Deaths: October 15
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- Composer
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Cacho Castaña was born on 11 June 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a composer and actor, known for Tango Bar (1987), El mundo que inventamos (1973) and La carpa del amor (1979). He was married to Marina Rosenthal, Andrea Sblano and Diana María. He died on 15 October 2019 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.- Alfonso Pícaro was born on 4 December 1928 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was an actor, known for Pimienta (1966), La venganza (1999) and ¡Qué noche de casamiento! (1969). He died on 15 October 2012 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Writer
- Actor
Arto Paasilinna was born on 20 April 1942 in Kittilä, Finland. He was a writer and actor, known for Jäniksen vuosi (1977), Natalia (1979) and Ulvova mylläri (1982). He was married to Terttu Annikki Kasper and Hilkka Onervan Nousu. He died on 15 October 2018 in Espoo, Finland.- Additional Crew
- Writer
Cicely Berry was born on 17 May 1926 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, UK. She was a writer, known for Stealing Beauty (1996), The Last Emperor (1987) and Titus (1999). She was married to Harry Moore. She died on 15 October 2018 in Cornwall, England, UK.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Clara Kimball Young was born Clarisa Kimball on September 6, 1890, to Edward Kimball and the former Mrs. E.M. Kimball, traveling stock company actors with the Holden Co. Though she claimed Chicago as her birthplace, there are no records of her being born in Cook County--which includes Chicago--and she may have been born on one of her parents' tours. Her parents lived in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where her birth name Clarisa changed from the 1890 census to Clairee in the one of 1900, though she once claimed her birth name was Edith.
Young Clarisa Kimball made her professional debut as an actress at the advanced age of three, touring with the Holden Co. with her parents and playing child parts in the company's repertoire. After attending Chicago's St. Francis Xavier Academy, she joined another traveling stock company that took her out west. She married actor James Young, and sometime between 1909 and 1912 they were both hired by the Vitagraph Co. Though she was making $75 a week in the stock company, she accepted Vitragraph's offer of an annual contract paying her $25 a week, as it was steady employment.
In addition to her husband, who was hired as an actor but eventually became one of the company's best directors, Vitagraph hired her parents. The studio, which had been formed at the end of the 19th century as the International Novelty Company by English vaudevillians Albert E. Smith, J. Stuart Blackton and Ronald A. Reader, was a family-friendly company. In addition to the Youngs, it also employed the sisters Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge, the Sidney Drew family, and Maurice Costello and his daughters Dolores Costello and Helene Costello.
Though Clara made dozens of films at Vitagraph, few of them survive. In her early films she was quite charming, and these showcased her natural personality better than did her later dramas. A tall, dark-haired, full-figured gal who was a popular type in the early 20th century, Clara played both conventional leading ladies and light comedy I(at which she excelled). She quickly became a top star at Vitagraph, ranking 17th in a 1913 popularity poll of stars that was topped by Kalem's Alice Joyce.
Clara would soon knock Joyce off her perch atop the popularity charts. When Vitagraph supplemented its normal output of one- and two-reelers in 1914 and '15 with several longer feature films, it paired Young and the equally popular 'Earle Williams' as her leading man. One of their first collaborations, My Official Wife (1914)--a potboiler in the then-popular Russian aristocracy genre, propelled Young and Williams to the top rank of stardom in the polls. The movie, helmed by her husband, made him a major director.
Into this "Garden of Eden" arrived a serpent in the guise of producer Lewis J. Selznick, the vice president of the new World Film Corp., who signed Young to a personal contract in 1914 and proceeded to change her image into that of an unbridled sexpot. In that year's Lola (1914) (aka "Without a Soul"), which was directed by her husband, she played a decent woman who dies and is resurrected, unfortunately lacking a soul (like many producers before and since). Transformed into a "vamp", the heartless Lola sets out to destroy men, resulting in Clara conquering the box office with another huge hit that cemented her reputation as a superstar. Simultaneously, Selznick was destroying the equanimity of his leading lady's home life, leading her husband to remark ruefully to Mabel Normand, "[W]here I made my mistake was in ever inviting that fellow to the house."
In 1916 James Young filed a lawsuit against Selznick for alienation of affections, to which Selznick riposted that the marriage was troubled before he had arrived on the scene. Clara filed charges against her husband, charging cruelty, though eventually it was James Young who obtained a divorce on grounds of desertion on April 8, 1919 (bBy then the Selznick-Kimball Young relationship was on the rocks and in the courts, and there was another correspondent to the divorce).
After playing two man-eating vamps, Clara settled into a series of roles as the traditional hapless heroine whose travails are resolved with a conventional happy ending. She did, however, get to assay the title roles in Camille (1915) and Trilby (1915) with more tragic results, and she got to play some more decadent Russian hussies in Hearts in Exile (1915) and The Yellow Passport (1916).
Screenwriter Frances Marion, her longtime friend, reported that Clara was bored with her roles at World Film and resentful about Selznick's control over her private life. Like many a movie mogul before and since, Selznick was determined to create a public image for his star that matched the roles she played, that of a gloomy tragedienne.
Selznick was an ambitious man who had a habit of alienating his business partners (a trait that would trigger the failure of his last company in 1923). He was ousted as general manager of World Film in February 1916. Three months later he left formed the Clara Kimball Young Film Corp. to produce films for her with himself as president, and Selznick Productions Inc., to distribute both her films and those of independent production companies. Now with exclusive control of her career, Selznick seemed determined to turn her back into the sexpot he made her when he produced her first movie at World. Leaving behind the five-reelers, he launched her in seven-reel extravaganzas, dressed in fashionable wardrobe and parrying risqué subject matter in The Common Law (1916), The Foolish Virgin (1916), The Price She Paid (1915) and The Easiest Way (1917).
She had a falling-out with Selznick after the initial series of four films for the company named for her--but controlled by him--apparently due to the salaciousness of the subject matter and his complete control over her life and career. At this time she became associated with Detroit-based movie exhibitor Harry Garson, with whom she entered into a personal relationship, as she had earlier with Selznick. In February 1917 a knife-wielding James Young attacked Garson as he exited New York City's Astor Theater with his wife.
It was Garson, anxious to make the leap from exhibition to production that former exhibitors like Louis B. Mayer had accomplished, who apparently encouraged her legal campaign to become emancipated from Selznick. She filed a lawsuit against him in June 1917, charging the president of Clara Kimball Young Film Corp. with fraud. She alleged that Selznick had set up dummy corporations to hide profits and had elected himself president of her production company while not allowing her any input into its management. Publicly denying the charge, Selznick obtained an injunction forbidding her to appear in movies produced by any other company. Selznick counter-charged that Young was under the influence of Garson and planned to make films with him as director for her new lover's Garson Productions.
The ball now in her court, Clara announced to the press her plans to take complete control of her career, artistically and financially, by forming her own company. Bristling over her former mentor's turning her into a public sexpot, she announced that she would no longer make pictures that flouted the mores of the censorship boards. In the legal round robin that their troubles degenerated into, Selznick then sued Garson to keep Garson Productions from doing business with Selznick Enterprises, which had a contract to release Clara Kimball Young films. For his part, Garson claimed that Clara's contract with Selznick was broken due to the failure of Selznick's companies to produce and deliver her movies.
The machinations of Selznick nemesis Adolph Zukor, who would later force him into bankruptcy and out of the business in 1923, came into play. Zukor helped finance the formation of the C.K.Y. Film Corp. in August 1917, while secretly acquiring a 50% stake in Selznick's company. Zukor temporarily left Selznick in charge of the renamed Select Pictures Corp., which would release films produced by Young with her own C.K.Y. Film. Corp.
Clara, her parents and her "business manager" Garson moved to California in early 1918, and in June of that year they announced plans to build a studio. To build a stock company for this new studio, Garson hired Blanche Sweet and director Marshall Neilan, and named himself a producer. The output of C.K.Y. Film Corp. continued Selznick's practice of outfitting Clara in fancy duds, but the length of the "features" was cut back to five reels. Intended for an adult audience, the films starring Clara featured female characters who could think for themselves and make their own decisions--ironically a case of wishful thinking for this woman who had had not one but two Svengalis in her life within a short period. She did branch out beyond her Selznick-construed vamp image, though, and appeared in a few comedies, including Cheating Cheaters (1919), which was hailed for its ingenious plot and wonderful supporting performances. Unfortunately, none of the movies produced by C.K.Y Film Corp. have survived.
Conflict with Selznick reared its ugly head again in 1919, when C.K.Y. posted a legal notice as an advertisement in the January 11th issue of "Moving Picture World". In it, Clara declared, "I have this day served notice upon the C.K.Y. Film Corporation of the termination of all contract relations between that company and myself, because of several flagrant violations of the terms of the agreement under which motion pictures has been produced for distribution through the Select Pictures Corporation." The ad also stated that "Cheating Cheaters" would be the last film for the C.K.Y. Film Corp. Declaring themselves independent producers, C.K.Y. and Garson began shooting The Better Wife (1919).
Another legal donnybrook between Trilby and her penultimate Svengali ensued. Selznick claimed that C.K.Y. was under contract to the C.K.Y. Film Corp. until August 21, 1921, and that Select Pictures owned C.K.Y. Film. "The Better Wife" wound up being released by Select Pictures in July 1919, the same month that Equity Pictures Corp. was created to distribute Clara Kimball Young films produced by Garson Productions. Launching their first independent feature, Eyes of Youth (1919), Young placed another advertisement declaring she had her own independent production company. Equity got off to a strong start, as "Eyes of Youth" proved to be a huge hit, her biggest box-office smash since "My Official Wife" made her the top female star in motion pictures back in 1914. Arguably the best film she ever made, "Eyes of Youth" sported fashionable gowns and a first-rate supporting cast, including featured player Rudolph Valentino in his pre-superstar days, and featured high-quality production values. The film was heavily advertised, which paid off at the box office. Her success was short-lived, however, as Selznick launched another legal battle against her and Equity Pictures. His threats to sue exhibitors who showed "Eyes of Youth" forced many canceled bookings, causing Equity Pictures to ultimately sustain a loss despite its healthy box-office intake.
After the qualified success of "Eyes of Youth," Harry Garson decided he wanted to direct. An uninspired director whose control over the medium seemed to deteriorate with experience, he helmed Young's next nine films. The movies, with weaker scripts, turned out badly and the productions were hampered by a lack of capital. The decline of the quality of their films became so blatant that critics scored Garson and Young for the bad direction of her last two films. Young was always mature-looking, even in her youth, and the films contained characters who were supposed to be possessed of a youthful quality now alien to the actress. She had grown old on-screen, violating one of cinema's strongest taboos that still is in effect for actresses.
The "Roaring Twenties" proved her demise. The quality of her films had deteriorated to the point that her 1921 film, Hush (1921) was released on a "states rights" basis rather than as a road show, a sure sign of the waning appeal of the woman who was once the #1 female star in America. Exhibitors would not pay top dollar for her films, and the income from them was sure to drop, as under the "tates Rights" model, exhibitors could show a movie as many times as they wanted within their territory for a contracted period and would only have to pay the initial exhibition fee to the production company, instead of the usual system in which the studio got a percentage of the entire box office.
The financial fortunes of Equity took a hit when the courts held for Selznick, ruling that he was owed $25,000 for each of her next ten films. In addition to fighting Selznick's legal barrage, she was subjected to lawsuits by the Harriman National Bank and Fine Arts Film Corp. The fan magazine "Moving Picture World"' in a case of paid-for editorial content, featured many stories attesting to Young's continued popularity, sometimes accompanied with personal appeals from her to her fans to continue showing their support. By the time Equity released her last two films for the company, What No Man Knows (1921) and The Worldly Madonna (1922), her films had degenerated into the cheap, rushed look of what were known as "Poverty Row" productions. Equity Pictures and Garson Productions ceased to be functioning entities in 1922.
Paramount Pictures head Adolph Zukor reportedly offered Young a Paramount contract if she would promise to keep Harry Garson out of her career, but she refused and signed with Commonwealth Pictures Corp., owned by Samuel Zierler, who allowed her to bring along her favorite director, Garson. Samuel Zierler Photoplay Corp. was to be the producer of her films, which would be distributed by Commonwealth in the state of New York and by Metro Pictures in all other territories.
Times, however, were changing. Boyish figures on women became the rage during the Twenties, and Young had a figure from the late Victorian era, which combined with the mature appearance made her look older than she actually was, and in fact she came across as matronly. It was the time of jazz babies and flaming youth, and a more naturalistic style of acting that damned more florid players as Young as "old-fashioned." Furthermore, by the 1920s the movie industry was becoming more vertically and horizontally integrated. The days of the entrepreneur were through; until 'Burt Lancaster (I)' became a successful independent star-producer after World War II, Charles Chaplin proved to be the last movie star to form and run his own successful production company. Creating new companies to produce and distribute one's films, as Young did, was a difficult process to undertake in the best of times, and the early 1920s saw a decline at the box office due to a postwar recession and an over-expansion of production that did in C.K.Y.'s nemesis, Lewis J. Selznick himself. It was a Sisyphean task Young had set for herself, hampered by a rolling stone named Harry Garson.
Garson was only to direct one film for Zierler, The Hands of Nara (1922), an out-and-out debacle. He was booted upstairs as producer, and experienced directors were assigned to her films, such as the far more capable King Vidor. Trying to turn around the trajectory of a falling star is difficult, and the uneven quality of her new films hurt her, as did changing tastes. Critics and exhibitors, already derisive of an aging star playing young, began carping about overacting. "Variety," the show business bible, published a sort of pre-mortem, commenting on how deeply Young's star had gone into eclipse in just two years due to bad movies. A Wife's Romance (1923) was the last of her films released by Metro, though she would make one more silent picture, the independently produced Lying Wives (1925). Young tried the novel career move of playing a villain, opposite Madge Kennedy's heroine, but the film fared badly with the critics, and the silent film career of Clara Kimball Young was over.
The rest of the Roaring Twenties were spent in vaudeville and cashing in on her former stardom with personal appearances. She eventually ditched Harry Garson and married Dr. Arthur Fauman in 1928. With the advent of sound, RKO Pictures brought her out of retirement for a featured comic role in Kept Husbands (1931), but her attempt to rejuvenate her career was hampered by a public perception that she was a "has-been". She segued over to Poverty Row for lead roles in and Mother and Son (1931)for low-rent Monogram Pictures and Women Go on Forever (1931) for Tiffany Productions, a producer primarily of cheap "hoss operas" and for introducing James Whale to Hollywood with Journey's End (1930). This was the apogee of her career trajectory in talkies, being reduced to bit parts in Poverty Row productions and appearances as an extra in productions at the "major" studios. Her claim to fame at this stage of her career was her appearance in the classic The Three Stooges short Ants in the Pantry (1936).
Her husband Arthur died in 1937, one of a series of personal misfortunes that Young suffered in the 1930s. Her comeback was derailed by bad publicity, as the press chronicled the sad state she had sunk into, the former top box-office star reduced to bit parts and extra work. They had built her up, and now they tore her down, as Hollywood did love its clichés, this one the great star now has-been reduced to the career gutter, a morality play for the masses who read movie magazines.
Young began appearing in westerns, appearing with William Boyd in his "Hopalong Cassidy" series, and productions with Gene Autry and Richard Dix. She even appeared on the radio, but her attempts to make a go of it ultimately failed. Years later she quipped that "during the Depression I had half a mind to take up a tin cup and beg for alms." She announced her retirement in 1941, declaring, "I've been working since I was two years old, I think I deserve the chance to quit and just enjoy life."
Her last film work was in 1941, in bottom-of-the-barrel PRC's Mr. Celebrity (1941) (a.k.a. "Turf Boy"), in which she appeared as herself with another silent-screen-star/has-been, Francis X. Bushman. During the early days of television broadcasting, the major studios' embargo on selling films to TV and a lack of programming meant that many TV stations began airing silent movies to fill air time. Young's surviving silents began to be showcased, giving her a new notoriety. Once again in the public eye, she was interviewed and went on the personal appearance circuit again, this time attending film conventions. In 1956 CBS hired her as the Hollywood correspondent for the original The Johnny Carson Show (1953) that ran for a single season in 1955-56.
At the dawn of the 1960s, Young battled poor health and had to retire to the Motion Picture Home. Frances Marion, the Oscar-winning screenwriter who had remained her friend, said that Young told her, "I was worn out from the long journey, but I have found my way home."
Clara Kimball Young died on October 15, 1960, and was interred at the Grand View Memorial Park in Glendale, California, after a funeral attended by several hundred friends.- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Cole Porter was born June 9, 1891, at Peru, Indiana, the son of pharmacist Samuel Fenwick Porter and Kate Cole. Cole was raised on a 750-acre fruit ranch. Kate Cole married Samuel Porter in 1884 and had two children, Louis and Rachel, who both died in infancy. Porter's grandfather, J.G. Cole, was a multi-millionaire who made his fortune in the coal and western timber business. His mother introduced him to the violin and the piano. Cole started riding horses at age six and began to studying piano at eight at Indiana's Marion Conservatory. By age ten, he had begun to compose songs, and his first song was entitled "Song of the Birds".
He attended Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905, an elite private school from which he graduated in 1909 as class valedictorian. That summer he toured Europe as a graduation present from his grandfather. That fall, he entered Yale University and lived in a single room at Garland's Lodging House at 242 York Street in New Haven, CT, and became a member of the Freshman Glee Club. In 1910, he published his first song, "Bridget McGuire". While at Yale, he wrote football fight songs including the "Yale Bulldog Song" and "Bingo Eli Yale," which was introduced at a Yale dining hall dinner concert. Classmates include poet Archibald Macleish, Bill Crocker of San Francisco banking family and actor Monty Woolley. Dean Acheson, later to be U.S. Secretary of State, lived in the same dorm with Porter and was a good friend of Porter. In his senior year he was president of the University Glee club and a football cheerleader.
Porter graduated from Yale in 1913 with a BA degree. He attended Harvard Law school from 1913 to 1914 and the Harvard School of Music from 1915 to 1916. In 1917 he went to France and distributed foodstuffs to war-ravaged villages. In April 1918 he joined the 32nd Field Artillery Regiment and worked with the Bureau of the Military Attache of the US. During this time he met the woman who would become his wife, Linda Lee Thomas, a wealthy Kentucky divorcée, at a breakfast reception at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. He did not, as is often rumored, join the French Foreign Legion at this time, nor receive a commission in the French army and see combat as an officer.
In 1919 he rented an apartment in Paris, enrolled in a school specializing in music composition and studied with Vincent D'indy. On December 18, 1919, married Linda Lee Thomas, honeymooning in the south of France. This was a "professional" marriage, as Cole was, in fact, gay. Linda had been previously married to a newspaper publisher and was described as a beautiful woman who was one of the most celebrated hostesses in Europe. The Porters made their home on the Rue Monsieur in Paris, where their parties were renowned as long and brilliant. They hired the Monte Carlo Ballet for one of their affairs; once, on a whim, they transported all of their guests to the French Riviera.
In 1923 they moved to Venice, Italy, where they lived in the Rezzonico Palace, the former home of poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. They built an extravagant floating night club that would accommodate up to 100 guests. They conducted elaborate games including treasure hunts through the canals and arranged spectacular balls.
Porter's first play on Broadway featured a former ballet dancer, actor Clifton Webb. He collaborated with E. Ray Goetz, the brother-in-law of Irving Berlin, on several Broadway plays, as Goetz was an established producer and lyricist.
His ballad "Love For Sale" was introduced on December 8, 1930, in a revue that starred Jimmy Durante and was introduced by Kathryn Crawford. Walter Winchell, the newspaper columnist and radio personality, promoted the song, which was later banned by many radio stations because of its content. In 1934, his hit "Anything Goes" appeared on Broadway. During the show's hectic rehearsal Porter once asked the stage doorman what he thought the show should be called. The doorman responded that nothing seemed to go right, with so many things being taken out and then put back in, that "Anything Goes" might be a good title. Porter liked it, and kept it. In 1936, while preparing for "Red, Hot and Blue" with Bob Hope and Jimmy Durante, Ethel Merman was hired to do stenographic work to help Porter in rewriting scripts of the show. He later said she was the best stenographers he ever had.
Porter wrote such classic songs as "Let's Do It" in 1928, "You Do Something To Me" in 1929, "Love For Sale" in 1930, "What Is This Thing Called Love?" in 1929, "Night and Day" in 1932, "I Get A Kick Out Of You" in 1934, "Begin the Beguine" in 1935, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" in 1938, "Don't Fence Me In" in 1944, "I Love Paris" in 1953, "I've Got You Under My Skin", In the Still of The Night", "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To", "True Love", "Just One Of Those Things", "Anything Goes", "From This Moment On", "You're The Top", "Easy to Love" and many, many more.
On October 24, 1937, taking a break from a re-write of what would be his weakest musical, "You Never Know", visiting as a guest at a countess' home, Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley, New York, he was badly injured in a fall while horseback-riding. Both of his legs were smashed and he suffered a nerve injury. He was hospitalized for two years, confined to a wheelchair for five years and endured over 30 operations to save his legs over the next 20 years. During his recuperation he wrote a number of Broadway musicals.
On August 3, 1952, his beloved mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. His wife, Linda, died of cancer on May 20, 1954. On April 3, 1958, he sustained his 33rd operation, and still suffering from chronic pain, his right leg was amputated. He refused to wear an artificial limb and lived as a virtual recluse in his apartment at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. He sought refuge in alcohol, sleep, self-pity and sank into despair. He even refused to attend a "Salute to Cole Porter" at the Metropolitan Opera on May 15, 1960, and the commencement exercises at Yale University in June of 1960 when he was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, or his 70th birthday party arranged by his friends at the Orpheum Theater in New York City in June 1962.
After what appeared to be a successful kidney stone operation at St. John's hospital in Santa Monica, California, he died very unexpectedly on October 15, 1964. His funeral instructions were that he have no funeral or memorial service and he was buried adjacent to his mother and wife in Peru, Indiana.- Dave Bry was born in 1970 in Red Bank, New Jersey, USA. He was married to Emily Raimes. He died on 15 October 2017 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Delphine was born in Beirut on the 10th April 1932 into an intellectual Protestant family. Her Alsatian father, Henri Seyrig, was the director of the Archaeological Institute and later France's cultural attaché in New York during World War Two. Her Swiss mother, Hermine De Saussure, was an adept of Rousseau's theories, a female sailing pioneer and the niece of the universally acclaimed linguist and semiologist, Ferdinand De Saussure. Delphine also had a brother, Francis Seyrig, who would go on to become a successful composer. At the end of the war, the family relocated to Paris, although Delphine's adolescence was to be spent between her country, Greece and New York. Never a good student, she decided to quit school at age 17 to pursue a stage career. Her father gave her his approval on the condition that she would have done this with seriousness and dedication. Delphine took courses of Dramatic Arts with some illustrious teachers such as Roger Blin, Pierre Bertin and Tania Balachova. Some of her fellow students included Jean-Louis Trintignant, Michael Lonsdale, Laurent Terzieff, Bernard Fresson, Stéphane Audran, Daniel Emilfork and Antoine Vitez. Her stage debut came in 1952 in a production of Louis Ducreux's musical "L'Amour en Papier", followed by roles in "Le Jardin du Roi" (Pierre Devaux) and in Jean Giraudoux's "Tessa, la nymphe au Coeur fidèle". Stage legend Jean Dasté was the first director to offer her a couple of parts that would truly showcase her talents: Ariel in Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and Chérubin in Beaumarchais' "The Marriage of Figaro". He also had her take the title role in a production of Giraudoux's "Ondine" from Odile Versois, who had gone to England to shoot an Ealing movie. Delphine's performance was greeted with enormous critical approval. The young actress stayed in Europe for a couple years more, starring in a production of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" in Paris, making two guest appearances in Sherlock Holmes (1954) (which was entirely shot in France) and trying to enter the TNP (People's National Theatre). She actually wasn't admitted because the poetic, melodious voice that would become her signature mark was deemed too strange. In 1956, Delphine decided to sail for America along with her husband Jack Youngerman (a painter she had married in Paris) and son Duncan.
Delphine tried to enter the Actor's studio, but, just like in the case of many of Hollywood's finest actors, she failed the admittance test. She would still spend three years as an observer (also attending Lee Strasberg's classes) and this minor mishap didn't prevent her from going on with her stage career anyway, as she did theatre work in Connecticut and appeared in an off-Broadway production of Pirandello's "Henry IV" opposite Burgess Meredith and Alida Valli. Legend wants that the show was such a flop that the producer burned down the set designs. One year later, a single meeting would change the young actress' life forever. Delphine was starring in a production of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" when one very day she was approached by a very enthusiast spectator. It was the great director Alain Resnais, fresh of the huge personal triumph he had scored with his masterwork, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). Resnais was now trying to do a movie about the pulp magazine character Harry Dickson (an American version of Sherlock Holmes) and thought that Delphine could have played the role of the detective's nemesis, Georgette Cuvelier/The Spider. The project would never see the light of the day, but this meeting would soon lead to the genesis of an immortal cinematic partnership. Delphine's first feature film was also done the same year: it was the manifesto of the Beat Generation, the innovative Pull My Daisy (1959). The 30 minutes film was written and narrated by Jack Kerouac and featured an almost entirely non-professional cast including poets Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky along with painter Larry Rivers. Delphine played Rivers' wife in this well-done and interesting curio, an appropriate starting point to a very intriguing and alternative career. In 1960 she landed the role of Cara Williams and Harry Morgan's French neighbour in a new sitcom, Pete and Gladys (1960). Although she left the show after only three episodes, it is interesting to see her interact with the likes of Williams, Morgan and Cesar Romero, since they seem to belong to such different worlds. This was going to be the end of Delphine's journey in the States, although she would keep very fond memories of this period, stating in 1969 that she didn't consider herself "particularly French, but American in equal measure". In 1961 she would take her native France by storm.
Resnais had now been approached by writer Alain Robbe-Grillet- one of the main creators of the "Nouveau Roman" genre- to direct a movie based upon his script "L'anneé dernière". Having been awed by the recent Vertigo (1958), Robbe-Grillet was nourishing the hope that Kim Novak could have possibly played the mysterious female protagonist of the upcoming adaptation of his novel. Luckily, Resnais had different plans. Delphine was back in France for a holiday when the director offered her the role of the enigmatic lady nicknamed A. in his latest movie, Last Year at Marienbad (1961). Delphine accepted and finally took her rightful place in film history. The plot of the movie is apparently simple: in a baroque-looking castle, X. (Giorgio Albertazzi) tries to convince the reclusive A. that they had an affair the previous year. The movie has been interpreted in many different ways: a ghost story, a sci-fi story, an example of meta-theatre, a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, a retelling of Pygmalion and the Statue and plenty more. Resnais proved to be very partial to Delphine and didn't want her to just stand there like a motionless mannequin like the entire supporting cast did. As X. begins to instill or awake some feelings and memories into A., Delphine subtly hints at a change happening inside the character, managing to alternatively project an image of innocence and desire in a brilliant way. With her stunning, sphinx-like beauty being particularly highlighted by raven-black hair (Resnais wanted her to look like Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box (1929)) and her warm, seductive voice completing the magical charm of the character, Delphine made A. her most iconic-looking creation and got immediately welcomed to the club of the greatest actresses of France. The movie itself received the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival and remains Resnais' masterpiece, not to mention possibly the greatest son of the French New Wave. The gothic organ music provided by Delphine's brother Francis also played an important role in the success of "Marienbad".
Like he had done a couple years before with Emmanuelle Riva, Resnais had made another invaluable gift to French cinema and one would have expected to see Delphine immediately racking a dozen film projects after "Marienbad", but for the time being she preferred to return to her first love, the theatre. She always wished to avoid the perils of celebrity and started a very turbulent relationship with reporters. She made this statement on the subject: "There is nothing to say about an actor or an actress. You just need to go and see them, that's all". She also hated the fact that, after "Marienbad", many journalists had paraphrased many of her statements in order to get meatier articles or entirely made up stories about her. Her next film project came in 1963 when she was reunited with Resnais for the superb Muriel (1963). Wearing some makeup that made her look plainer and older, Delphine gave a first sample of her chameleon-like abilities and one of her most spectacular performances ever as Hélène Aughain, an apparently absent-minded, but actually very tragic antique shop dealer who tries to reshape her squalid present in order to get even with a past made of shame and humiliation. Providing her character with a clumsy walk and an odd behavior that looks amusing on the surface, she delegated her subtlest facial expressions to hint at Hélène's grief and sense of dissatisfaction, creating a very pathetic and moving figure in the process. This incredible achievement was awarded with a Volpi cup at Venice Film Festival. Delphine felt very proud for herself and for Resnais. "Muriel" turned out to be one of the director's most divisive works, with some people considering it his finest film and others dismissing it as a product below his standard. The movie's American reception was unfortunately disastrous: having been released in New York disguised as an "even more mysterious sequel" to Marienbad, it stayed in theaters for five days only. The same year, Delphine did a TV movie called Le troisième concerto (1963) which marked her first collaboration with Marcel Cravenne. Her performance as a pianist who's seemingly losing her mind scored big with both critics and audience and made her much more popular with the French public than two rather inaccessible movies such as "Marienbad" and "Muriel" could ever do. Delphine never considered herself a star though, stating that "a star is like a racing horse a producer can place money on" and that she wasn't anything like that. In the following years she kept doing remarkable stage work. 1964 saw her first collaboration with Samuel Beckett: she invited the great author at her place in Place Des Vosges where she rehearsed for the role of the Lover in the first French production of "Play" along with Michael Lonsdale as the Husband and Eléonore Hirt as the Wife. The three of them would then bring the show to the stage and star in a film version in 1966. Delphine would team up with Beckett on other occasions in the future and even more frequently with Lonsdale, her co-star in several films and stage productions. For two consecutive times she won the "Prix Du Syndicat de la Critique" (the most ancient and illustrious award given by French theatre critics) for Best Actress: in 1967 (1966/1967 season) for her performances in "Next Time I'll Sing to You" and "To Find Oneself" and in 1969 (1968/1969 season) for her work in L'Aide-mémoire. In 1966 she did a cameo in the surreal, Monty Pythonesque Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966), which was written and directed by William Klein (her friend of about 20 years) and starred Sami Frey, who would be her partner for her entire life after her separation from Youngerman. In 1967, she had a few exquisitely acted scenes (all shot in one day and a half) with Dirk Bogarde in Joseph Losey's excellent Accident (1967). Her appearance as Bogarde's old flame seemed to echo and pay homage to "Marienbad", from the almost illusory touch of the whole sequence to the suggestive use of music by the great John Dankworth. Delphine totally enjoyed to work with Losey, although their relationship would drastically change by the time of their next adventure together. The same year would also see the release of the spellbinding The Music (1967), her first filmed collaboration with Marguerite Duras. The author had always worshiped Delphine for her exceptional screen presence and for possessing the aura of a classic goddess of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She said about her: "When Delphine Seyrig moves into the camera's field, there's a flicker of Garbo and Clara Bow and we look to see if Cary Grant is at her side". She also loved her sexy voice, stating that she always sounded like "she had just sucked a sweet fruit and her mouth was still moist" and would go on to call her "the greatest actress in France and possibly in the entire world". "La Musica" isn't the most remembered Seyrig-Duras collaboration, but nevertheless occupies a special place in history as the beginning of a beautiful friendship between two artists that would become strictly associated with each other for eternity. Delphine's performance won her the "Étoile de Cristal" (the top film award given in France by the "Académie Française" between 1955 and 1975 and later replaced by the César). The actress later made a glorious Hedda Gabler for French television, although she never much enjoyed to do work for this kind of medium. She often complained about the poverty of means and little professionalism of French TV and declined on several occasions the possibility to play the role of Mme De Mortsauf in an adaptation of Balzac's "Le lys dans la vallée". In 1968 she found one of her most famous and celebrated roles in François Truffaut's latest installment of the Antoine Doinel saga, Stolen Kisses (1968), which overall qualifies as one of her most "traditional" career choices. Delphine's new divine creature was Fabienne Tabard, the breathtakingly beautiful wife of an obnoxious shoe store owner (Michael Lonsdale) and the latest object of Antoine's attention. It is very interesting that, in the movie, Antoine reads a copy of "Le lys dans la vallée" and compares Fabienne to the novel's heroine. At one point, Delphine had almost agreed to appear in the TV production on the condition that Jean-Pierre Léaud would have played the leading male role. She later inquired with Truffaut if he knew about this by the time he had written the script, but he swore that it was just a coincidence. In 1969 she declined the leading female role in The Swimming Pool (1969) because she didn't see anything interesting about it; this despite strong soliciting from her close friend Jean Rochefort (whom she nicknamed "Mon petit Jeannot"). At the time, it was considered almost inconceivable to decline the chance of appearing in an Alain Delon movie, but Delphine really valued the power of saying "no" and the part went to Romy Schneider instead. It consequently came of great surprise when, the same year, she accepted the role of Marie-Madeleine in William Klein's rather dated, but somewhat charming Mr. Freedom (1968), where she played most of her scenes semi-naked. But Delphine, as usual, had her valid reasons to appear in this strong satire of American Imperialism. Klein's comic strip adaptation isn't without its enjoyable moments (like a scene where the Americans use a map to indicate the Latin dictatorships as the civilized, democratic world), but goes on for too long and suffers every time Delphine disappears from the screen. Still, it remains a must for Seyrig fans, as you'd never expect to see the most intellectual of actresses having a martial arts fight with the gigantic John Abbey and giving a performance of pure comic genius in the tradition of Kay Kendall. The same year she also had a cameo as the Prostitute in Luis Buñuel's masterful The Milky Way (1969). Delphine read the entire script, but eventually regretted that she hadn't watched Alain Cuny playing his scene, because, in that case, she would have played her own very differently and brought the movie to full circle, something she thought she hadn't done. She promised Buñuel to do better on the next occasion they would have worked together.
In 1970, Delphine eventually agreed to appear in Le lys dans la vallée (1970) under the direction of Marcel Cravenne, although the male protagonist wasn't played by Léaud, but by Richard Leduc. It turned out to be one of the best ever adaptations of a French classic and her performance was titanic. She then played the Lilac Fairy in Jacques Demy's lovely musical Donkey Skin (1970), which starred a young Catherine Deneuve in the title role, but boosted a superlative supporting cast including Jacques Perrin, Micheline Presle, Sacha Pitoëff and Jean Marais (who sort of provided a link with Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946)). Despite all this profusion of talent, Delphine effortlessly stole the movie with her sassy smile, impeccable comedic timing and multi-colored wardrobe. Although she would go on to sing on future occasions, Demy preferred to have her musical number dubbed by Christiane Legrand. The following year, she won a new multitude of male admirers when she arguably played the sexiest and most memorable female vampire in film history in the underrated psychological horror Daughters of Darkness (1971). The choice of a niche actress like Delphine to play the lesbian, Dietrichesque Countess Bathory is considered one of the main factors that sets Harry Kümel's movie apart from the coeval products made by the likes of Jesús Franco or Jean Rollin. To see another horror movie highlighted by the presence of an unforgettable female vampire in Seyrig style, one will have to wait for the similar casting of the splendid Nina Hoss in the auteur effort We Are the Night (2010). Cravenne's Tartuffe (1971) was a delicious "Jeu à Deux" between Delphine and the immense Michel Bouquet. In 1972, Delphine would add another immortal title to her filmography, as she was cast in Luis Buñuel's surrealist masterpiece, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). As the adulterous Simone Thévenot, always wearing a sanctimoniously polite smile, she managed to give the star turn in a flawless cast: Fernando Rey made his Rafael Acosta deliciously nasty behind his cover of unflappability, Paul Frankeur was hilariously obtuse as M.Thévenot, Jean-Pierre Cassel suitably ambiguous as M.Sénéchal, Julien Bertheau looked charmingly sinister as Mons.Dufour, Bulle Ogier got to show her formidable gifts for physical comedy as Florence and the role of Alice Sénéchal, a woman who gets annoyed at not getting coffee while a man has just confessed to have murdered his father, proved for once the perfect fit for the coldest and least emotional of actresses, Stéphane Audran. The movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The next year, Delphine appeared in a couple of star-studded productions: she gave a brief, but memorably moving performance in Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal (1973) as a French woman who makes the fatal mistake of falling for Edward Fox's ruthless killer. People's memories of the movie are often associated with her scenes. She also appeared in Losey's disappointing A Doll's House (1973) opposite a badly miscast Jane Fonda as Nora. The two actresses didn't get along with the director as they both thought his vision of the story to be deeply misogynist. Many key dialogues were unskillfully butchered for the adaptation, diminishing the depth of the characters and the end result was consequently cold, although the movie has its redeeming features. The brilliant David Warner arguably remains the definitive screen Torvald and Delphine is typically impeccable in the fine role of Kristine, although one can't help but think that an accomplished Ibsenian actress like her should have played Nora in the first place. Although Losey wasn't in speaking terms with her any longer by the time the shooting ended, Delphine befriended Jane as they shared a lot of ideals and causes. Delphine Seyrig was of course a vocal feminist, although she didn't consider herself a militant: she actually believed that women should have already known their rights by then and that she didn't have to cause any consciousness raising in them. She would go on to work with more and more female directors shortly after, considering also that she had now begun to love cinema as much as theatre. In 1974 she appeared in a stage production of "La Cheuvachée sur le lac de Constance" because she dearly desired to act opposite the wonderful Jeanne Moreau, but from that moment on, most of her energies were saved for film work. She also grew more and more radical in picking up her projects: Le journal d'un suicidé (1972), Dites-le avec des fleurs (1974) and Der letzte Schrei (1975) certainly qualify as some of her oddest features, not to mention the most difficult to watch. Le cri du coeur (1974), although flawed by an inept performance by Stéphane Audran, was slightly more interesting: the director capitalized on Delphine's Marienbad image once again, casting her as a mysterious woman the crippled young protagonist gets sexually obsessed with. She made another relatively "ordinary" pick by playing villainous in Don Siegel's remarkable spy thriller The Black Windmill (1974) alongside stellar performers like Michael Caine, Donald Pleasence, John Vernon and Janet Suzman.
The following year, Delphine had two first rate roles in Le jardin qui bascule (1975) and in Liliane de Kermadec's Aloïse (1975) (where her younger self was played, quite fittingly, by an already prodigious Isabelle Huppert). But 1975 wasn't over for Delphine as the thespian would round off the year with two of her most amazing achievements. The Seyrig/Duras team did finally spring into action again with the memorable India Song (1975), another movie which lived and died entirely on Delphine's intense face. Laure Adler wrote these pertinent words in her biography of Duras: "In India Song we see nothing of Calcutta, all we see is a woman dancing in the drawing room of the French embassy and that is enough, for Delphine fills the screen". Coming next was what many people consider the actress' most monumental personal achievement: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). It has become a common saying that, when you have a great interest in an actor, you could watch him/her reading the phone book. Seyrig fans can experiment it almost literally in Chantal Akerman's three hour minimalist masterpiece, which meticulously follows the daily routine of widowed housewife Jeanne. Akerman chose Delphine "because she brought with her all the roles of mythical woman that she played until now. The woman in Marienbad, The woman in India Song". The movie can be considered a filmed example of "Nouveau Roman": every moment of Jeanne's day is presented almost real-time -from the act of peeling potatoes or washing dishes- and every gesture has a precise meaning, like Jeanne's incapacity of putting her life together being expressed by her inability of making a decent coffee or put buttons back on a shirt. The movie is also of course a feminist declaration: Jeanne regularly resorts to prostitution to make a living, which (according to Akerman) symbolizes that, even after the death of her husband, she's still dependant of him and always needs to have a male figure enter her life in his place. Her declaration of independence is expressed at the end of the movie through the murder of one of her clients. Delphine's approach to the role was as natural as possible and she completely disappeared into it, giving a hypnotic performance that keeps the viewer glued to his chair and prevents him to feel the sense of boredom every actress short of extraordinary would have induced. It's considered one of the greatest examples of acting ever recorded by a camera and possibly the definitive testament to Delphine's abilities. By now she was being referred as France's greatest actress with the same frequency Michel Piccoli was called the greatest actor. 1976 saw the the Césars replacing the "Étoiles de Cristal" and Delphine was nominated for "India Song", but she lost to Romy Schneider for her work in That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) by Andrzej Zulawski. The same year also saw her getting behind the camera as she directed Scum Manifesto (1976), a short where she read the Valerie Solanas text by the same name. She also starred in Duras' new version of "India Song", Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta (1976) (where the setting was changed to the desert) and headlined the cast of Mario Monicelli's Caro Michele (1976). In 1977 she traveled to the UK to shoot an episode of BBC Play of the Month (1965). She stated her great admiration for British TV as opposed to French TV, congratulating BBC for its higher production values and for its major respect for the material it used to produce. Thinking retrospectively about the whole thing, these sentiments seem rather misplaced, since BBC erased tons of programs from existence in order to make room in the storage and for other reasons, but fortunately "The Ambassadors" wasn't part of the slaughter. Like Henry James's story, the cast featured some veritable cultural ambassadors as three different nations offered one of their most talented thespians ever: Paul Scofield represented England, Lee Remick represented United States and Delphine represented France as Madame De Vionnet. Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977) marked her final and most forgettable film collaboration with Duras. In Faces of Love (1977), she played the drug-addicted ex-wife of a director (a typically outstanding Jean-Louis Trintignant) who summons her along with two other actresses to shoot a film version of "The Three Sisters". She was again nominated for a César, but the sentimentality factor played in favor of Simone Signoret's performance in Moshé Mizrahi's award-friendly Madame Rosa (1977), which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film two months later. Mizrahi later cast both actresses in his subsequent feature, I Sent a Letter to My Love (1980), also starring Jean Rochefort. This bittersweet feature proved much better than the director's previous work: Signoret and Rochefort gave great performances, but, once again, Delphine was best in show as a naive, hare-brained woman so much different from her usual characters and gave another confirmation of her phenomenal range. She was nominated for another César in the supporting actress category, but lost to Nathalie Baye for Every Man for Himself (1980). It's ironic that, despite being considered the nation's top actress by so many people, Delphine never won a César. One theory is that she had alienated many voters (particularly the older ones) by often dismissing 50's French cinema and regularly comparing French actors unfavorably to American ones, just like many New Wave authors (Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette) had done back in the days when they worked as critics for the "Cahiérs Du Cinema" and none of them ever won a César either (or at least not a competitive one). This along with having made many enemies because of her vocally feminist attitude of course. She once stated herself that many people in France probably disliked her because she was always saying what she thought.
In the 80's, Delphine appeared in three stage plays that were later filmed: La Bête dans la Jungle (a Duras adaptation of the Henry James novel), "Letters Home" (about the poet Sylvia Plath) and "Sarah et le cri de la langouste" (where she played the legendary Sarah Bernhardt). She scored a particular success with the latter and won the "Prix Du Syndicat de la Critique" for a record third time, more than any other actress (Michel Bouquet is her male counterpart with three Best Actor wins). In 1981, she directed a feminist documentary, Sois belle et tais-toi! (1981), where she interviewed many actresses, including her friend Jane Fonda, about their role (sometimes purely decorative) in the male-dominated film industry. In 1982 she co-founded the Simone De Beauvoir audiovisual centre along with Carole Roussopoulos and Ioana Wieder. A final collaboration with Chantal Akerman, the innovative musical Golden Eighties (1986), allowed her to do what she couldn't do in "Peau d'âne" and give a very moving rendition of a beautiful song. Avant-garde German director Ulrike Ottinger provided Delphine with some unforgettable and appropriately weird roles in three of her features: multiple characters in Freak Orlando (1981), the only female incarnation of Dr.Mabuse in Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984) (opposite Veruschka von Lehndorff, playing the title role 'en travesti') and Lady Windermere in Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989). She gave a final, stunning TV performance in Une saison de feuilles (1989) as an actress suffering from Alzheimer's disease and won a 7 d'or (a French Emmy) for it. Her mature turn as a woman who's reaching the end of the line looks particularly poignant now, as it has the bitter taste of a tear-eyed farewell. A woman of extraordinary courage, Delphine had been secretly battling lung cancer (she had always been a chain smoker) for a few years, but, because of her supreme professionalism, she had never neglected a work commitment because of that. Only her closest friends knew. It became evident that there was no hope left when, in September 1990, she had do withdraw her participation from a production of Peter Shaffer's "Lettice and Lovage" with Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud's theatre company. One month later she tragically lost her battle with cancer and died in hospital, leaving an unbridgeable void in the acting world and in the lives of many. Tributes flew in torrents, with Jean-Claude Brialy hosting a particularly touching memorial where Jeanne Moreau read some very heartfelt phrases come from the pen of Marguerite Duras to honour the memory of her muse. In the decade following Delphine's death, many of her features unfortunately didn't prove to have much staying power -being so unique and destined to a very selected and elitist audience- and plenty of people began to forget about the actress. Delphine's good friend, director Jacqueline Veuve, thought this unacceptable and she saw to do something about it, shooting a documentary called Delphine Seyrig, portrait d'une comète (2000), which premiered at Locarno film festival. This partially helped to renew the actress' cult and to expand it to several other followers. Similar retrospectives at the Modern Art Museum in New York and at the La Rochelle Film Festival hopefully served the same purpose as well. One can also hope that the French Academy (Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma) would start to make amends for past sins by awarding Delphine a posthumous César: since the immortal Jean Gabin received one in 1987, who could possibly make a likelier pair with him?- Actress
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Dorothy Ford was born April 4, 1922 and raised in San Francisco and Santa Barbara, California, as well as in Tucson, Arizona. During school she appeared in several pageants, and after graduation went into modeling. Standing 6'2" and with measurements of 38-26-38-1/2, she was a natural for photographic work.
Her first job was in San Francisco when Billy Rose cast her in his "Aquacade", along with Johnny Weissmuller, and she was an Earl Carroll showgirl, appearing in various revues including "Something to Shout About" and "Star Spangled Glamour". Ford caught the attention of casting agents, and made her screen debut as a model in Lady in the Dark (1944). MGM put her under contract in 1943, casting her in two musicals, Thousands Cheer (1943) (with Red Skelton) and Broadway Rhythm (1944). Her other appearances that year included Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), Meet the People (1944), Bathing Beauty (1944) and The Thin Man Goes Home (1944). She was seen in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) as part of an onscreen performing act and in King Vidor's An American Romance (1944) before she left MGM in 1945.
Dorothy studied at the Actors' Lab, the West Coast version of New York City's Group Theater. She had a much fuller role in her Universal Pictures' debut with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Here Come the Co-eds (1945), which finally gave her a chance to really act. Playing the captain of a women's basketball team appearing as ringers in a college game, she exuded a bold confidence as well as a shy streak, and stole every scene she was in. She briefly returned to modeling in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as part of South America's first post-war fashion show. It was there that she met Gen. Mark W. Clark, who testified that "this is the first girl I've ever seen who could go bear hunting armed with a switch."
In 1946, she returned to MGM and appeared in Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946), playing a co-ed who doesn't have a date for the college dance and is unexpectedly matched up with Mickey Rooney. The height difference between Ford and the 5'2" Rooney made for laughs at the homecoming dance, which was the highlight of the film. This was her first major role to play off her height; she wore four-inch heels and publicity stills from the studio listed her height as 6'6". By that time she was often referred to in press releases as a "Glamazon". She was outspoken in advising other tall women that "if nature has made you tall, then be good and tall." During the 1940s, when actresses between 5'8" and 5'10", such as Maureen O'Hara, Ingrid Bergman, Alexis Smith, Angela Lansbury, and Marie Windsor, were regarded as formidable, Ford -- at 6'2" and 145 pounds -- was regarded as one of the most striking women in Hollywood.
Ford appeared in a New York stage production of "The Big People" (which played off her height in a positive way). In 1948, she was back in Hollywood in an unusual independently-made anthology film, On Our Merry Way (1948). In 1949, she was cast in John Ford's 3 Godfathers (1948) playing the potential love interest of John Wayne. That same year she married James Sterling in Las Vegas. However, just over a month later she obtained an annulment in Ventura, California on the grounds that they were both drunk at the time. Her Superior Court suit said the two never lived together after the rites and that she didn't know she was a bride until two days after the ceremony. Sterling did not contest the suit.
As the 1950s began, Ford's career slowed down and her biggest role of the decade came in the Abbott & Costello fantasy-comedy, Jack and the Beanstalk (1952). Evidently, Costello liked Ford and appreciated her sense of humor, because he later included her in an episode of The Abbott and Costello Show (1952). She made various television appearances throughout the 1950s, including "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" and "The Red Skelton Show". In April 1952, aged 30, she married Thomas B. Chambers, an automobile sales manager and tennis star. In 1953, she became pregnant, but was hospitalized after losing the baby. She and Chambers divorced the following year.
After an appearance in The Bowery Boys vehicle Feudin' Fools (1952), Ford's screen career started to wind down, but her remaining roles were in some surprisingly high-visibility films. John Wayne cast her in a small role in The High and the Mighty (1954) as a glamour girl with her hooks into 'Phil Harris', and Billy Wilder used her in the opening segment of The Seven Year Itch (1955). Dorothy appeared in several lower-budget films over the next few years, then faded out of movies in 1962 but remained involved with the movie business even after giving up acting, joining MGM as a technician in the studio's film lab in 1965. She was married for 30 years to actor Mike Ragan (born Hollis Alan Bane); they retired to Marina Del Rey, California until his death in 1995. She died in Canoga Park, California on October 15, 2010 at the age of 88.- Actress
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The scintillating, sultry-eyed blonde (formerly a redhead) star of screen, TV and award-winning stage went on to become best known, however, for her sensual delivery pitching cigars in taunting '60s ads and commercials with her Mae Westian come-on line "Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?" This, of course, was at a time when smoking was considered quite sexy and fashionable, and Edie Adams went above and beyond the call of duty in making these ads legendary.
Edie had her hand dipped in all pools of entertainment. She was a singing siren, an award-winning Broadway musical entertainer, a deft impressionist and comedienne, a serious dramatic actress, a commercial saleswoman and a viable TV celebrity. Off-stage, she showed remarkable poise and resourcefulness when her famous first husband, landmark TV comic Ernie Kovacs, was tragically killed in a January 1962 car crash in Los Angeles and she found her family finances in dire straits.
She was born Edith Elizabeth Enke on April 16, 1927, in the relatively small town of Kingston, Pennsylvania, but moved while fairly young to Grove City. Her family relocated again, this time to Tenafly, New Jersey, where she grew up. Following her graduation from high school, Edie aspired to become an opera singer and studied voice and piano at New York's Juilliard School of Music. She then went on to take acting classes at the Columbia School of Drama.
Her theatrical debut occurred with a 1947 production of "Blithe Spirit", and a year later she appeared in the stage show "Goodnight Ladies". Gradually building up her singing reputation via the nightclub circuit, her big break came when Arthur Godfrey booked her on his "Talent Scouts" show. She didn't come out the winner, but a TV director who caught sight of her performance envisioned in her a seductive "straight man" who could mesh well with a certain zany comedian. In 1951, Edie (then known as Edith Adams) was signed up as a featured singer on Ernie Kovacs's comedy show that originated in Philadelphia. The show, live and unrehearsed, became an innovative, groundbreaking effort in the relatively new medium. Outrageous and even incomprehensible at times, his comedy was deemed way ahead of its time and, as a result, had problems reaching mainstream audiences who didn't "get it", and the programs were short-lived. Various Kovacs platforms that included Edie were Ernie in Kovacsland (1951), "Kovacs on the Korner" (1952), and, of course, The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952). She and Kovacs eloped to Mexico City in 1954 and their union produced a daughter, Mia Kovacs. The duo were a popular couple in the Hollywood social circuit (moving there from New York in the late '50s) and the connections she developed out there were quite valuable in furthering her career.
Early '50s TV opened many doors for Edie and she waltzed right through them. Her New York stage debut in the popular musical "Wonderful Town" in 1952 had her walking away with the Theatre World Award for "Best Newcomer". A few years later, she slithered away with a supporting Tony Award for her bodacious take on the "Daisy Mae" character in the musical "Li'l Abner" (1956). Following that were more musical and dramatic ventures on the stage, including "The Merry Widow" (1957) (a show she would return to more than once), "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1960) and "Free as a Bird" (1960). On film, Edie showed the public that she wasn't just a pretty face with her sharply unsympathetic supporting performance in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960) and a funny, sexier one in the second of Rock Hudson and Doris Day's three battle-of-the-sexes romps, Lover Come Back (1961). Surprisingly, Edie and Ernie never appeared together in a film. Edie remained primarily a TV fixture and, outside of her Emmy-nominated coupling with Kovacs, winningly played the Fairy Godmother in Julie Andrews' popular TV version of Cinderella (1957), appeared regularly with Jack Paar and Dinah Shore on their respective variety shows, acted on various prime-time shows, and graced a number of celebrity game and talk show panels.
One of Edie's last pairings with Kovacs was in 1960 when they appeared as guests on the very last episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957). The pair appeared as themselves, with one of the highlights being Edie crooning the lovely ballad "That's All". Kovacs' sudden 1962 death was a terrible reversal of fortunes for Edie. An inveterate gambler, he left her owing much money to the IRS. Instead of filing bankruptcy, however, she worked her way out of debt. In the process, her career received a second wind. Perhaps it didn't hurt that the public adored Edie and that she was a genuinely sympathetic figure in the wake of her private tragedy.
She returned to the nightclub circuit from whence she came, recorded albums, and also toured the country in various dramatic and musical comedy vehicles, including "Rain" (as Sadie Thompson), "Bells Are Ringing", "Annie Get Your Gun" (as Annie Oakley), "I Do! I Do!", "Anything Goes" and "Bus Stop". She also received outstanding notices in a few of her films, whether dramas (Love with the Proper Stranger (1963), The Best Man (1964)) or frivolous comedies (Call Me Bwana (1963), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963), The Honey Pot (1967)). Moreover, she was handed her own musical variety show Here's Edie (1963) (aka "The Edie Adams Show") and received a couple of Emmy nominations for her efforts. She also took advantage of her famous impressions of Zsa Zsa Gabor and others, appearing in various TV comedy formats.
More than anything, however, it was her come-hither temptress pitching Muriel cigars that had TV audiences' tongues wagging. It was a smashingly successful and highly profitable coup for Edie professionally. Her late husband, a notorious cigar smoker, at one time sold Dutch Master cigars on TV. The idea then for Edie to pitch a competing slimmer cigar on TV was only natural. She had much to do with the direction of the commercials, which ran throughout the 1960s, providing them with a perfect blend of class, glamour and sensuality.
While growing noticeably heavier in later years, she never lost her trademark humor and sex appeal. Edie could still be seen from time to time on the stage in such shows as "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", the female version of "The Odd Couple", "Hello, Dolly!" and "Nunsense". She remained committed to the end to restoring/preserving her late husband's videotapes and kinescopes of his ground-breaking '50s TV work. She also recalled her offbeat life with Kovacs in the book "Sing a Pretty Song", which was published in 1990.
Edie got married again in 1964, to photographer Marty Mills, with whom she had a son, Josh Mills. That union ended in divorce in 1971. The following year, Edie married jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli. She and Candoli, who died in January of 2008, divorced in 1989. In another eerie, tragic circumstance, daughter Mia Kovacs was killed in a 1982 Los Angeles auto accident at age 22 -- 20 years after her father's similar demise. Suffering from cancer and losing weight in her latter years, the beloved Edie died of complications from pneumonia at age 81 in Los Angeles.- Edythe Chapman was born in Rochester, New York on October 8, 1863. A stage actress who came upon movies late in life, she nonetheless made 97 motion pictures. She was 51 years old when she played in _Richelieu (1914)_. Edythe was one of the busier actresses in the early silent era appearing in as many as nine films a year. She didn't achieve the fame as some of her counterparts such as Mary Miles Minter, Clara Bow, or Colleen Moore, but she was a commodity that movie moguls wanted because of her fine character performances. In 1920, Edythe appeared as Aunt Polly in Huckleberry Finn (1920), followed by 'The County Fair' (1920). Throughout the twenties she stayed busy. She was even lucky enough to make the successful transition into the "talkie" era when other performers were finished because their voices didn't lend themselves well to sound. Edythe made her final film 'Up the River' (1930) when she was 67. She was 85 years old when she died in Glendale, California on October 15, 1948.
- Eugeniusz Kaminski was born on 8 November 1931 in Bydgoszcz, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland. He was an actor, known for Kuchnia polska (1993), Kuchnia polska (1991) and Krótkie zycie (1976). He died on 15 October 2018 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.
- Frank DeKova parlayed a sinister scowl, piercing eyes and an all-around menacing attitude into a long career of playing cold-blooded trigger-men, rampaging Indian chiefs, brutal Mexican army officers and the like. So it would probably come as a shock to those who know his work to discover that, before he became an actor, he was--of all things--a schoolteacher.
Born in New York in 1910, DeKova gave up teaching for the stage, and played in many Shakespearean productions before getting work on Broadway. One of his first starring roles was in the classic detective play "Detective Story", which got him noticed and brought to Hollywood. He debuted in Viva Zapata! (1952) as the devious Mexican colonel who sets up Zapata's assassination. For the next several years he played an assortment of gangsters, killers, gunfighters and Indians--with time out to play a prehistoric patriarch in Roger Corman's campy Teenage Cave Man (1958)--and did much television work, including a standout job as a Mafia hit-man assigned to kill Elliot Ness in The Untouchables: Part 1 (1959). The role for which he will be most remembered, however, is probably the one that was his most atypical: the scheming, somewhat untrustworthy but very funny Hekawi Chief Wild Eagle, the partner to Forrest Tucker's Sgt. O'Rourke in O'Rourke's various schemes to make money, in the western comedy series F Troop (1965). He showed a previously unknown talent for comedy and managed to steal most of the scenes he was in from such veterans as Tucker and Larry Storch. He died in his sleep in 1981. - Actor
- Writer
Gary Vinson was born on 22 October 1936 in El Segundo, California, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Roaring 20's (1960), Pistols 'n' Petticoats (1966) and Battlestar Galactica (1978). He was married to Lavonne Rose Wuertzer and Paula Jeanne Hill. He died on 15 October 1984 in Redondo Beach, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gloria Lynne was born on 23 November 1929 in Harlem, New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Se7en (1995), U Turn (1997) and Psychic Killer (1975). She was married to Harry Alleyne. She died on 15 October 2013 in Newark, New Jersey, USA.- Composer
- Music Department
Hosein Dehlavi was born on 30 September 1927 in Tehran, Iran. He was a composer, known for Marjan (1956), The Female Vampire (1967) and The Lovers' Wind (1978). He died on 15 October 2019 in Tehran, Iran.- Music Department
- Editor
- Producer
Igo Kantor was born in Vienna, Austria, and received a high school and music education in Lisbon, Portugal. He received a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations and a Master's Degree in Political Science from UCLA. He speaks Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Hebrew fluently. He is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors' Guild of America. He has been a US citizen since 1952.
He is the President of Major Arts Corp. and has produced several films from 1977 to 1996. He has worked all over the globe and is very knowledgeable about co-productions in foreign countries. He has written, producing and directed 65 half-hour shows for Liberty International called "Scope", starring Joe Penny and 'Alexandra Cousteau'. Among the films and TV shows he has produced are Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) (nominated as best horror film), The Dark (1979), Hardly Working (1980) (grossed over $40 million), United We Stand (2001) (two-hour pre-Olympic Special), "Blood, Sweat and Tears' Iron Curtain Odyssey", FTA (1972), _"Legends of the West with Jack Palance" (1992_ (TV Series, winner of the Western Heritage Award by the Cowboy Hall of Fame for best TV Western Documentary of 1992), "Holiday Classic Cartoons". Projects in the planning stages include "Alibi Store", "Twirpy", "A Stone's Throw", "Sean", "Kingdom of the Spiders II", "Shadows over Africa", "Tonight at Eleven", "Lyon's Den" and "The International Jazz Awards".
He was the founder of the post-production house Synchrofilm, Inc. For eight years he worked on post-production on about 200 features and many TV shows, specials and series. Some of the better known features that he supervised are Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Last Picture Show (1971), Papillon (1973), The Candidate (1972), Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), Woodstock (1970), Hang 'Em High (1968), Badlands (1973), Fritz the Cat (1972), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), Benji (1974), Johnny Got His Gun (1971), Macon County Line (1974), The War Wagon (1967) and the TV series The Monkees (1965), Tarzan (1966), "Superman", The Doris Day Show (1968), H.R. Pufnstuf (1969), Insight (1960), "The Search", among others. He also received Emmy nominations 3 years in a row for editing the Bob Hope Christmas Show.
In 1963 Kantor was Music Supervisor at Universal on Wagon Train (1957), General Electric Theater (1953) and "Chrysler Playhouse". Between 1954 and 1962, Kantor was head of the Music Editorial Department at Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems. He edited or supervised the music for Bye Bye Birdie (1963), Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963), The Interns (1962), Gidget Goes to Rome (1963), Diamond Head (1962) and such TV shows as Father Knows Best (1954), The Donna Reed Show (1958), Playhouse 90 (1956), Dennis the Menace (1959), The Ford Television Theatre (1952), Hazel (1961), The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (1954), Alcoa Theatre (1957), Naked City (1958), Circus Boy (1956) and Empire (1962).- Producer
- Actor
Jack Narz's career in television spanned nearly 30 years. After the service and a short but productive stint in local radio, Narz started in television late in 1950 as announcer on early-TV classics like Space Patrol (1950) and Life with Elizabeth (1952). Moving on to host the trouble-prone Dotto (1958) and Video Village (1960), Narz worked steadily in radio and TV until achieving his biggest success with the syndicated version of Concentration (1973) in 1973. After Concentration (1973) left the airwaves in the fall of 1978, Narz semi-retired, but he remained active for years on the celebrity golf circuit and on behalf of several charities.- Janet Shaw was born on 23 January 1919 in Beatrice, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress, known for Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Night Monster (1942) and The Old Maid (1939). She was married to David Ashford Stuart and Willard Garcia Ilefeldt. She died on 15 October 2001 in Beatrice, Nebraska, USA.
- Burly, stentorian-voiced John Hamilton, worked on Broadway and in touring theatrical companies for many years prior to his 1930 film debut. He was in the original Broadway company of "Seventh Heaven" and would appear in the film remake (Seventh Heaven (1937)) in 1937. For Warner Bros, he starred with Donald Meek in a series of short mysteries based on S.S. Van Dine stories. He was often typecast as prison wardens, judges and police chiefs, but played various types of characters in an almost limitless number of films from the 1930s to the 1950s. He became famous when he was cast as Daily Planet newspaper editor Perry White in the 1950s TV classic, Adventures of Superman (1952). He died of a heart attack in 1957 and is survived by a son. Hamilton is often confused with John F. Hamilton, an American actor whose career began in the 1920s, John Hamilton, a British actor who worked during the same period but exclusively in the UK, and with several other actors of the same name.
- His father was the actor Reginald Sheffield who began as a child star and later turned to character acting. Johnny appeared at age seven on Broadway in the original cast of "On Borrowed Time". When Maureen O'Sullivan wanted out of her Jane role in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan series, it was decided that she and Tarzan would adopt a son (they had to adopt, according to the Legion of Decency, because they weren't married) before she died. Weissmuller personally chose Sheffield for the part of Boy, a part inspired by Bobby Nelson's portrayal in Tarzan the Mighty (1928); athletic by nature, he was taught to swim by swimming Olympian Weissmuller. Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939) was such a success that MGM signed Sheffield to six more films as Tarzan's Boy. By the time of Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948), he was too big for the part; the film merely said he was away at school. When Monogram Studios learned he had been dropped, they picked him up for the series of movies based on the Roy Rockwood Bomba: The Jungle Boy (1949) movies. He made twelve of these between 1949 and 1955.
- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Lekh Tandon was born on 13 February 1929 in Lahore, Punjab, British India. He was a director and actor, known for Dulhan Wahi Jo Piya Man Bhaaye (1977), Chennai Express (2013) and Swades (2004). He died on 15 October 2017 in Mumbai, India.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Leo Marini was born on 23 August 1920 in Mendoza, Argentina. He was an actor, known for Sueña, mi amor (1946), Sussi (1988) and Our Lady of the Assassins (2000). He was married to Gloria Solanas and Esther Salandari. He died on 15 October 2000 in Mendoza, Argentina.- Leonardo Simons was born on 1 September 1947 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was an actor, known for Pimienta (1966), La muchacha del cuerpo de oro (1967) and Música en libertad (1970). He was married to Alicia Gorbato and Ruth Kysiel. He died on 15 October 1996 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Marcelo Zlotogwiazda was born on 6 October 1958 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was an actor, known for Numeral 15 (2005), Día D (1996) and Televisión registrada (1999). He died on 15 October 2019 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Marie Dubois was born on 12 January 1937 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Jules and Jim (1962), La Menace (1977) and Shoot the Piano Player (1960). She was married to Serge Rousseau. She died on 15 October 2014 in Lescar, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France.- Mario Buatta was born on 20 October 1935 in Staten Island, New York City, New York, USA. He died on 15 October 2018 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.
- Born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle on August 7 1876, the only daughter of a Dutch hat-maker, she seemed unlikely to later become the Mata Hari, the most infamous double agent in spy history. She answered an advertisement in the local paper placed by Rudolph MacLeod, a career military man in need of a wife. Enchanted by the tall, dark, and lovely Margaretha, MacLeod married her in 1895, and moved her to Dutch-controlled Java. His wife fell in love with Java, and wore native sarongs, learned the local language, and watched local dancers. MacLeod's philandering and bad temper strained their marriage, and even the birth of their second child could not repair the damage done. After their move to Sumatra, a terrible tragedy occurred that would finally end their marriage. While getting ready for bed on June 27 1899, Margaretha heard her children screaming. Racing to their nursery, she found her son and daughter had been poisoned, probably by an angry servant. While their daughter Jeanne Louise (called "Non", a Malay name) survived, her elder brother Norman was not so fortunate. Margaretha fell into a deep depression that was only worsened by MacLeod's blaming her for Norman's death. Finally, the tension exploded, and MacLeod beat Margaretha brutally before kidnapping their daughter and fleeing to Europe. She obtained a divorce and had her child returned to her, but MacLeod refused to pay any support. Unable to care for Non, Margaretha reluctantly left the girl in her father's care and left for Paris. There she became an exotic dancer, choosing the Malay term "matahari" (Eye of the Sun) as her stage name. Concocting a fanciful tale of being a half-Javanese temple dancer devoted to the god Shiva, Margaretha first appeared on stage as her alter-ego Mata Hari in 1905. Her erotic dancing (that included shedding veils, sarongs, and most everything else in the course of her performance) made her an instant sensation, and traveled all over Europe. She also made several unsuccessful attempts to regain custody of her daughter Non, even plotting with a servant to kidnap the girl from her school in Velp. While trying to visit her lover, a Russian officer named Vadim Maslov, Margaretha was approached by Georges Ladoux, a French army captain, who asked her to spy on the Germans. She agreed and planned to seduce a German General and get him to spill military secrets. However, she was arrested by British intelligence and interrogated by Scotland Yard, who were convinced she was actually a spy for the Germans. Finally she was released, and as 1916 drew to a close Margaretha made her way to Spain where she romanced a German Major called Kalle. He caught onto her and sent false messages claiming that she was in fact a German spy. The French arrested Margaretha on February 13 1917 and imprisoned her. She was convicted that summer of spying for an enemy nation and sentenced to death. On October 15 1917, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle faced the firing squad. She refused a blindfold and blew one last kiss to her killers. Mata Hari was killed by a bullet to the heart, and her body was donated to medical science.
- Maximira Figueiredo was born on 2 February 1939 in São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. She was an actress, known for Lá no Meu Sertão (1962), O Vendedor de Linguiça (1962) and Cavalo Amarelo (1980). She died on 15 October 2018 in Praia Grande, São Paulo, Brazil.
- Actress
- Writer
Mona Bruce was born on 3 December 1924 in Birmingham, England, UK. She was an actress and writer, known for Within These Walls (1974), ITV Television Playhouse (1955) and BBC Play of the Month (1965). She was married to Robert James. She died on 15 October 2008 in Suffolk, England, UK.- Nathan Davis was born on 22 May 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Holes (2003), Poltergeist III (1988) and Chain Reaction (1996). He was married to Metta Davis. He died on 15 October 2008 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Although he came to be called "Hollywood's Irishman in Residence"--and, along with good friends James Cagney, Allen Jenkins, Frank McHugh and a few others were called "The Irish Mafia"--and he often played Irish immigrants, Pat O'Brien was US-born and -bred. As a young boy the devoutly Roman Catholic O'Brien considered entering the seminary to study for the priesthood, but although he often played a Father, Monsignor or Bishop, he never actually followed through and entered the seminary. And although never a policeman, in movies he often wore the cop's badge and, although in real life he had no discernible Irish accent, he could pour on the "brogue" when the role called for it.
Pat O'Brien excelled in roles as beneficent men but could also give convincing performances as wise guys or con artists. He was a most popular film star during the 1930s and 1940s. Over almost five decades, he co-starred in nine films with Cagney, including his own screen swansong, Ragtime (1981).- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Actor
Paul Allen was born on 21 January 1953 in Seattle, Washington, USA. He was a producer and actor, known for Hard Candy (2005), Ocean Warriors (2016) and Naledi: A Baby Elephant's Tale (2016). He died on 15 October 2018 in Seattle, Washington, USA.- Actor
- Writer
Rick Van Nutter was born in Pomona, California and entered film work as a location manager/assistant director while living in the Hawaian Islands. Later he traveled to Africa as a production manager and stopped off in Rome on his way home and decided to stay for awhile. The following year while working as a location manager for a film company he was asked to take a part in the film and caught the acting bug and from then on spent the rest of his life in front of the cameras- Editor
- Actor
- Editorial Department
Robert J. Mauch was born on 6 July 1921 in Peoria, Illinois, USA. He was an editor and actor, known for The Prince and the Pauper (1937), Penrod's Double Trouble (1938) and Warner Brothers Presents (1955). He was married to Georgia "Gigi" Shattuck Culhane. He died on 15 October 2007 in Santa Rosa, California, USA.- Sandra Villani was born on 4 February 1965 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was an actress, known for Death in Buenos Aires (2014), Refugiado (2014) and Only People (No More Nor Less) (1999). She died on 15 October 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Actress
- Producer
Susana Fontana was born on 3 April 1937 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was an actress and producer, known for La Torre en jaque (1981), La gran ocasión (1982) and Teleshow (1996). She died on 15 October 2010 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.- Tamara Buciuceanu-Botez was a famous Romanian film and theater actress .She was born on August 10, 1929 in Tighina, Moldova. She graduated from Institute of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography in 1952.In 1962, she plays first role in the movie Omul de lînga tine.Other notable roles in films :The Graduates (1986), Primãvara bobocilor (1987) and Chirita în provincie (2002). Play on the stage of the theater ''National I.L. Caragiale'' in Bucharest.Received from the Royal House of Romania the decoration of the Order of the Romanian Crown in the rank of Officer in 2014.She was married with actor Alexandru Botez . She died on October 15, 2019 in Bucharest, Romania.