Sami Frey was born in 1937 in Paris. He made his film debut in 1956 with “Pardonnez nos offenses”. His other films include “Cesar et Rosalie” with Romy Schneider in 1972 and “Black Widow” in 1987. His most recent film “Mensch” was released in 2009.
TCM Overview:
A handsome dark-haired French actor, Sami Frey began his career as a teen actor on stage and in features. His screen profile increased in tandem with the rise of the French New Wave and he enjoyed early success in Agnes Varda’s “Cleo From 5 to 7/Cleo de 5 a 7” (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard’s “Bande a Part/Band of Outsiders” (1964). A prolific actor with more than 50 films to his credit, Frey often was cast as the eccentric. During his long career, he worked for some of the leading filmmakers including Jean-Paul Rappeneau (“Les Marie de l’an II” 1971), Marguerite Duras (“Jaune le soleil” 1972) and Colinne Serreau (“Pourquoi Pas!” 1978). In 1984, Frey made his American film debut as the target for Diane Keaton’s “The Little Drummer Girl”. Bob Rafelson tapped him to play a suave entrepreneur whom both Debra Winger and Theresa Russell find attractive in the noirish “Black Widow” (1987). The actor also was impressive in a pivotal role as a French Zionist in the epic ABC miniseries “War and Remembrance” (1988). Frey has continued to appear onstage in France and more recently earned critical praise for his portrayal of poet Antonin Artaud in “My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud” (1993; released in the USA in 1995) and as a knight banished from court who finds romance with a peasant in “L’Amour Conjugal/Conjugal Love” (1995).
The TCM overview can be accessed also online here.
‘New blood, new looks, new vitality, new fluidum, new eroticism, new normality for that malady-ridden strain of to-day’s neurotic actors’ – Marlene Dietrich’s ‘ABC’ under B for Belmondo. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years”. (1972)
Jean-Paul Belmondo was born near Paris in 1933. In his youth he was a boxer and a footballer. In 1960 he had a huge success in French cinema with his performance in “Breathless” with Jean Seberg. He went on to make “Leon Morin, Priest” and “That Man From Rio”. In 1970 he starred with Alain Delon in “Borsalino”. He has acted also on the stage.
TCM Overview:
For generations of French filmgoers and lovers of international cinema, few actors defined the Gallic male on screen more succinctly than Jean-Paul Belmondo. Though rugged and unconventionally handsome, Belmondo’s innate charm and physicality captured the world’s attention with his turn as a doomed small-time crook in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” (1960), one of the vanguards of the French New Wave. The film’s global popularity minted him as an icon of cinematic cool, an image he would underscore for the next four decades in arthouse-minded projects like Godard’s “Pierrot le Fou” (1965) and Francois Truffaut’s “Mississippi Mermaid” (1969). At the same time, he proved himself as a capable and highly athletic action star, often providing his own daring stunts in “That Man from Rio” (1964), “Borsalino” (1970) and “The Professional” (1981). He returned to stage work and more sedate fare in the late 1980s and ’90s, earning a Cesar for “Itinéraire d’un enfant gâté” (1988) and high praise for a modern-day take on “Les Misérables” (1995) before suffering a paralyzing stroke. Though physically limited, he returned to features in 2008 for the melancholy “A Man and His Dog” (2008). Though no longer the robust, roguish figure of his youth, Belmondo’s inherent strength and spirit remained intact, providing an inspiring reminder of why he remained a French national treasure for nearly half a century.
Born April 9, 1933 in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Jean-Paul Belmondo was the son of sculptor Paul Belmondo. A poor student, he channeled his energies into boxing and football, but by his twenties, decided that acting would be his true calling. He was reluctantly accepted at the Paris Conservatory, whose educators felt that his prospects as a professional actor were slim. Belmondo would spend much of the 1950s in theater before making his screen debut in the 1957 comedy “A pied, a cheval et en voiture” (“On Foot, On Horse and By Carriage”). He eventually worked his way up to starring roles with “Sois Belle et Tais-Toi” (“Be Beautiful But Shut Up”) (1957), a crime picture co-starring another up-and-coming leading man, Alain Delon. Belmondo’s breakthrough coincided with the rise of the French New Wave cinema. His young, reckless but romantic thief in Jean-Luc Godard’s “A bout de soufflé” (“Breathless”) (1960) epitomized the movement’s rejection of old standards of storytelling and characterization. The film’s popularity among young moviegoers on both sides of the Atlantic helped to make Belmondo an international star with the same cultural impact as James Dean or Marlon Brando, with young men adopting his casual slouch and rough-hewn charm.
Belmondo soon became the actor of choice for other New Wave directors, playing daring, forward-thinking young men who challenged the establishment in Vittorio De Sica’s “Two Women” (1960) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Léon Morin, Priest” (1961), which earned him a BAFTA nomination as a young priest who inspired both faith and emotion in Emmanuelle Riva’s disillusioned war widow. He would also reunite twice with Godard, first for the musical comedy tribute “A Woman is a Woman” (1961) and later, as the lead in his postmodern, genre-bending “Pierrot le Fou” (1965). At the same time, Belmondo was finding great success as the athletic hero of mainstream features like the period swashbuckler “Cartouche” (1962) with Claudia Cardinale and Philippe De Broca’s action-thriller “That Man from Rio” (1964). These films, along with the comedy-romance “La chasse à l’homme” (“Male Hunt”) (1964) with sisters Catherine Deneueve and Francoise Dorleac, soon replaced arthouse fare as Belmondo’s projects of choice. Belmondo also served as president of the French actors’ union in 1963, the same year he published his autobiography, 30 Years and 25 Films.
Belmondo soon settled into a string of energetic action features like “Les tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine” (“Up to His Ears”) (1965), many of which were produced through his own company, Cerito. There were occasional forays into English-language filmmaking, like “Is Paris Burning?” (1966), in which he and other young lions of French cinema like Delon and Jean-Pierre Cassel played leaders of the French Resistance, and a cameo in the overblown “Casino Royale” (1967). But Belmondo remained resolutely faithful to French cinema, and continued to divide his time between popular entertainment like the caper film “The Brain” (1968) and “Borsalino” (1971) with Delon, and collaborations with New Wave mainstays like Louis Malle with “The Thief of Paris” (1967), Francois Truffaut with “Mississippi Mermaid” (1969) and Claude Chabrol with “Docteur Popaul” (“High Heels”) (1972).
Alain Resnais’ “Stavisky” (1974) earned Belmondo some of the best reviews of his career as the real-life embezzler whose elaborate surety scheme unseated Prime Minister Camille Chautemps in the 1930s. But its failure at the box office seemed to sour the actor on arthouse projects, so he devoted himself to action and crime thrillers for much of the next two decades. He began a profitable collaboration with director Georges Lautner as the anti-hero of such action-packed films as “Flic ou Voyou” (“Cop or Hood”) (1979) and “The Professional” (1981), which frequently featured Belmondo performing his own stunts. In the late ’80s, with his status as an action star on the wane due to age, Belmondo returned to the stage, and soon divided his time between popular tours in Cyrano de Bergerac, among other productions, and more arthouse-minded film projects. In 1988, he won the Cesar as a wealthy man who staged his own death in Claude Lelouch’s “Itinéraire d’un enfant gâté” (1988).
Belmondo continued to work well into the 1990s, most notably in Lelouch’s “Les Misérables” (1995) as the film’s modern-day Jean Valjean figure. He spent much the decade reaping national rewards for his body of work, including appointment as Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1991 and Commander of the National Order of Merit in 1994. In 2001, he suffered a debilitating stroke that left him partially paralyzed. Belmondo spent the next seven years recuperating, but returned in 2008 for “A Man and His Dog” (2008), a semi-remake of De Sica’s “Umberto D.” (1952) with Belmondo as an aging, debilitated pensioner who was cast out by his landlady lover after she decided to marry another man. The film generated controversy in the European press, with critics alternately praising Belmondo’s courageous performance or condemning the film for showing a national icon in such an unkind light.
By Paul Gaita
This TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Jean-Paul Belmondo died aged 88 in September 2021.
What struck one immediately were the thick, sprawling lips – on to which was stuck a Gauloise – the broken nose, and the sunglasses, suit, tie and hat worn as a homage to the great US gangster prototypes, especially Humphrey Bogart. At one stage, Poiccard looks at a film poster, runs his fingers over his lips and sighs: “Bogie.”
Despite the tough exterior, Belmondo gave the impression of fragility, with his pale, delicate skin and soft voice. The New York Times reviewer found him “hypnotically ugly” and “the most effective cigarette-mouther and thumb-to-lips rubber since time began”.
An Italian poster for Breathless (À Bout de Souffle, 1960).Photograph: Snap/Rex/Shutterstock
Because of Belmondo’s relaxed, naturalistic acting technique, it was assumed that the dialogue had been improvised, but it was written by the film’s director, Jean-Luc Godard, who nevertheless would not allow the actor to learn his lines but cued him during takes. In the final sequence, the camera chases Belmondo as he continues to run after being shot. As he dies, he looks up at his girlfriend, smiles knowingly and says: “C’est dégueulasse!” (“It’s shitty!”).
Because Belmondo projected an anti-conformist image, he was immediately dubbed “le James Dean français”, and after Paul Newman saw him in Paris in the early 1960s he commented: “Why, he’s one of us.” When Jean Gabin, from the golden age of prewar French cinema, co-starred with Belmondo, the darling of the New Wave, in Un Singe en Hiver (A Monkey in Winter) in 1962, he told him: “Kid, you’re me at 20.”Advertisementhttps://41fff71a0ef42e5734925b483b8ce969.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
There was even a wave of “Belmondism”, manifesting itself in a particular style of offhand, narcissistic behaviour. Of hisjoli-laidlooks, Belmondo commented, “Hell, everybody knows that an ugly guy with a good line gets the chicks.” At the age of 19, he had married a dancer, Élodie Constantin. In 1966 while starring in Philippe De Broca’sUp to His Ears, he and Ursula Andress fell for each other, and Élodie, the mother of their three children, filed for divorce.
In a way, it is absurd that, following Breathless, Belmondo soon chose to withdraw more and more from the New Wave directors and go into commercial films with few artistic demands – vehicle thrillers, adventure movies and acrobatic comedies, in which he became repetitious and self-parodic. The actor Claude Brasseur remarked: “Despite everything, I think it’s a pity for him making popular films because he could enjoy his métier so much more. I remember at the Conservatoire he did astonishing things. Alas, now he has become a sort of stunt man de luxe.”
Catherine Rouvel, Mario David and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Borsalino, an American-type gangster movie, 1970.Photograph: Paramount/Allstar
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What was most dispiriting about his career was that French audiences seemed to prefer it that way. When reproached, Belmondo replied: “My public expects a certain type of picture, and I’m not going to let them down.” Secure in his pre-eminence, producing many of his films himself, “Bebel”, as he was affectionately known in France, all but guaranteed a hit a year, few of which crossed the Channel or the Atlantic. Belmondo, who did not speak English, never made it to Hollywood, preferring to make American-type gangster movies such as Borsalino (1970), opposite Alain Delon, who shared top place in the box-office polls.
“Nothing impresses him. No danger, no risk, nothing serious, nothing important, nothing explained,” said the journeyman director Henri Verneuil, with whom Belmondo made eight pictures. “He never reads a scenario ahead of time. Never thinks out his role. Never says, ‘How was I in the last scene?’ Never makes suggestions.”
He was born in Paris, the grandson of an Italian workman from Piedmont who had emigrated to French Algeria. His father, Paul Belmondo, was a leading academic sculptor and a professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, and his mother, Sarah (nee Rainaud-Richard), was a painter. The rebellious Jean-Paul, whose schooldays were turbulent, studied drama at the Paris Conservatory following a brief career as an amateur boxer, and for several years performed in the classics on stage in the provinces before entering the Comédie-Française.
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos (The Finger Man), 1962. Photograph: The Criterion Collection/Allstar
As Breathless was Godard’s first feature, it was assumed, by some critics, that it was also Belmondo’s. In fact, Belmondo appeared in supporting roles in nine films before his “overnight” rise to fame. One of his first roles was for Marcel Carné in Les Tricheurs (The Cheaters, 1958), and the following year his portrayal of Bernadette Lafont’s uncouth Hungarian fiance in Claude Chabrol’sÀ Double Tour (Web of Passion) prefigured the Breathless character.Advertisement
So strong was the impact of his persona in Breathless that his restrained performances as affectionate and humane characters in Vittorio De Sica’sTwo Women (1960), Peter Brook’s Moderato Cantabile (1960) and Jean-Pierre Melville’sLéon Morin, Priest (1961) came as a surprise, revealing an actor of a wider range than his subsequent filmography acknowledges. “He is the most accomplished actor of his generation,” claimed Melville. “He can play any given scene in 20 different ways, and all of them will be right.”
Belmondo made two further films for Melville, both in 1963: Le Doulos (The Finger Man) and L’Aîné des Ferchaux (Magnet of Doom). In the former, he suppressed his magnetic charm in the part of a sly, safecracking stool pigeon. But it was Godard who gave him his last great role, in Pierrot le Fou (1965). Belmondo as Ferdinand, dissatisfied with Parisian life, and with his wife, sets off on a picaresque journey to the south with Marianne (Anna Karina), getting involved with her criminal activities on the way.
There was a similarity between Ferdinand and Michel Poiccard – both are on the run, both are unable to assimilate into society, and each is betrayed by the woman he loves. However, Ferdinand is a more romantic and intellectual figure, acting out an existential tragedy of the transience of love. At the end, having fatally shot Karina and her boyfriend, Belmondo paints his face blue, places sticks of dynamite around his head and lights the fuse. He has second thoughts, but it is too late. “Damn, it’s too absurd!” he says before being blown up.
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Ursula Andress started an affair while they were filming Up to His Ears, 1965.Photograph: United Artists/Allstar
With challenging opportunities becoming rarer and rarer after Breathless, his acceptance of roles in François Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid (1969) and Alain Resnais’s Stavisky (1974) reminded audiences of his qualities. In the latter, Resnais cleverly subverted Belmondo’s charm and virility, the source of his success as a popular star, to play the notorious real-life conman.Advertisement
In 1987 he returned to the stage to play the title role in Kean, the Dumas drama reinvented by Jean-Paul Sartre, and was an excellent Cyrano de Bergerac three years later, also appearing in Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear for his own theatre company at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris. One of his last films to have received an international distribution was Les Misérables(1995), Claude Lelouch’s effective updating of the Victor Hugo classic to the Nazi occupation, with Belmondo in his most challenging screen role since the 60s as an uneducated ex-boxer who befriends an intellectual Jewish family.
In 2001, Belmondo suffered a stroke, which kept him off the stage and screen until his brief return in A Man and His Dog (2008), based on De Sica’s 1952 film Umberto D. Although he had difficulty walking and speaking, he played a character with the same disabilities. However, no matter what Belmondo did, most serious film commentators would continue to see him as the young rebel who rode in on the New Wave.
His second marriage, to the dancer Nathalie Tardivel, ended in divorce in 2008. Their daughter, Stella, survives him, along with a daughter, Florence, and son, Paul, from his first marriage. Another daughter from his first marriage, Patricia, died in a fire in 1994.
Lily Damita was born in 1904 in Blaye, France. She appeared in some German silent films in the 1920’s, some of them directed by her then husband Michael Curtiz. In 1928 she went to Hollywood and starred in “The Rescue”, “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” and “This Is the Night”. In 1935 she married her second husband the actor Errol Flynn. They had a son together Sean Flynn. Sean Flynn was originally an actor and them became a photographer and journalist who disappeared on assignment in Viet Nam during the conflict in 1970. Damita funded searches for Sean Flynn to no avail. She died in 1994 in Florida at the age oif 89.
Her “Independent” obituary by David Shipman:
Liliane Marie Madeleine Carre (Lili Damita), actress: born Blaye, France 10 July 1904; married secondly 1935 Errol Flynn (died 1959; one son deceased; marriage dissolved 1942), 1962 Allen Loomis (marriage dissolved); died Palm Beach, Florida 21 March 1994.
LILI DAMITA was a pretty, talented star actress of early talkies, though now chiefly remembered as the wife of Errol Flynn, who called her – if not to her face – ‘Tiger Lil’.
They met on a transatlantic liner in 1935. He was a bisexual adventurer hoping for a career in show- business after making a semiprofessional film in his native Australia. In Britain he had played roles with the Northampton rep, and a fleeting appearance in the West End brought the offer of the lead in a Warner Bros ‘quota quickie’, on the strength of which he was summoned to Hollywood.
Damita was born in France, started dancing professionally at 16 and made her film debut in 1922. She was trouping in Berlin with a company managed by her mother when more movies were offered, if not with significant roles – though she appeared in two made by Germany’s leading director, GW Pabst.
In 1926 she starred in The Queen was in the Parlour, by Noel Coward, filmed by Michael Balcon’s Gaumont-British in a coproduction with the renowned German studio Ufa. But her international career remained on hold till she met Sam Goldwyn in Berlin in 1928.
The advent of Pola Negri and more especially Greta Garbo had caused Hollywood to look more closely at Europe’s female stars. Audiences accepted several movie queens as vamps but, even in the era of the flapper, it was safer to have such stories set in decadent old Europe. Goldwyn had already decided to split up the team of Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, so he cast Damita as the young wife of an elderly politician who dallies with Colman in The Rescue (1929), a so-so version of Conrad; but with the coming of talkies he feared that her accent would be as much an obstacle as Banky’s. Damita worked on it while on loan to MGM for The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), based on Thornton Wilder’s novel, and was signed by Fox for her first talkie, The Cockeyed World (also 1929), as the fiery senorita fought over by Sergeant Quirt (Edmund Lowe) and Captain Flagg (Victor McLaglen).
This was a sequel to What Price Glory? (1926), when their bone of contention had been Dolores Del Rio, and it enjoyed the same phenomenal popularity. Unfortunately, Hollywood was awash with exotic beauties, partly because of Del Rio’s success, and Damita didn’t work again until Paramount cast her as a French orphan who poses as Gary Cooper’s wife in Fighting Caravans (1931) – by which time the arrival of Marlene Dietrich had renewed interest in femmes fatales. RKO made Damita the young wife attracted to a stepson of her own age in The Woman Between (1931), and in Friends and Lovers (also 1931) she was the wife of a sadistic Eric von Stroheim.
Goldwyn dropped her, partly because her frankness with the press about her millionaire lovers was of dubious value at the box-office. She later said that her contract forbade marriage, but she managed a clandestine one about this time, after announcing that she would not, after all, wed Prince Louis Ferdinand, the son of the Crown Prince of Germany.
That last relationship was used by the writers of an Edward G. Robinson vehicle, I Loved a Woman (1931). The Robinson character was a recognisable amalgam of two Chicago tycoons, and in the same vein Warners came up with The Match King (1932), with Warren William as a thinly disguised Ivar Kreuger. Damita played the temperamental German star with whom he is so besotted that he sees his fraudulent fortune disappear, only to lose her to an obscure violinist in the last reel – almost the only element of the role which was not drawn from her own life.
As movie offers ceased Damita returned to the stage, but was sacked after a few days in a musical, Here’s How (1934), supposedly because she could no longer deliver across the footlights but almost certainly because she was too demanding. She walked out of a British film on realising that her role was subsidiary to that of Gertrude Nissen, but stayed to play Jack Buchanan’s girlfriend in a remake of the old farce Brewster’s Millions (1935). It was when returning from that job that she met Flynn.
They became lovers after meeting again on the Warner tennis court and married on a whim, thus presenting the studio with a problem when he became a star overnight in Captain Blood (1935). Warners rose to the occasion and proclaimed her a tempestuous enchantress tamed by their new romantic hero – in contrast to the virginal Olivia de Havilland, his frequent leading lady. Damita was jealous of her and of Flynn’s success and his barely concealed infidelities; after she failed to re-ignite her career in France the couple settled for a life of quarrels, separations and acrimonious attempts at reconciliation.
She became pregnant and after the birth of a son began proceedings for divorce. This was made easier when Flynn was accused of statutory rape by two adolescent members of his fan club; and although he was acquitted the divorce judge awarded her half of Flynn’s property and dollars 1,500 a month. She did not remarry till after his death. Their son, Sean, was briefly an actor in the Sixties, before disappearing, permanently, while photographing the war in Vietnam.
This “Independent” overview can also be accessed online here.
The Rescue, poster, Lili Damita, Ronald Colman, 1929. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)This Is The Night, poster, US poster, from left: Lili Damita, Charles Ruggles, 1932. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)The Bridge Of San Luis Rey, poster, (aka LE PONT DU ROI ST. LOUIS), Lili Damita on Belgian poster art, 1929. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Simone Silva was born in Cairo, Egypt to French parents in 1928. She came to Britain in the late 1940’s and virually all of her acting career was in British films. Her first film was in 1951 in “Lady Godiva Rides Again”. Her other films include “South of Algiers”, “The Weak and the Wicked” and “Third Party Risk”. She died in 1957 at the age of 29 in London.
IMDB entry:
Simone Silva was born to French-Italian parents in Cairo as Simone de Bouillard. She was known mainly in England, where the great majority of her films were produced, as an actress of B-movies, who usually played supporting roles and bit parts.This mostly forgotten actress in some ways was more bright in life than in her very short career. Her tragic death was not entirely the result of natural causes. She was found dead in London’s fashionable Mayfair district after having apparently suffered a stroke likely brought on by a severe diet, as she struggled desperately to return to the screen in perfect shape.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Yuri Suassuna de Medeiros: yuri.medeiros@gmail.com
Hildegard Knef was born in 1925 in Ulm in Germany. She began studying actiong in 1940 and made some films before the fall of the Third Reich. Her first international film was in 1951 in “Decision Before Dawn” with Oscar Werner. She won a contract with 20th Century Fox and in Hollywood she made “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Susan Hayward” and “Diplomatic Courier” with Tyrone Power. She starred on Broaway in “Silk Stockings” in 1955 and also had a successful career as a singer. Knef was also an acclaimed writer. She died in 2002 at the age of 76.
IMDB entry:
Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef was born on December 28, 1925 in Ulm, Germany. In 1940, she began studying acting. Even before the fall of the Third Reich, she appeared in several films, but most of them were only released after the war. To avoid being raped by Soviet soldiers, she dressed like a young man and was sent to a camp for prisoners of war. She escaped and returned to war-shattered Berlin where she played her first parts on stage. The first German movie after World War II, Murderers Among Us (1946), made her a star. David O. Selznick invited her to Hollywood and offered her a contract – with two conditions: Hildegard Knef should change her name into Gilda Christian and should pretend to be Austrian instead of German. She refused both and returned to Germany. In 1951, she provoked one of the greatest scandals in German film history when she appeared naked on the screen in the movie Sunderin (1951). The Roman Catholic Church protested vehemently against that film, but Hildegard just commented: “I can’t understand all that tumult – five years after Auschwitz!”
With the support of her first husband, the American Kurt Hirsch, she tried a second time to launch a Hollywood career, changed her family name from Knef to Neff (because Americans could not pronounce Knef), but the only worthwhile part she got was a supporting role in the Hemingway adaptation of The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). She became a leading lady in German, French and British films. Finally, America offered her another chance, this time on the stage. She achieved a kind of stardom as Ninotchka in the very popular Broadway play, “Silk Stockings”. In 1963, she began a new career as a singer and surprised the audience with her typical, deep, smoky voice and the fact that many lyrics of her songs were written by herself. In 1970, she wrote the autobiographical bestseller “Der Geschenkte Gaul”. She got sympathy from all over the world for her fight against cancer, which she defeated several times.
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Elke Sommer was born in 1940 in Berlin. She came to film prominence in the early 1960’s and starred opposite the leading men of the time including Paul Newman in “The Prize” in 1963 , Peter Sellers in “A Shot in the Dark” in 1964, “The Art of Love” with Dick Van Dyke and James Garner and “The Oscar” opposite Stephen Boyd. In the 1970’s she starred in some classic Italian horror films and in the UK starred in a “Carry On”, “Carry On Behind”. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
This gorgeous Teutonic temptress was one of Hollywood’s most captivating imports of the 1960s. Blonde and beautiful, Berlin-born Elke Sommer, with her trademark pouty lips, high cheekbones and sky-high bouffant hairdos, proved irresistible to American audiences, whether adorned in lace or leather, or donning lingerie or lederhosen. She was born in Berlin-Spandau on November 5, 1940 with the unlikely name of Else Schletz-Ho to a Lutheran minister and his wife. The family was forced to evacuate to Erlangen, during World War II in 1942, a small university town in the southern region of Germany. It was here that her parents first introduced her to water colors and her lifelong passion for painting was ignited. Her father’s death in 1955, when she was only 14, interrupted her education and she relocated to Great Britain, where she learned English and made ends meet as an au pair. She eventually attended college back in Germany and entertained plans to become a diplomatic translator but, instead, decided to try modeling.
After winning a beauty title (“Miss Viareggio Turistica”) while on vacation in Italy, she caught the attention of renowned film actor/director Vittorio De Sica and began performing on screen. Her debut film was in the Italian feature, Men and Noblemen(1959), which starred DeSica and was directed by Giorgio Bianchi. Following a few more Italian pictures, which included her first starring role in Love, the Italian Way (1960), also directed by Bianchi, Elke began making a name for herself in German films, as well, and gradually upgraded her status to European sex symbol. A pin-up favorite, she appeared fetchingly in both dramas and comedies, with such continental features asDaniella by Night (1961), Sweet Ecstasy (1962) and her first English-speaking picture,Why Bother to Knock (1961), to her credit.
Hollywood naturally became intrigued and she moved there in the early 1960s to try and tap into the foreign-born market. Her sexy innocence made a vivid impression in the all-star, war-themed drama, The Victors (1963), the Hitchcock-like thriller, The Prize (1963), for which she won a “Best Newcomer” Golden Globe Award, and, especially, A Shot in the Dark (1964), the classic bumbling comedy where she proved a shady and sexy foil toPeter Sellers‘ Inspector Clousseau. She grew in celebrity, which was certainly helped after showing off her physical assets, posing for spreads in Playboy Magazine. In the meantime, she was appearing opposite the hunkiest of Hollywood actors including Paul Newman, James Garner, Glenn Ford and Stephen Boyd.
The multilingual actress, whose career took her to scores of different countries over time and benefited from speaking seven languages fluently, resorted to a number of low-budget features in Europe, including two Italian horror movies directed by Mario Bavathat have now gone on to become cult classics: Baron Blood (1972) and The Exorcist(1973) rip-off, Lisa and the Devil (1972). The latter movie actually was a guilty pleasure. “Lisa” was re-released in 1975 as “The House of Exorcism” and added more footage of a demonic Elke, Linda Blair style, spewing frogs, insects, green pea soup and a slew of cuss words! In England, she good-naturedly appeared in the “comedy” films, Percy(1971), and its equally cheeky sequel, It’s Not the Size That Counts (1974), which starred Hywel Bennett (later Leigh Lawson) as the first man to have a penis transplant(!). She also showed up in one of the later “Carry On” farces, entitled Carry on Behind (1975).
Elke fared better on television, where she appeared in the television pilot, Probe (1972), opposite Hugh O’Brian, as well as the well-made 1980s miniseries, Inside the Third Reich(1982), Jenny’s War (1985), Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986) and Peter the Great(1986). A delightful personality on the talk show circuit, the lovely Elke also made appearances as a cabaret singer and, in time, put out several albums. She found a creative outlet on stage too with such vehicles as “Irma la Douce”, “Born Yesterday”, “Cactus Flower”, “Woman of the Year” and “Same Time, Next Year”.
The veteran actress has since focused more time on book writing and painting than she has on acting. Holding her first one-woman art show at the McKenzie Galleries in Beverly Hills in 1965, her artwork bears an exceptionally strong influence to Marc Chagall and she, at one point, hosted a mid-1980s PBS series (“Painting with Elke”), that centered on her artwork, which has now exhibited and sold for more than 40 years. Nevertheless, on occasion, she tackles an acting role, often in her native Germany. Divorced from writer and journalist Joe Hyams, whom she met when he interviewed her for a Hollywood article (he recently died in November 2008), she has been married since 1993 to hotelier Wolf Walther.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Walter Slezak was born in Vienna in 1902. His father was a famous opera singer Leo Slezak. He acted as a leading man in German silent films. He made his Broadway debut in 1941. The following year he made his first Hollywood film “Once Upon A Honeymoon” with Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant. Amonh his other films are “Sinbard the Sailor”, “The Princess and the Pirate” and “Come September”. He died in 1983.
TCM Overview:
Romantic lead and then (due to his increasing weight) character player, discovered by Michael Curtiz in Hungary in 1922. Slezak began appearing in German films that year and moved to the US, initially as a stage actor, in 1930. His screen roles were often as heavies, notably in “This Land is Mine” (1943) and “Lifeboat” (1944). Like his father, Leo Slezak (1873-1946), he was also a gifted opera singer. Daughter Erika Slezak has appeared on daytime soaps.
Anna Maria Sandri was born in 1936 in Rome. Her first film was as a child in “La Morte Civile” in 1942. She only made a few films, the best known being “The Black Tent” in 1956 with Donald Sinden and Anthony Steel. It seems to have also been her final film to date.
Marla Landi was born in Torino in Italy in 1933. Most of her acting career was in British films. Her film debut was in 1954 in “The Golden Link”. Her other films include “Across the Briidge”, “Dublin Nightmare”, “The Pirates of Blood River” and “The Murder Game”. Her most famous role was in 1959 in “The Hound of the Baskervilles” with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. She retired from acting in 1969. In 1977 she married Sir Francis Dashwood, 11th Baronet. Together they lived at West Wycombe House in Buckinghamshire.
First Man Into Space, poster, right from left: Marla Landi, Marshall Thompson, 1959. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
