the British film director Jack Clayton until his death in 1995.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Dann
The Times obituary in 2021.
When William Wyler was searching for a female lead for his biblical epic Ben-Hur, his mind turned back to a beautiful young Israeli actress he had met two years earlier at the Cannes Film Festival.
He had already cast the title role but was struggling to find the right actress to play Charlton Heston’s love interest, Esther. More than 30 names were considered, including Ava Gardner and Carroll Baker. None of them seemed right, and then the director remembered the little-known Haya Harareet.
Wyler had come across her at Cannes in 1955 when Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer, in which she starred, had been nominated for the Palme d’Or. Directed by Thorold Dickinson, the film did not win but had its own place in history as the first feature-length production to be shot and produced in Israel for international distribution. Harareet shone in the film as a young Jewish woman working for the underground during the war for Israeli independence. When Wyler met her at a reception at one of the swanky hotels on La Croisette overlooking the Mediterranean, he was impressed by her sultry looks and her sharp intelligence.
Two years later Wyler could not remember her name but ordered his production team to “find that Israeli girl I met in Cannes”. It took them weeks to track her down to Paris, where she was living, and when she arrived in Rome, where filming was due to start, he gave her the part on the strength of a 30- second screen test. She also signed a four-year contract with MGM, becoming the first Israeli actress to be taken on by a Hollywood studio.
She might easily have got lost in the epic grandeur of Ben-Hur. The movie cost $15 million to make and at the time was the most extravagant production in cinema history. The set for the film’s climactic chariot race alone covered 18 acres, was five storeys high and took six months to build. More than 300 actors had speaking parts and the film deployed 10,000 extras, not to mention more than 200 camels and 2,500 horses.
Yet Harareet was not overawed and Wyler coached a career-defining performance from her. Variety hailed the emergence of “a performer of stature” and continued: “Her portrayal of Esther, the former slave, is sensitive and revealing. She has a striking appearance and represents a welcome departure from the standard Hollywood ingénue”. The review also gave Wyler “considerable credit for taking a chance on an unknown”.
The film was banned in several Arab countries because of Harareet’s nationality but Ben-Hur was a box-office smash and became the biggest grossing film since Gone with the Wind. Adjusted for inflation, the film made $1.8 billion and to this day sits in the list of the top 20 money-spinning movies of all time. The film also garnered 11 Academy awards, a record until it was equalled by Titanic four decades later.
Harareet at the Cannes film festival in 1960
Harareet became an overnight sensation and was photographed with Heston on the red carpet at glittering premieres in New York and Los Angeles. When she arrived in Britain for the European premiere she noted with satisfaction that the bathroom of her suite at Claridge’s was larger than the entirety of the cramped lodgings she had occupied when living in London several years earlier.
Yet the epic scale of the movie came at a cost. The film’s producer had a heart attack on set and died, and the production supervisor was also forced to retire with stress-related heart problems. Harareet’s health survived the rigours of the nine-month shoot but her career did not. Despite a sheath of press cuttings hailing her as “Hollywood’s brightest new star”, she felt Ben-Hur had typecast her as an “exotic beauty”.
I’m an actress who played the part of Esther. But that doesn’t mean I have to go on playing her for the rest of my life,” she complained. The roles she was offered on the back of Ben-Hur were “boring” and MGM wouldn’t allow her to “grow up”.
To negotiate her escape, she drew the studio’s attention to her friendship with left-wing socialists. “You don’t want to be associated with a communist, do you?” she told the studio provocatively. In truth she had never been a party member but the stink of McCarthyism still lingered in Hollywood. The ruse worked and she was released from her contract.
She was also keen to leave for another reason. At the 1960 Academy awards she met the British director Jack Clayton, whose film Room at the Top was up against Ben-Hur for several awards. It was love at first sight. The following morning he delivered 1,000 roses to her hotel room and as soon as her MGM contract was cancelled she moved to Britain to live with him.
They subsequently married and lived together in leafy Buckinghamshire until Clayton’s death in 1995. They were inseparable for 35 years.
She was cast opposite Stewart Granger in the British-made thriller The Secret Partner in 1961 and appeared in one more Hollywood movie, playing a single mother training to be a doctor in David Swift’s 1962 feature The Interns. After abandoning acting she wrote the screenplay for her husband’s 1967 film Our Mother’s House starring Dirk Bogarde and at the age of 40 took a degree in political science at the London School of Economics. A previous marriage to Nachman Zerwanitzer, an irrigation engineer, ended in divorce before she left Israel.
Haya Neuberg was born in 1931 in Haifa, in what was then the British mandate of Palestine. Her parents, Reuben and Yocheved Neuberg, were Jewish immigrants from Poland. At school she was given the name Hararit (later changed to Harareet), which means “mountainous” in Hebrew.
At 17 she left home without parental approval to join the Israeli Defence Forces’ equivalent of Ensa, entertaining those fighting in the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. She also won one of the first beauty contests held in the newly formed state, which helped to launch her career as an actress at the Cameri theatre in Tel Aviv.
She left Israel in 1956 for Italy, where she befriended the directors Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, who taught her Italian during long weekends on the island of Capri. From there she moved to London and then Paris, where she learnt French well enough to appear on the stage before Wyler tracked her down.
She made annual trips to Israel to see her family before finally returning one last time, having asked for her ashes to be scattered in the land of her birth.
Haya Harareet, actress, was born on September 20, 1931. She died in her sleep on February 3, 2021, aged 89
