Paul van Yperen's Blog, page 375
July 28, 2015
Imported from the USA: Burt Lancaster
Fame came to Burt Lancaster (1913-1994) with his first film role, as the doomed Swede in Universal's The Killers (1946), but the former circus acrobat knew better than to leave his career in other hands. After less than two years in Hollywood, Lancaster formed his own production company and took the lead in such popular successes as the Technicolor swashbucklers The Flame and the Arrow (1950) and The Crimson Pirate (1952), and the Western Vera Cruz (1954). The athletic and handsome Lancaster remained a box office draw for 20 years, winning a 1961 Academy Award for playing the corrupt evangelist Elmer Gantry (1960). His best work through the next decades was often in European features like Luchino Visconti's Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) and Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (1974), Novecento/1900 (1976) and Atlantic City (1980), which netted him an Oscar nomination.
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-156. Photo: Sam Lévin.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 338. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948).
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, presented by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 246. Photo: Hal Wallis / Paramount, 1949.
Acrobat, Nude Model and Singing Waiter
Burton Stephen Lancaster was born in East Harlem in New York City in 1914. He was one of the five children of Elizabeth (Roberts) and James Henry Lancaster, a postal clerk at Manhattan's General Post Office. All of his grandparents were immigrants from Northern Ireland.
Burt was a tough street kid who took an early interest in gymnastics. Lancaster was accepted into New York University with an athletic scholarship but subsequently dropped out.
At the age of 19, Lancaster met Nick Cravat, with whom he continued to work throughout his life. Together they learned to act in local theatre productions and circus arts at Union Settlement, one of the city's oldest settlement houses. They formed the acrobat duo 'Lang and Cravat' and joined the Kay Brothers circus. In 1939, an injury forced Lancaster to give up the profession, with great regret.
He supported himself working as a nude artists model by day and a singing waiter by night. In 1942, he joined the US army during WW II and performed with the Twenty-First Special Services Division, organized to follow the troops on the ground and provide USO entertainment to keep up morale. He served with General Mark Clark's Fifth Army in Italy from 1943–1945.
After the war, he made his Broadway debut as Burton Lancaster in Harry Brown's wartime drama A Sound of Hunting, the source for the film Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952). Though the production closed after 12 performances, Lancaster caught the eye of Hollywood agent Harold Hecht. Hecht provided Lancaster with an introduction to producer Hal Wallis.
Lancaster's debut was the Film Noir The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946) opposite Ava Gardner. Siodmak and cinematographer Elwood Bredell employed stark chiaroscuro lighting to offset Lancaster's angular face and chiselled physique. It made him an instant Hollywood star at the age of 32.
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. W 304. Photo: International Pictures Corporation.
British postcard in The People series by Show Parade Picture Service, London, no. P. 1038. Photo: Universal International.
French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 399. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950).
His own production company
After his sensational debut, the tall, muscular Lancaster appeared in two more films the following year. He traded on his tough guy image in Jules Dassin's Brute Force (1947) and I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948). He reunited with Robert Siodmak for another excellent Film Noir, Criss Cross (1949). He varied the image slightly, playing Barbara Stanwyck's cheating husband in Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948) and Edward G. Robinson's conscience-bound son in All My Sons (Irving Reis, 1948), a personal project for which he took a $50,000 salary cut. Lancaster was a self-taught actor who learned the business as he went along.
Burt Lancaster impressed film audiences with his acrobatic prowess the Technicolor Swashbucklers The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950) and The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952). The films became his first major box-office successes. His friend from his circus years, Nick Cravat, played a key supporting role in both films. Lancaster played one of his best remembered roles with Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). Iconic is the scene in which he and Kerr make love on a Hawaiian beach amid the crashing waves. He was nominated for an Academy Award for this role. Lancaster won the 1960 Academy Award for Best Actor, a Golden Globe Award, and the New York Film Critics Award for his performance for playing the corrupt evangelist in Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks, 1960).
In 1948, Burt Lancaster had set up his own production company with Harold Hecht and James Hill, to direct his career. Their production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, produced such films as the Oscar winner Marty (Paddy Chayefsky, 1955), Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956), Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957), and Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958). Lancaster realized a long-held dream and directed his own film, The Kentuckian (1955). Reviews were negative, however, and he did not return to the director's chair for another two decades. In 1965, United Artists made a settlement with Lancaster to end its association with Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, which had financially floundered in the late 1950s due to a few flops and exorbitant spending, and wound up operations in 1959.
His films often reflected his liberal political beliefs. In 1947 he signed a letter deploring the anti-communist witch hunts in Hollywood, and he was nearly blacklisted due to his political beliefs. The FBI kept a file detailing his activities. In 1963, he was one of the Hollywood stars, who participated in Martin Luther King's March on Washington. Later, Lancaster appeared prominently on President Richard Nixon's 'List of Enemies' due to his support for Senator George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election. In 1985, Lancaster joined the fight against AIDS after his close friend, Rock Hudson, contracted the disease. He campaigned for Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. D 79. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952).
German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel Filmpostkarten-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. W 1552. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for South Sea Woman (Arthur Lubin, 1953).
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. T 828. Photo: Warner Bros.
Heart Attack
During the latter part of his career, Burt Lancaster left adventure and acrobatic films behind and portrayed more distinguished characters. This period brought him work on several European productions. Italian director Luchino Visconti wanted to cast Laurence Olivier in the title role of the Italian prince in Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) opposite Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale , but his producer overruled him. The producer insisted on a box office star to justify the lavish production's high budget and essentially forced Visconti to accept Lancaster. Lancaster delivered one of the strongest performances of his career, and the film was a huge success in Europe. Visconti directed him again in Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation piece (Luchino Visconti, 1974) with Silvana Mangano and Helmut Berger. In this film, Lancaster played a reclusive professor who is brought face to face with his latent homosexuality.
Lancaster sought demanding roles, and if he liked a part or a director, he was prepared to work for much lower pay than he might have earned elsewhere. He even helped to finance movies whose artistic value he believed in. He also mentored directors such as Sydney Pollack and John Frankenheimer and appeared in several television films. He also appeared in European features like Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976) as Robert De Niro's autocratic grandfather, and as an aging gangster in Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980), which earned him an Oscar nomination.
He tried to raise financing for four years for Hector Babenco's film of Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), based on the novel by Manuel Puig, after Babenco gave him the novel in 1981 at the NY Film Critics Society Ceremony. Lancaster was to have played the role of Molina, the gay hairdresser who shares a cell with Valentin, a political prisoner. However, Lancaster had heart attacks in 1981 and 1983, and subsequently a quadruple-bypass operation, and at the age of 70, he was essentially uninsurable. The film was later made with William Hurt, who won a Best Actor Oscar as Molina.
In the 1980s Burt Lancaster appeared as a supporting player in a number of films, such as an American general in the Italian war drama La pelle/The Skin (Liliana Cavani, 1981), an astronomy-obsessed Texas oilman in Bill Forsythe's wry comedy Local Hero (1983). Lancaster's last feature film was Field of Dreams (Phil Alden Robinson, 1989) with Kevin Costner.
His acting career ended after he suffered a stroke in 1990 which left him partly paralyzed and largely unable to speak. At 80, Burt Lancaster died in his Century City apartment in Los Angeles in 1994, the very same year as his long-time friend and circus partner Nick Cravat.
Lancaster was married three times. He was married to acrobat June Ernst from 1935 to 1946, and to Norma Anderson from 1946 to 1969. His third marriage, to Susan Martin, was from September 1990 until his death in 1994. He and his second wife Norma had five children: James Stephen 'Jimmy' (1946), William 'Billy' (1947), Susan Elizabeth (1949), Joanna Mari (1951) and Sighle (1954).
German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 858. Photo: Columbia-Film. Publicity still for From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953).
Yugoslavian postcard by IOM, Beograd. Photo: Sedmo Silo. Publicity still for From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) with Deborah Kerr .
Dutch postcard by Takken, no, AX 1128. Photo: Paramount.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, no. 957. Photo: Columbia C.E.I.A.D.
Sources: Richard Harland Smith (TCM), Jason Ankeny (AlMovie), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-156. Photo: Sam Lévin.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 338. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948).
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, presented by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 246. Photo: Hal Wallis / Paramount, 1949.
Acrobat, Nude Model and Singing Waiter
Burton Stephen Lancaster was born in East Harlem in New York City in 1914. He was one of the five children of Elizabeth (Roberts) and James Henry Lancaster, a postal clerk at Manhattan's General Post Office. All of his grandparents were immigrants from Northern Ireland.
Burt was a tough street kid who took an early interest in gymnastics. Lancaster was accepted into New York University with an athletic scholarship but subsequently dropped out.
At the age of 19, Lancaster met Nick Cravat, with whom he continued to work throughout his life. Together they learned to act in local theatre productions and circus arts at Union Settlement, one of the city's oldest settlement houses. They formed the acrobat duo 'Lang and Cravat' and joined the Kay Brothers circus. In 1939, an injury forced Lancaster to give up the profession, with great regret.
He supported himself working as a nude artists model by day and a singing waiter by night. In 1942, he joined the US army during WW II and performed with the Twenty-First Special Services Division, organized to follow the troops on the ground and provide USO entertainment to keep up morale. He served with General Mark Clark's Fifth Army in Italy from 1943–1945.
After the war, he made his Broadway debut as Burton Lancaster in Harry Brown's wartime drama A Sound of Hunting, the source for the film Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952). Though the production closed after 12 performances, Lancaster caught the eye of Hollywood agent Harold Hecht. Hecht provided Lancaster with an introduction to producer Hal Wallis.
Lancaster's debut was the Film Noir The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946) opposite Ava Gardner. Siodmak and cinematographer Elwood Bredell employed stark chiaroscuro lighting to offset Lancaster's angular face and chiselled physique. It made him an instant Hollywood star at the age of 32.
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. W 304. Photo: International Pictures Corporation.
British postcard in The People series by Show Parade Picture Service, London, no. P. 1038. Photo: Universal International.
French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 399. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950).
His own production company
After his sensational debut, the tall, muscular Lancaster appeared in two more films the following year. He traded on his tough guy image in Jules Dassin's Brute Force (1947) and I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948). He reunited with Robert Siodmak for another excellent Film Noir, Criss Cross (1949). He varied the image slightly, playing Barbara Stanwyck's cheating husband in Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948) and Edward G. Robinson's conscience-bound son in All My Sons (Irving Reis, 1948), a personal project for which he took a $50,000 salary cut. Lancaster was a self-taught actor who learned the business as he went along.
Burt Lancaster impressed film audiences with his acrobatic prowess the Technicolor Swashbucklers The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950) and The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952). The films became his first major box-office successes. His friend from his circus years, Nick Cravat, played a key supporting role in both films. Lancaster played one of his best remembered roles with Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). Iconic is the scene in which he and Kerr make love on a Hawaiian beach amid the crashing waves. He was nominated for an Academy Award for this role. Lancaster won the 1960 Academy Award for Best Actor, a Golden Globe Award, and the New York Film Critics Award for his performance for playing the corrupt evangelist in Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks, 1960).
In 1948, Burt Lancaster had set up his own production company with Harold Hecht and James Hill, to direct his career. Their production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, produced such films as the Oscar winner Marty (Paddy Chayefsky, 1955), Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956), Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957), and Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958). Lancaster realized a long-held dream and directed his own film, The Kentuckian (1955). Reviews were negative, however, and he did not return to the director's chair for another two decades. In 1965, United Artists made a settlement with Lancaster to end its association with Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, which had financially floundered in the late 1950s due to a few flops and exorbitant spending, and wound up operations in 1959.
His films often reflected his liberal political beliefs. In 1947 he signed a letter deploring the anti-communist witch hunts in Hollywood, and he was nearly blacklisted due to his political beliefs. The FBI kept a file detailing his activities. In 1963, he was one of the Hollywood stars, who participated in Martin Luther King's March on Washington. Later, Lancaster appeared prominently on President Richard Nixon's 'List of Enemies' due to his support for Senator George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election. In 1985, Lancaster joined the fight against AIDS after his close friend, Rock Hudson, contracted the disease. He campaigned for Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. D 79. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952).
German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel Filmpostkarten-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. W 1552. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for South Sea Woman (Arthur Lubin, 1953).
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. T 828. Photo: Warner Bros.
Heart Attack
During the latter part of his career, Burt Lancaster left adventure and acrobatic films behind and portrayed more distinguished characters. This period brought him work on several European productions. Italian director Luchino Visconti wanted to cast Laurence Olivier in the title role of the Italian prince in Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) opposite Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale , but his producer overruled him. The producer insisted on a box office star to justify the lavish production's high budget and essentially forced Visconti to accept Lancaster. Lancaster delivered one of the strongest performances of his career, and the film was a huge success in Europe. Visconti directed him again in Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation piece (Luchino Visconti, 1974) with Silvana Mangano and Helmut Berger. In this film, Lancaster played a reclusive professor who is brought face to face with his latent homosexuality.
Lancaster sought demanding roles, and if he liked a part or a director, he was prepared to work for much lower pay than he might have earned elsewhere. He even helped to finance movies whose artistic value he believed in. He also mentored directors such as Sydney Pollack and John Frankenheimer and appeared in several television films. He also appeared in European features like Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976) as Robert De Niro's autocratic grandfather, and as an aging gangster in Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980), which earned him an Oscar nomination.
He tried to raise financing for four years for Hector Babenco's film of Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), based on the novel by Manuel Puig, after Babenco gave him the novel in 1981 at the NY Film Critics Society Ceremony. Lancaster was to have played the role of Molina, the gay hairdresser who shares a cell with Valentin, a political prisoner. However, Lancaster had heart attacks in 1981 and 1983, and subsequently a quadruple-bypass operation, and at the age of 70, he was essentially uninsurable. The film was later made with William Hurt, who won a Best Actor Oscar as Molina.
In the 1980s Burt Lancaster appeared as a supporting player in a number of films, such as an American general in the Italian war drama La pelle/The Skin (Liliana Cavani, 1981), an astronomy-obsessed Texas oilman in Bill Forsythe's wry comedy Local Hero (1983). Lancaster's last feature film was Field of Dreams (Phil Alden Robinson, 1989) with Kevin Costner.
His acting career ended after he suffered a stroke in 1990 which left him partly paralyzed and largely unable to speak. At 80, Burt Lancaster died in his Century City apartment in Los Angeles in 1994, the very same year as his long-time friend and circus partner Nick Cravat.
Lancaster was married three times. He was married to acrobat June Ernst from 1935 to 1946, and to Norma Anderson from 1946 to 1969. His third marriage, to Susan Martin, was from September 1990 until his death in 1994. He and his second wife Norma had five children: James Stephen 'Jimmy' (1946), William 'Billy' (1947), Susan Elizabeth (1949), Joanna Mari (1951) and Sighle (1954).
German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 858. Photo: Columbia-Film. Publicity still for From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953).
Yugoslavian postcard by IOM, Beograd. Photo: Sedmo Silo. Publicity still for From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) with Deborah Kerr .
Dutch postcard by Takken, no, AX 1128. Photo: Paramount.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, no. 957. Photo: Columbia C.E.I.A.D.
Sources: Richard Harland Smith (TCM), Jason Ankeny (AlMovie), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
July 27, 2015
Clara Wieth
Clara Wieth (1883-1975), later known as Clara Pontoppidan, was a Danish actress who appeared in many masterpieces of the Scandinavian silent cinema. Later she became a noted stage actress in Denmark and appeared in a number of Danish sound films.
German postcard, no. 5556. Photo: Nordisk.
German postcard by Verleih Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 7494.
The White Slave Trade
Clara Wieth was born Clara Rasmussen in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1883. She was the daughter of merchant H. Rasmussen and his wife Caroline Brammer.
From 1892 on, she attended the Ballet School of Det kongelige Teater (the Royal Theatre) in Copenhagen. Already in 1902, film pioneer Peter Elfelt filmed her there, doing a pas-de-deux. Clara started as a stage actress at Det kongelige Teater in 1901, after which engagements followed at the Dagmar Teatret (from 1905 on), Det Ny Teater (1908-1909)and Alexandra Teatret (1914-1917).
In 1910 she made her film debut. From 1911 on she played in dramas and sensational films, directed by August Blom and produced by Nordisk Film. Her breakthrough was with Den hvide Slavehandels sidste offer/The Last Victim of the White Slave Trade (August Blom, 1911), in which Clara plays an innocent girl who falls in the hand of white slavers who force girls into prostitution. Nordisk Film stated that this film and other White Slave Trade dramas were made to expose the social dangers of white slavery, but audiences enjoyed the sensationalized melodrama and the exploitation of young women placed in compromising positions.
A variation was Mormonens Offer/A Victim of the Mormons (August Blom, 1911), which was controversial for demonizing the Mormon religion. The film's box-office success is cited for initiating a decade of anti-Mormon propaganda films in America. It is the story of an attractive young woman (Clara Wieth) who is seduced and kidnapped by a Mormon missionary, then forced to accompany him to Utah to become one of his wives. The film became a hit, partly due to the popularity of its star, Valdemar Psilander , and partly due to the publicity from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' objections and its failed campaign to ban the film.
Clara became one the most active and popular actresses of the Danish silent cinema. In Ekspeditricen/Expediency (August Blom, 1911) Wieth was a glove seller who fits a rich man ( Carlo Wieth ) tight glacé gloves in a gesture which shows the eroticism for which the Danish cinema was famous then. In Ved faengslets Port/Temptations of a Big City (August Blom, 1911) she is the daughter of a usurer who falls in love with a debt ridden playboy ( Valdemar Psilander ).
As a matter of fact Wieth played several films with her husband Carlo Wieth in the male lead, but also several times opposite Psilander, the most popular Danish actor of the 1910s. Between 1911 and 1913 Clara Wieth was enormously active, playing in over 10 (short) films a year, not only with Blom, such as in Vampyrdanserinden/The Vampire Dancer (August Blom, 1912), but also with other prolific Danish directors like Eduard Schnedler-Sörensen and Holger-Madsen.
Czech postcard by Pressfoto, no. U 401/2 869. Photo: publicity still for Miraklet/The Miracle (Victor Sjöström, 1913).
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 5002. Postcard for Laegen/Die Seuche/The Plague (Fritz Magnussen, 1918), with Olaf Fönss .
Leaves From Satan's Book
From 1913 on, Clara Wieth also played in films in Sweden. She worked with the famous Swedish director Victor Sjöström on such films as Miraklet/The Miracle (1913), Bra flicka reder sig själv/A Good Girl Keeps Herself in Good Order (1914), and Prästen/The Clergyman (1914).
She also appeared in films by his compatriot Mauritz Stiller, including Pa livets ödevagar/On the Fateful Roads of Life (1913), and Bröderna/Brothers (1914) with Gunnar Tolnaes .
Among her memorable performances in later years are her roles in the anti-war film Pax aeterna (Holger-Madsen, 1917); Carl Dreyer's Blade af Satans bog/Leaves from Satan's Book (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1919), the tale of Satan's (Helge Nissen) banishment from heaven; and Häxan/Witchcraft through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen, 1922), in which she played a nun.
Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts. The film was made as a documentary but contains dramatized sequences that are comparable to horror films. With Benjamin Christensen's meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and the lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made, costing nearly two million Swedish krona. Although it won acclaim in Denmark and Sweden, the film was banned in the United States and heavily censored in other countries for what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and sexual perversion.
In Dreyer's fairy tale story Der var engang/Once upon a time (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1922) she plays the female lead of the princess of Illyria in a variation on William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Clara Wieth's last role in a silent film was in the Icelandic film Hadda Padda (Guðmundur Kamban, Svend Methling, 1924).
German postcard by Verlag Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 137.
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 5705.
Prima Donna
After her divorce of Carlo Wieth , she worked under the name of Clara Pontoppidan. For years she focused on stage acting, but she returned to the cinema when sound film had set in. In 1932, she appeared in the film Kirke og orgel/Church and Organ (George Schneevoigt, 1932). A year earlier she was awarded the Ingenio et Arti, a Danish medal awarded to prominent Danish and foreign scientists and artists.
In the 1930s, she played some smaller parts in Danish films, directed by Svend Methling. She played leading roles as a prima donna in the stage drama Mens porten var lukket/While the Door Was Locked (Asbjørn Andersen, 1948) and in the romantic comedy Bruden fra Dragstrup/The Bride of Dragstrup (Annelise Reenberg, 1955).
In 1958 she won the Bodil award for best female protagonist as the tragic mother in En kvinde er overflödig/A woman is superfluous (Gabriel Axel, 1957). Her last film performance was in the erotic comedy Takt og tone i himmelsengen/1001 Danish Delights (Sven Methling, 1972).
Clara Wieth was married to actor Carlo Wieth from 1906 until their divorce in 1917. In 1920 she married doctor Pol Vilhelm Pontoppidan and they stayed together until his death in 1953. In 1975, she died in Copenhagen, at the age of 91. Between 1949 and 1963 Wieth had published her memoirs in four parts.
German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1513. Photo: Nordisk Film.
Scene from Ved Fængslets Port/Temptations of a Big City (August Blom, 1911). Source Radio Santos (REM - YouTube).
Trailer for Häxan/Witchcraft through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen, 1922). Source: Todo El Terror Del Mundo (YouTube).
Sources: Danskefilm (Danish), Wikipedia and .
German postcard, no. 5556. Photo: Nordisk.
German postcard by Verleih Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 7494.
The White Slave Trade
Clara Wieth was born Clara Rasmussen in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1883. She was the daughter of merchant H. Rasmussen and his wife Caroline Brammer.
From 1892 on, she attended the Ballet School of Det kongelige Teater (the Royal Theatre) in Copenhagen. Already in 1902, film pioneer Peter Elfelt filmed her there, doing a pas-de-deux. Clara started as a stage actress at Det kongelige Teater in 1901, after which engagements followed at the Dagmar Teatret (from 1905 on), Det Ny Teater (1908-1909)and Alexandra Teatret (1914-1917).
In 1910 she made her film debut. From 1911 on she played in dramas and sensational films, directed by August Blom and produced by Nordisk Film. Her breakthrough was with Den hvide Slavehandels sidste offer/The Last Victim of the White Slave Trade (August Blom, 1911), in which Clara plays an innocent girl who falls in the hand of white slavers who force girls into prostitution. Nordisk Film stated that this film and other White Slave Trade dramas were made to expose the social dangers of white slavery, but audiences enjoyed the sensationalized melodrama and the exploitation of young women placed in compromising positions.
A variation was Mormonens Offer/A Victim of the Mormons (August Blom, 1911), which was controversial for demonizing the Mormon religion. The film's box-office success is cited for initiating a decade of anti-Mormon propaganda films in America. It is the story of an attractive young woman (Clara Wieth) who is seduced and kidnapped by a Mormon missionary, then forced to accompany him to Utah to become one of his wives. The film became a hit, partly due to the popularity of its star, Valdemar Psilander , and partly due to the publicity from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' objections and its failed campaign to ban the film.
Clara became one the most active and popular actresses of the Danish silent cinema. In Ekspeditricen/Expediency (August Blom, 1911) Wieth was a glove seller who fits a rich man ( Carlo Wieth ) tight glacé gloves in a gesture which shows the eroticism for which the Danish cinema was famous then. In Ved faengslets Port/Temptations of a Big City (August Blom, 1911) she is the daughter of a usurer who falls in love with a debt ridden playboy ( Valdemar Psilander ).
As a matter of fact Wieth played several films with her husband Carlo Wieth in the male lead, but also several times opposite Psilander, the most popular Danish actor of the 1910s. Between 1911 and 1913 Clara Wieth was enormously active, playing in over 10 (short) films a year, not only with Blom, such as in Vampyrdanserinden/The Vampire Dancer (August Blom, 1912), but also with other prolific Danish directors like Eduard Schnedler-Sörensen and Holger-Madsen.
Czech postcard by Pressfoto, no. U 401/2 869. Photo: publicity still for Miraklet/The Miracle (Victor Sjöström, 1913).
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 5002. Postcard for Laegen/Die Seuche/The Plague (Fritz Magnussen, 1918), with Olaf Fönss .
Leaves From Satan's Book
From 1913 on, Clara Wieth also played in films in Sweden. She worked with the famous Swedish director Victor Sjöström on such films as Miraklet/The Miracle (1913), Bra flicka reder sig själv/A Good Girl Keeps Herself in Good Order (1914), and Prästen/The Clergyman (1914).
She also appeared in films by his compatriot Mauritz Stiller, including Pa livets ödevagar/On the Fateful Roads of Life (1913), and Bröderna/Brothers (1914) with Gunnar Tolnaes .
Among her memorable performances in later years are her roles in the anti-war film Pax aeterna (Holger-Madsen, 1917); Carl Dreyer's Blade af Satans bog/Leaves from Satan's Book (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1919), the tale of Satan's (Helge Nissen) banishment from heaven; and Häxan/Witchcraft through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen, 1922), in which she played a nun.
Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts. The film was made as a documentary but contains dramatized sequences that are comparable to horror films. With Benjamin Christensen's meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and the lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made, costing nearly two million Swedish krona. Although it won acclaim in Denmark and Sweden, the film was banned in the United States and heavily censored in other countries for what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and sexual perversion.
In Dreyer's fairy tale story Der var engang/Once upon a time (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1922) she plays the female lead of the princess of Illyria in a variation on William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Clara Wieth's last role in a silent film was in the Icelandic film Hadda Padda (Guðmundur Kamban, Svend Methling, 1924).
German postcard by Verlag Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 137.
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 5705.
Prima Donna
After her divorce of Carlo Wieth , she worked under the name of Clara Pontoppidan. For years she focused on stage acting, but she returned to the cinema when sound film had set in. In 1932, she appeared in the film Kirke og orgel/Church and Organ (George Schneevoigt, 1932). A year earlier she was awarded the Ingenio et Arti, a Danish medal awarded to prominent Danish and foreign scientists and artists.
In the 1930s, she played some smaller parts in Danish films, directed by Svend Methling. She played leading roles as a prima donna in the stage drama Mens porten var lukket/While the Door Was Locked (Asbjørn Andersen, 1948) and in the romantic comedy Bruden fra Dragstrup/The Bride of Dragstrup (Annelise Reenberg, 1955).
In 1958 she won the Bodil award for best female protagonist as the tragic mother in En kvinde er overflödig/A woman is superfluous (Gabriel Axel, 1957). Her last film performance was in the erotic comedy Takt og tone i himmelsengen/1001 Danish Delights (Sven Methling, 1972).
Clara Wieth was married to actor Carlo Wieth from 1906 until their divorce in 1917. In 1920 she married doctor Pol Vilhelm Pontoppidan and they stayed together until his death in 1953. In 1975, she died in Copenhagen, at the age of 91. Between 1949 and 1963 Wieth had published her memoirs in four parts.
German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1513. Photo: Nordisk Film.
Scene from Ved Fængslets Port/Temptations of a Big City (August Blom, 1911). Source Radio Santos (REM - YouTube).
Trailer for Häxan/Witchcraft through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen, 1922). Source: Todo El Terror Del Mundo (YouTube).
Sources: Danskefilm (Danish), Wikipedia and .
July 26, 2015
Luise Ullrich
Austrian actress Luise Ullrich (1910-1985) starred in many German films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. No German star played self-sacrificing womanhood better than the blond actress and her film Annelie (1941), became the main morale-booster of World War II Germany.
Dutch postcard by Isa-Film, no. 4636. Photo: Zander & Labisch.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8361, 1933-1934. Photo: Yva, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3594/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Quick / Ufa.
Tomboy
Luise Eliza Aloysia Ullrich was born in Wien (Vienna), Austria-Hungary (now Austria), in 1911. She was the daughter of a major in the Austro-Hungarian Army and a concert violinist.
Already at age 14, she received training as an actress at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. While still a teenager, she was contracted for two years by the Wiener Volkstheater where she made her stage debut in Herbert Sudermann's Heimat in 1926.
In 1931 she moved to Berlin for the Lessing Theater. Her first major triumph was next to Werner Krauss in Richard Billinger's drama Rauhnacht (1932). Later, she switched to the Berliner Staatstheater (Berlin State Theater) and the Deutsche Theater
After a few short films, Ullrich played alongside the ’king of the mountains’, Luis Trenker , in the melodrama Der Rebell/The Rebel (Kurt Bernhardt, Edwin H. Knopf, 1932). Actor and film-maker Trenker had spotted her during one of her performances in Rauhnacht, and cast her in the leading role of Erika.
Although she was upstaged by both Trenker and the Alps, according to Hans Wolstein at AllMovie , Ullrich gave a thoughtful performance and was equally praised for her performance in Max Ophüls screen adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play Liebelei/Flirtation (1933), which some thought she stole outright from its star, Magda Schneider .
This was followed by Vorstadtvarieté/Suburban Variety (Werner Hochbaum, 1934). With her big eyes and an idiosyncratic voice with a slightly ironic undertone, she often embodied a tomboy in her early films. I.S. Mowis at IMDb : "the ideal 'girl next door' type, tomboyish, spirited, charming and witty."
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 6651. Photo: Verleih Muschak & Co / Deutsche Universal Film. Publicity still for Der Rebell/The Rebel (1932) with Luis Trenker .
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute, Zeitschrift für Film und Theater G.m.b.H., Berlin. Photo: Ufa / Quick.
Dutch postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8875/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Fanal / Europa. Publicity still for Regine (Erich Waschneck, 1935).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8937/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Fanal-Europa. Publicity still for Regine (Erich Waschneck, 1935) with Adolf Wohlbrück .
Morale-booster
Luise Ullrich played her first leading role as a maid in Regine (Erich Waschneck, 1934). Other prestigious films were Viktoria (Carl Hoffmann, 1935), a romance based on a novel by Knut Hamsun, and Schatten der Vergangenheit/Shadows of the Past (Werner Hochbaum, 1936) in which she played two sisters opposite Gustav Diessl .
Ich liebe dich/I Love You (Herbert Selpin, 1938) even became a blockbuster. Her co-star Viktor de Kowa was also in real life her partner for seven years.
Another big hit was Annelie (Josef von Báky, 1941), about a young woman who always comes too late. At the Venice Film Festival, Luise won the Coppa Volpi (Volpi Cup) for Best Actress. Annelie became the main morale-booster of World War II for Germany. The Ufa production grossed an impressive six and a half million Reichsmark.
Next she appeared in Der Fall Rainer/The Rainer Case (Paul Verhoeven, 1942) with Paul Hubschmid . She played the title figure in Nora (Harald Braun, 1944), a butchered version of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll's House that came complete with an uplifting ending and none too subtle touches of anti-Semitism.
In 1938, Luise Ullrich had turned down an offer from MGM boss Louis B. Mayer and she had gone instead to South America. There she had met Count Wulf Diether Graf zu Castell-Rüdenhausen, director of Munich-Riem airport. In 1942 the two married. They would have two daughters, Gabriela and Michaela.
German postcard by Ross Verlag. Photo: Atelier Binder.
German postcard by Ross Verlag. Photo: Minerva / Europa.
Belgian card. Photo: G. Mauquoy, Anvers (Antwerp).
Fassbinder
After the war Luise Ullrich appeared mainly on the Munich stage. In the cinema, she moved from delicate fresh girl parts to more mature roles in films like Nachtwache/Night Watch (Harald Braun, 1949), Um Thron und Liebe/Sarajevo (Fritz Kortner, 1955), and Ein Student ging vorbei/A Student Walked Past (Werner Klingler, 1960).
In Rainer Werner Fassbinder's TV Mini-Series Acht Stunden sind kein Tag/Eight Hours Are Not a Day (1972) she played a strong-minded grandmother opposite Hanna Schygulla and Gottfried John.
On TV she was also seen in the classic TV Krimi series Der Kommissar/The Chief Inspector (1970). In addition to her acting roles Luise Ullrich wrote several minor novels and the autobiography Komm auf die Schaukel, Luise (Come on the swing, Louise) (1973).
In 1973, the actress was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Germany’s Cross of Merit) and in 1979 the Filmband in Gold for her life's work, her last major award.
Luise Ullrich spent most of her remaining years writing and painting. One of her last works was an Australian travel memoir, published in 1985. That same year she died of cancer in München (Munich), Germany. Ullrich was 74. A street in the city centre of Munich is named after her.
German postcard by Gloria Palast, Berlin. Photo: publicity still for Eine Frau von Heute/A woman of today (Paul Verhoeven, 1954).
Final scene of Liebelei/Flirtation (1933). Source: BD130 (YouTube).
Luise Ullrich sings Waiting (I´m waiting) in Schatten der Vergangenheit/Shadows of the Past (1936). Source: Alparfan (YouTube).
Sources: Hans J. Wollstein (New York Times / Rovi), Stephanie D´heil (Steffi-line)(German), (IMDb), Wikipedia (German), and .
Dutch postcard by Isa-Film, no. 4636. Photo: Zander & Labisch.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8361, 1933-1934. Photo: Yva, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3594/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Quick / Ufa.
Tomboy
Luise Eliza Aloysia Ullrich was born in Wien (Vienna), Austria-Hungary (now Austria), in 1911. She was the daughter of a major in the Austro-Hungarian Army and a concert violinist.
Already at age 14, she received training as an actress at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. While still a teenager, she was contracted for two years by the Wiener Volkstheater where she made her stage debut in Herbert Sudermann's Heimat in 1926.
In 1931 she moved to Berlin for the Lessing Theater. Her first major triumph was next to Werner Krauss in Richard Billinger's drama Rauhnacht (1932). Later, she switched to the Berliner Staatstheater (Berlin State Theater) and the Deutsche Theater
After a few short films, Ullrich played alongside the ’king of the mountains’, Luis Trenker , in the melodrama Der Rebell/The Rebel (Kurt Bernhardt, Edwin H. Knopf, 1932). Actor and film-maker Trenker had spotted her during one of her performances in Rauhnacht, and cast her in the leading role of Erika.
Although she was upstaged by both Trenker and the Alps, according to Hans Wolstein at AllMovie , Ullrich gave a thoughtful performance and was equally praised for her performance in Max Ophüls screen adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play Liebelei/Flirtation (1933), which some thought she stole outright from its star, Magda Schneider .
This was followed by Vorstadtvarieté/Suburban Variety (Werner Hochbaum, 1934). With her big eyes and an idiosyncratic voice with a slightly ironic undertone, she often embodied a tomboy in her early films. I.S. Mowis at IMDb : "the ideal 'girl next door' type, tomboyish, spirited, charming and witty."
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 6651. Photo: Verleih Muschak & Co / Deutsche Universal Film. Publicity still for Der Rebell/The Rebel (1932) with Luis Trenker .
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute, Zeitschrift für Film und Theater G.m.b.H., Berlin. Photo: Ufa / Quick.
Dutch postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8875/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Fanal / Europa. Publicity still for Regine (Erich Waschneck, 1935).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8937/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Fanal-Europa. Publicity still for Regine (Erich Waschneck, 1935) with Adolf Wohlbrück .
Morale-booster
Luise Ullrich played her first leading role as a maid in Regine (Erich Waschneck, 1934). Other prestigious films were Viktoria (Carl Hoffmann, 1935), a romance based on a novel by Knut Hamsun, and Schatten der Vergangenheit/Shadows of the Past (Werner Hochbaum, 1936) in which she played two sisters opposite Gustav Diessl .
Ich liebe dich/I Love You (Herbert Selpin, 1938) even became a blockbuster. Her co-star Viktor de Kowa was also in real life her partner for seven years.
Another big hit was Annelie (Josef von Báky, 1941), about a young woman who always comes too late. At the Venice Film Festival, Luise won the Coppa Volpi (Volpi Cup) for Best Actress. Annelie became the main morale-booster of World War II for Germany. The Ufa production grossed an impressive six and a half million Reichsmark.
Next she appeared in Der Fall Rainer/The Rainer Case (Paul Verhoeven, 1942) with Paul Hubschmid . She played the title figure in Nora (Harald Braun, 1944), a butchered version of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll's House that came complete with an uplifting ending and none too subtle touches of anti-Semitism.
In 1938, Luise Ullrich had turned down an offer from MGM boss Louis B. Mayer and she had gone instead to South America. There she had met Count Wulf Diether Graf zu Castell-Rüdenhausen, director of Munich-Riem airport. In 1942 the two married. They would have two daughters, Gabriela and Michaela.
German postcard by Ross Verlag. Photo: Atelier Binder.
German postcard by Ross Verlag. Photo: Minerva / Europa.
Belgian card. Photo: G. Mauquoy, Anvers (Antwerp).
Fassbinder
After the war Luise Ullrich appeared mainly on the Munich stage. In the cinema, she moved from delicate fresh girl parts to more mature roles in films like Nachtwache/Night Watch (Harald Braun, 1949), Um Thron und Liebe/Sarajevo (Fritz Kortner, 1955), and Ein Student ging vorbei/A Student Walked Past (Werner Klingler, 1960).
In Rainer Werner Fassbinder's TV Mini-Series Acht Stunden sind kein Tag/Eight Hours Are Not a Day (1972) she played a strong-minded grandmother opposite Hanna Schygulla and Gottfried John.
On TV she was also seen in the classic TV Krimi series Der Kommissar/The Chief Inspector (1970). In addition to her acting roles Luise Ullrich wrote several minor novels and the autobiography Komm auf die Schaukel, Luise (Come on the swing, Louise) (1973).
In 1973, the actress was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Germany’s Cross of Merit) and in 1979 the Filmband in Gold for her life's work, her last major award.
Luise Ullrich spent most of her remaining years writing and painting. One of her last works was an Australian travel memoir, published in 1985. That same year she died of cancer in München (Munich), Germany. Ullrich was 74. A street in the city centre of Munich is named after her.
German postcard by Gloria Palast, Berlin. Photo: publicity still for Eine Frau von Heute/A woman of today (Paul Verhoeven, 1954).
Final scene of Liebelei/Flirtation (1933). Source: BD130 (YouTube).
Luise Ullrich sings Waiting (I´m waiting) in Schatten der Vergangenheit/Shadows of the Past (1936). Source: Alparfan (YouTube).
Sources: Hans J. Wollstein (New York Times / Rovi), Stephanie D´heil (Steffi-line)(German), (IMDb), Wikipedia (German), and .
July 25, 2015
Les trois mousquetaires (1913)
Today's film special is about the two-part film Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (1913). This early silent adaptation of Alexandre Dumas père's' famous novel was directed by Henri Pouctal for Le Film d'Art. The film starred Émile Dehelly as D'Artagnan and Nelly Cormon as Milady. The cards were unnumbered and the film is lost, so we tried to follow the order of the novel, but we have some hesitations about the cards on Milady's past.
Émile Dehelly as D'Artagnan.
Caption: At the inn of Meung-sur-Loire the outfit of the Chevalier d'Artagnan raised the sarcasm of Count Rochefort whom Richelieu sent to Milady de Winter, who is charged by Buckingham with a secret message for the Queen.
Caption: Charlotte Backson, who has taken refuge in an inn, notices the Count de la Fère, a rich gentleman who lives in the neighbourhood. She decided to conquer him and to hide her past.
Caption: When he discovers the past of his wife, the Count de la Fère avenges his honour by chastening the miserable woman who abused him.
Caption: D'Artagnan helps Athos, Porthos and Aramis to take their revenge on the Cardinal's guards.
Caption: In the presence of D'Artagnan, Mr De Treville, the Captain of the King's Musketeers saddles Athos, Porthos and Aramis with reproaches because they have been beaten by the Cardinal's guards.
Caption: the Musketeers and D'Artagnan appreciate the stratagem by Planchet, who to enable his master to fittingly receive his friends, draws liquid and solid from Mrs. Bonacieux' table.
Caption: D'Artagnan saves Mrs Bonacieux and he takes charge to bring the Queen's letter to Buckingham reclaiming from the Duke the twelve studs. On advice of the Cardinal, the king has demanded her to appear with these studs at the upcoming ball at the Hotel-de-Ville.
Extreme length
The very first cinematic adaptation of Dumas' Les trois mousquetaires was a French short made by Georges Méliès in 1903, Les trois mousquetaires et le collier de la reine/The three Musketeers and the Queen's Necklace.
The next adaptation, Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (1913) by Henri Pouctal was the first feature-length film version of the classic novel. In the early 1910s, feature-length films were just starting, but Pouctal's Les trois mousquetaires had already the extreme length of 4000 metres.
The film was released in two parts, La Haine de Richelieu (Richelieu's Hate) and Le Triomphe d'Artagnan (D'Artagnan's Triumph). While several sources list the film as being made in 1912, actually, it was released in Paris and elsewhere in Europe in the fall of 1913 and in the US in 1914.
Henri Pouctal wrote the script too, while cinematography was by Louis Chaix. Sets were by Emile Bertin. The leading actors were Émile Dehelly as D'Artagnan and Nelly Cormon as Milady.
In addition, the film featured Marcel Vibert (Athos), Adolphe Candé (Porthos), Stellio (Aramis), Philippe Garnier (Cardinal Richelieu), Jean Peyrière (Count Buckingham), Guizelle (Constance Bonacieux), Henri Legrand (Planchet), Marcel Marquet (Louis XIII), Aimée Raynal (Queen Anne), Edouard Hardoux (Bonacieux), Jacques Volnys (Count De Rochefort). Bit parts were for Jean Duval, Rolla Norman , Édouard de Max , and Marsa Renhardt.
Caption: Thanks to the passport taken from the Count De Rochefort, D'Artagnan can embark for Dover.
Caption: Called back to Britain, the Duke of Buckingham has brought to London twelve diamond studs as a remembrance of their pure love, offered by the Queen of France, and which she had gotten from the King.
Caption: Buckingham returns the twelve diamond studs to D'Artagnan. They are reclaimed by the Queen to satisfy the King's demands.
Caption: Back from London. D'Artagnan has just returned to the Queen the twelve diamonds reclaimed from Buckingham.
Caption: Adorned with the diamond studs, the Queen appears at the Aldermen's Ball, to the great discomfiture of the Cardinal who was already convinced of his triumph.
Caption: Charged to win over D'Artagnan to Richelieu's side, Milady de Winter entertains him at her place, confiding that her charms will conquer the resistance of the ardent knight.
Caption: The stigma.
Caption: Milady de Winter realizes with terror that D'Artagnan has discovered her shameful secret and swears revenge.
The highlight of the season
In his thorough study on 1910s, French silent film, The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914 (1994), Richard Abel wrote that the film was distributed by AGC, the biggest distributor after Pathé and Gaumont around 1913.
From April to October 1913, AGC led a huge campaign to promote Les trois mousquetaires as the highlight of the season. As part of a new distribution strategy, it was pre-screened in the Fall of 1913 at the Paris' cinema Majestic.
Abel states that Pouctal was the sole director of the film, while the Cinémathèque française, IMDb and Wikipedia also list André Calmettes as a co-director.
According to Abel, Les trois mousquetaires is still a lost film, but these postcards give a nice impression.
After the version of Pouctal, many later versions would follow, such as the 1921 and 1933 version by Henri Diamant-Berger. Check out our post on the 1921 version.
Caption: Having become the spy of the Cardinal and the lady-in-waiting of the Queen, Milady de Winter copies Buckingham's message to communicate it to the Cardinal.
Caption: The Cardinal de Richelieu meets Milady de Winter at the Inn of the Red Dove in La Rochelle.
Caption: At the Inn of the Red Dove, Athos recognizes the voice of his wife whom he thought dead. He hears her pleading to Cardinal Richelieu to sentence D'Artagnan to death.
Caption: Unmasked, Milady de Winter leaves the Inn of the Red Dove, swearing revenge.
Caption: As D'Artagnan has escaped her, Milady de Winter decides to hit the one he loves. She pours poison in the glass of Madame Bonacieux, whom the young man has just joined in the Monastery of Bethune.
Caption: D'Artagnan and the Musketeers swear to avenge the death of Madame Bonacieux.
Caption: Milady de Winter is captured by the Musketeers and D'Artagnan in the hovel where she had taken refuge after her murder, and is delivered to the henchman.
Caption: JUSTICE!
Sources: Richard Abel (The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914), Ciné-Ressources (French), Wikipedia (French), and IMDb.
Émile Dehelly as D'Artagnan.
Caption: At the inn of Meung-sur-Loire the outfit of the Chevalier d'Artagnan raised the sarcasm of Count Rochefort whom Richelieu sent to Milady de Winter, who is charged by Buckingham with a secret message for the Queen.
Caption: Charlotte Backson, who has taken refuge in an inn, notices the Count de la Fère, a rich gentleman who lives in the neighbourhood. She decided to conquer him and to hide her past.
Caption: When he discovers the past of his wife, the Count de la Fère avenges his honour by chastening the miserable woman who abused him.
Caption: D'Artagnan helps Athos, Porthos and Aramis to take their revenge on the Cardinal's guards.
Caption: In the presence of D'Artagnan, Mr De Treville, the Captain of the King's Musketeers saddles Athos, Porthos and Aramis with reproaches because they have been beaten by the Cardinal's guards.
Caption: the Musketeers and D'Artagnan appreciate the stratagem by Planchet, who to enable his master to fittingly receive his friends, draws liquid and solid from Mrs. Bonacieux' table.
Caption: D'Artagnan saves Mrs Bonacieux and he takes charge to bring the Queen's letter to Buckingham reclaiming from the Duke the twelve studs. On advice of the Cardinal, the king has demanded her to appear with these studs at the upcoming ball at the Hotel-de-Ville.
Extreme length
The very first cinematic adaptation of Dumas' Les trois mousquetaires was a French short made by Georges Méliès in 1903, Les trois mousquetaires et le collier de la reine/The three Musketeers and the Queen's Necklace.
The next adaptation, Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (1913) by Henri Pouctal was the first feature-length film version of the classic novel. In the early 1910s, feature-length films were just starting, but Pouctal's Les trois mousquetaires had already the extreme length of 4000 metres.
The film was released in two parts, La Haine de Richelieu (Richelieu's Hate) and Le Triomphe d'Artagnan (D'Artagnan's Triumph). While several sources list the film as being made in 1912, actually, it was released in Paris and elsewhere in Europe in the fall of 1913 and in the US in 1914.
Henri Pouctal wrote the script too, while cinematography was by Louis Chaix. Sets were by Emile Bertin. The leading actors were Émile Dehelly as D'Artagnan and Nelly Cormon as Milady.
In addition, the film featured Marcel Vibert (Athos), Adolphe Candé (Porthos), Stellio (Aramis), Philippe Garnier (Cardinal Richelieu), Jean Peyrière (Count Buckingham), Guizelle (Constance Bonacieux), Henri Legrand (Planchet), Marcel Marquet (Louis XIII), Aimée Raynal (Queen Anne), Edouard Hardoux (Bonacieux), Jacques Volnys (Count De Rochefort). Bit parts were for Jean Duval, Rolla Norman , Édouard de Max , and Marsa Renhardt.
Caption: Thanks to the passport taken from the Count De Rochefort, D'Artagnan can embark for Dover.
Caption: Called back to Britain, the Duke of Buckingham has brought to London twelve diamond studs as a remembrance of their pure love, offered by the Queen of France, and which she had gotten from the King.
Caption: Buckingham returns the twelve diamond studs to D'Artagnan. They are reclaimed by the Queen to satisfy the King's demands.
Caption: Back from London. D'Artagnan has just returned to the Queen the twelve diamonds reclaimed from Buckingham.
Caption: Adorned with the diamond studs, the Queen appears at the Aldermen's Ball, to the great discomfiture of the Cardinal who was already convinced of his triumph.
Caption: Charged to win over D'Artagnan to Richelieu's side, Milady de Winter entertains him at her place, confiding that her charms will conquer the resistance of the ardent knight.
Caption: The stigma.
Caption: Milady de Winter realizes with terror that D'Artagnan has discovered her shameful secret and swears revenge.
The highlight of the season
In his thorough study on 1910s, French silent film, The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914 (1994), Richard Abel wrote that the film was distributed by AGC, the biggest distributor after Pathé and Gaumont around 1913.
From April to October 1913, AGC led a huge campaign to promote Les trois mousquetaires as the highlight of the season. As part of a new distribution strategy, it was pre-screened in the Fall of 1913 at the Paris' cinema Majestic.
Abel states that Pouctal was the sole director of the film, while the Cinémathèque française, IMDb and Wikipedia also list André Calmettes as a co-director.
According to Abel, Les trois mousquetaires is still a lost film, but these postcards give a nice impression.
After the version of Pouctal, many later versions would follow, such as the 1921 and 1933 version by Henri Diamant-Berger. Check out our post on the 1921 version.
Caption: Having become the spy of the Cardinal and the lady-in-waiting of the Queen, Milady de Winter copies Buckingham's message to communicate it to the Cardinal.
Caption: The Cardinal de Richelieu meets Milady de Winter at the Inn of the Red Dove in La Rochelle.
Caption: At the Inn of the Red Dove, Athos recognizes the voice of his wife whom he thought dead. He hears her pleading to Cardinal Richelieu to sentence D'Artagnan to death.
Caption: Unmasked, Milady de Winter leaves the Inn of the Red Dove, swearing revenge.
Caption: As D'Artagnan has escaped her, Milady de Winter decides to hit the one he loves. She pours poison in the glass of Madame Bonacieux, whom the young man has just joined in the Monastery of Bethune.
Caption: D'Artagnan and the Musketeers swear to avenge the death of Madame Bonacieux.
Caption: Milady de Winter is captured by the Musketeers and D'Artagnan in the hovel where she had taken refuge after her murder, and is delivered to the henchman.
Caption: JUSTICE!
Sources: Richard Abel (The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914), Ciné-Ressources (French), Wikipedia (French), and IMDb.
July 24, 2015
Nova Pilbeam (1919-2015)
Today, we read that British film and stage actress Nova Pilbeam died at 17 July. She was a forgotten star with an odd name. As a teenager, she played in two Alfred Hitchcock classics, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Young and Innocent (1937). In 1948 she vanished from the British cinema. Nova Pilbeam was 95.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 877. Photo: Gaumont-British.
British postcard, no. B-32. Photo: Gaumont-British.
British postcard, no. 162 A. Photo: Gaumont-British.
Hitchcock's First True International Hit
Nova Margery Pilbeam was born in Wimbledon, London in 1919. Her parents were actor and theatrical manager Arnold Pilbeam, and his wife Margery Stopher Pilbeam. Nova made her stage debut at the age of five in a charity performance produced by her father.
As soon as the law allowed, she made her professional debut. At 12, she played Marigold in Toad of Toad Hall at the Savoy theatre in 1931. This led to more stage work in her teen years and to an audition for Robert Stevenson at Gaumont British in 1934.
She got a leading role in the British drama Little Friend (Berthold Viertel, 1934). She played a young girl who becomes an unwilling witness to the divorce of her parents ( Matheson Lang and Lydia Sherwood). At Wicked Lady , Carole writes: “When the film was released, Pilbeam was a sensation. Kinematograph Weekly praised the ‘brilliant performance by the newly discovered English protégée’. Gaumont-British executives were impressed and signed her to a seven year contract”.
Pilbeam first got a small but important role in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) featuring Peter Lorre . Pilbeam played a sophisticated teenager who is kidnapped. The Man Who Knew Too Much became one of the most successful and critically acclaimed thrillers of Hitchcock's British period.
Brendon Hanley at AllMovie : ”Though Alfred Hitchcock would remake the movie himself in 1956 with a bigger budget, the original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is arguably a more historically significant and aesthetically interesting film. It was Hitchcock's first true international hit. Though he wouldn't have a major success in America until The Lady Vanishes, Man and the subsequent The 39 Steps helped establish the director's distinctive style and lay the groundwork for his popularity. Along with Hitchcock's trademark blend of suspense and humour and blurring of the normal and abnormal, the film also features his characteristically grand showpieces, most memorably the recreation of the true-life ‘Sidney Street Siege’ and the famous Albert Hall scene.”
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. 995a. Photo: Gaumont British.
British postcard by Real Photograph, no. 162. Photo: Gaumont-British Pictures.
Extremely Touching
Nova Pilbeam then played a lead role as the 16-years old Lady Jane Grey in Tudor Rose (Robert Stevenson, 1935), a dramatization of Grey's short life, from her forced marriage to Henry VIII to her brief reign as queen of England and finally to her beheading. Carole at WickedLady : “Pilbeam looked glorious in the sumptuous Tudor costumes and was extremely touching in the role. She subsequently won the Film Weekly medal for the best performance by a performer in a British Film.”
Still only seventeen, Pilbeam then had a starring role opposite Derrick de Marney in Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1937), for which she is now best known.
Hal Erickson reviews at AllMovie : “Alfred Hitchcock was beginning to repeat himself, but audiences didn't mind so long as they were thoroughly entertaining-which they were, without fail. Derrick De Marney finds himself in a 39 Steps situation when he is wrongly accused of murder. While a fugitive from the law, De Marney is helped by heroine Nova Pilbeam, who three years earlier had played the adolescent kidnap victim in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. The obligatory 'fish out of water' scene, in which the principals are briefly slowed down by a banal every day event, occurs during a child's birthday party. The actual villain, whose identity is never in doubt (Hitchcock made thrillers, not mysteries) is played by George Curzon, who suffers from a twitching eye. Curzon's revelation during an elaborate nightclub sequence is a Hitchcockian tour de force, the sort of virtuoso sequence taken for granted in these days of flexible cameras and computer enhancement, but which in 1937 took a great deal of time, patience and talent to pull off.” A
fter this, Pilbeam's film career may have stalled somewhat. She was considered for Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), but lost the role to Margaret Lockwood . In 1939 she appeared on the early British television drama Prison Without Bars (1939) with Jill Esmond, and in the Ealing comedy Cheer Boys Cheer (Walter Forde, 1939) depicting the rivalry between two firms of brewers.
In 1939 Nova Pilbeam married Penrose ‘Pen’ Tennyson, a great-grandson of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. They had met at the set of Young and Innocent, where he was an assistant director to Alfred Hitchcock. Tennyson became a film director himself the year they were married.
British postcard by De Reszke Cigarettes, no. 39. Photo: Gaumont-British.
British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, no. C 332. Photo: Cannons.
British postcard by Real Photograph in the Art Photo Postcard series, no. 81. Photo: Gaumont-British.
Tragic Plane Crash
Unlike other British film stars of the 1930s, Nova Pilbeam never made a film in Hollywood. Producer David O. Selznick wanted her for the lead as Mrs De Winter in Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) and thought she could be an international film star. However, her agent was worried about the length of a five-year contract and Hitchcock thought she was too immature for the role.
It must have been a blow to Pilbeam that Hitchcock gave the role to Joan Fontaine and that her studio, Gaumont British, had collapsed in 1937 due to overexpansion and the inability to penetrate the American market. In 1941 her husband Pen Tennyson suddenly died in a tragic plane crash. He had been called up to film some instructional shorts for the war effort.
Despite all this, Pilbeam carried on. Throughout the 1940s, she appeared in British war and crime films along with many stage roles. In 1940 she played with Wilfrid Lawson in Pastor Hall (Roy Boulting, 1940), based on the true story of Pastor Martin Neimuller, who was sent to Dachau concentration camp for criticising the Nazi party. Another wartime propaganda film was The Next of Kin (Thorold Dickinson, 1942) about the danger of Nazi espionage. It became a great box office hit.
On stage, Pilbeam gave vibrant performances as the title role of Peter Pan, Viola in Twelfth Night and Rosalind in As You Like It. One of her last films was The Three Weird Sisters (1948). It was a Gothic tale of a dying Welsh mining town and the three old and afflicted ladies who oversee it. The screenplay is credited to five writers, including Dylan Thomas.
After the release, she retired from the screen. She was 29 at the time. In 1950, Pilbeam married BBC Radio journalist Alexander Whyte and their daughter Sarah Jane was born in 1952. The couple stayed together until his death in 1972. Nova Pilbeam died of natural causes in London. She was 95.
Opening of Little Friend (1934). Source: D Cairns (YouTube).
Trailer for the Blue-ray of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Source: Network Distributing (YouTube).
Scene from Young and Innocent (1937). Source: hitchcockmoments (YouTube).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Brendon Hanley (AllMovie), Carole (Wicked Lady), BritMovie, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia and .
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 877. Photo: Gaumont-British.
British postcard, no. B-32. Photo: Gaumont-British.
British postcard, no. 162 A. Photo: Gaumont-British.
Hitchcock's First True International Hit
Nova Margery Pilbeam was born in Wimbledon, London in 1919. Her parents were actor and theatrical manager Arnold Pilbeam, and his wife Margery Stopher Pilbeam. Nova made her stage debut at the age of five in a charity performance produced by her father.
As soon as the law allowed, she made her professional debut. At 12, she played Marigold in Toad of Toad Hall at the Savoy theatre in 1931. This led to more stage work in her teen years and to an audition for Robert Stevenson at Gaumont British in 1934.
She got a leading role in the British drama Little Friend (Berthold Viertel, 1934). She played a young girl who becomes an unwilling witness to the divorce of her parents ( Matheson Lang and Lydia Sherwood). At Wicked Lady , Carole writes: “When the film was released, Pilbeam was a sensation. Kinematograph Weekly praised the ‘brilliant performance by the newly discovered English protégée’. Gaumont-British executives were impressed and signed her to a seven year contract”.
Pilbeam first got a small but important role in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) featuring Peter Lorre . Pilbeam played a sophisticated teenager who is kidnapped. The Man Who Knew Too Much became one of the most successful and critically acclaimed thrillers of Hitchcock's British period.
Brendon Hanley at AllMovie : ”Though Alfred Hitchcock would remake the movie himself in 1956 with a bigger budget, the original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is arguably a more historically significant and aesthetically interesting film. It was Hitchcock's first true international hit. Though he wouldn't have a major success in America until The Lady Vanishes, Man and the subsequent The 39 Steps helped establish the director's distinctive style and lay the groundwork for his popularity. Along with Hitchcock's trademark blend of suspense and humour and blurring of the normal and abnormal, the film also features his characteristically grand showpieces, most memorably the recreation of the true-life ‘Sidney Street Siege’ and the famous Albert Hall scene.”
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. 995a. Photo: Gaumont British.
British postcard by Real Photograph, no. 162. Photo: Gaumont-British Pictures.
Extremely Touching
Nova Pilbeam then played a lead role as the 16-years old Lady Jane Grey in Tudor Rose (Robert Stevenson, 1935), a dramatization of Grey's short life, from her forced marriage to Henry VIII to her brief reign as queen of England and finally to her beheading. Carole at WickedLady : “Pilbeam looked glorious in the sumptuous Tudor costumes and was extremely touching in the role. She subsequently won the Film Weekly medal for the best performance by a performer in a British Film.”
Still only seventeen, Pilbeam then had a starring role opposite Derrick de Marney in Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1937), for which she is now best known.
Hal Erickson reviews at AllMovie : “Alfred Hitchcock was beginning to repeat himself, but audiences didn't mind so long as they were thoroughly entertaining-which they were, without fail. Derrick De Marney finds himself in a 39 Steps situation when he is wrongly accused of murder. While a fugitive from the law, De Marney is helped by heroine Nova Pilbeam, who three years earlier had played the adolescent kidnap victim in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. The obligatory 'fish out of water' scene, in which the principals are briefly slowed down by a banal every day event, occurs during a child's birthday party. The actual villain, whose identity is never in doubt (Hitchcock made thrillers, not mysteries) is played by George Curzon, who suffers from a twitching eye. Curzon's revelation during an elaborate nightclub sequence is a Hitchcockian tour de force, the sort of virtuoso sequence taken for granted in these days of flexible cameras and computer enhancement, but which in 1937 took a great deal of time, patience and talent to pull off.” A
fter this, Pilbeam's film career may have stalled somewhat. She was considered for Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), but lost the role to Margaret Lockwood . In 1939 she appeared on the early British television drama Prison Without Bars (1939) with Jill Esmond, and in the Ealing comedy Cheer Boys Cheer (Walter Forde, 1939) depicting the rivalry between two firms of brewers.
In 1939 Nova Pilbeam married Penrose ‘Pen’ Tennyson, a great-grandson of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. They had met at the set of Young and Innocent, where he was an assistant director to Alfred Hitchcock. Tennyson became a film director himself the year they were married.
British postcard by De Reszke Cigarettes, no. 39. Photo: Gaumont-British.
British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, no. C 332. Photo: Cannons.
British postcard by Real Photograph in the Art Photo Postcard series, no. 81. Photo: Gaumont-British.
Tragic Plane Crash
Unlike other British film stars of the 1930s, Nova Pilbeam never made a film in Hollywood. Producer David O. Selznick wanted her for the lead as Mrs De Winter in Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) and thought she could be an international film star. However, her agent was worried about the length of a five-year contract and Hitchcock thought she was too immature for the role.
It must have been a blow to Pilbeam that Hitchcock gave the role to Joan Fontaine and that her studio, Gaumont British, had collapsed in 1937 due to overexpansion and the inability to penetrate the American market. In 1941 her husband Pen Tennyson suddenly died in a tragic plane crash. He had been called up to film some instructional shorts for the war effort.
Despite all this, Pilbeam carried on. Throughout the 1940s, she appeared in British war and crime films along with many stage roles. In 1940 she played with Wilfrid Lawson in Pastor Hall (Roy Boulting, 1940), based on the true story of Pastor Martin Neimuller, who was sent to Dachau concentration camp for criticising the Nazi party. Another wartime propaganda film was The Next of Kin (Thorold Dickinson, 1942) about the danger of Nazi espionage. It became a great box office hit.
On stage, Pilbeam gave vibrant performances as the title role of Peter Pan, Viola in Twelfth Night and Rosalind in As You Like It. One of her last films was The Three Weird Sisters (1948). It was a Gothic tale of a dying Welsh mining town and the three old and afflicted ladies who oversee it. The screenplay is credited to five writers, including Dylan Thomas.
After the release, she retired from the screen. She was 29 at the time. In 1950, Pilbeam married BBC Radio journalist Alexander Whyte and their daughter Sarah Jane was born in 1952. The couple stayed together until his death in 1972. Nova Pilbeam died of natural causes in London. She was 95.
Opening of Little Friend (1934). Source: D Cairns (YouTube).
Trailer for the Blue-ray of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Source: Network Distributing (YouTube).
Scene from Young and Innocent (1937). Source: hitchcockmoments (YouTube).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Brendon Hanley (AllMovie), Carole (Wicked Lady), BritMovie, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia and .
July 23, 2015
Geneviève Grad
Blond French actress Geneviève Grad (1944) is best known as the daughter of Louis de Funès in the first three films of the Gendarme of Saint-Tropez series of the 1960s. In the late 1960s she made some erotic films.
French postcard by E.D.U.G, no. 325, presented by Corvisart, Epinal. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Spanish postcard by Torro de Bronce, no. 196. Photo: Unifrance Film / Sam Lévin.
The Gendarme's beautiful daughter
Geneviève Gabrielle Grad was born in 1944 in Paris. Her father was a typographer for the newspaper France-Soir. She trained in dance, but at 15 she was spotted for the film.
She made her film debut as an extra in Les dragueurs/The Dredgers (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1959) starring Jacques Charrier and Charles Aznavour . She changed her career plans and took acting classes from Beatrice Dussanne.
Geneviève played the teenage daughter of Martine Carol in in the crime drama Un Soir sur le plage/One Night at the Beach (Michel Boisrond, 1961). That same year, she played the female lead in the French swashbuckler Le Capitaine Fracasse/Captain Fracasse (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1961), featuring Jean Marais and Philippe Noiret .
In Italy, she starred in the Peplum Il conquistatore di Corinto/The Centurion (Mario Costa, 1961) set in 146 BC in Greece. In this French/Italian historical drama, set against the back-drop of the Battle of Corinth, she played Hebe, the daughter of a local governor with anti-Roman sentiments, who falls in love with a Roman centurion named Caius Vinicius ( Jacques Sernas ). She stayed in Italy for I normanni/Attack of the Normans (Giuseppe Vari, 1962), set in England in the early 9th century. Viking incursions play a central role in this film starring Cameron Mitchell.
Grad also participated in another European genre of the 1960s, the Eurospy film. She co-starred in the French thriller Gibraltar (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1964) with Hildegard Knef and Gérard Barray , who played a secret agent going undercover to infiltrate smugglers between Tangiers and Gibraltar.
Then she played her best known role Nicole Cruchot, the beautiful daughter of Marshal Ludovic Cruchot ( Louis de Funès ) in the comedy Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez/The Troops of St. Tropez (Jean Girault, 1964). It is was the first film in The gendarme series, comedies situated in Saint-Tropez, a fashionable resort on the French Riviera.
Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez was a huge box office hit and spawned five sequels. Grad only appeared in the first three films. The other two were: Le gendarme à New York/Gendarme in New York (Jean Girault, 1965) and Le gendarme se marie/The Gendarme Gets Married (Jean Girault, 1968). She also recorded the songs Douliou Douliou Saint-Tropez (1964) and Les Garçons, les filles et l'amour (The boys, the girls and love) (1966).
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 130.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 294. Retail price: 1,50 Lei. Photo: publicity shot for Le gendarme se marie/The Gendarme Gets Married (Jean Girault, 1968) with Louis de Funès and Geneviève Grad.
The era of sexual liberation
Geneviève Grad had a nervous breakdown and retired for a while. She departed from her image as the beautiful daughter of De Funès with her next films.
In the era of sexual liberation and social revolution, she played a lead role in the French film Flash Love, with Paul Guers as her partner. The film was first limited released in 1968, got a wider release in 1972 and was re-released in 1977 as Libertés sexuelles/Love-Making: Hot Style (Max Kalifa, 1977).
She also played the lead role in the Brazilian-French drama O Palácio dos Anjos/Palais des anges érotiques et des plaisirs secrets/The Palace of Angels (Walter Hugo Khouri, 1970) with Luc Merenda. The film, about a French girl living in São Paulo, who decides with two friends to transform a little apartment into a luxury bordello, was entered into the 1970 Cannes Film Festival.
Apart from these films, she appeared on stage and in several made for TV films and TV series during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Grad - not yet 40 - made her final film in 1983. She played a supporting part in the Darry Cowl comedy Ça va pas être triste/It's going to be sad (Pierre Sisser, 1983).
Later, she worked as a production assistant for TV 1, as an antiques dealer and for the city of Vendôme. Geneviève Grad has a son, Dimitri Bogdanoff (1976), with former boyfriend, Igor Bogdanoff, a controversial scientist and television-show host.
Since 1993, Geneviève Grad is married to architect Jean Guillaume. They live in Vendôme in France.
Spanish postcard by Editorial Filasol in the series Sexy vintage girls.
Trailer for Sandokan, la tigre di Mompracem/Sandokan the Great (Umberto Lenzi, 1963) with Steve Reeves. Source: Sleaze-O-Rama (YouTube).
Geneviève Grad sings Douliou Douliou Saint-Tropez in Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964). Source: SuperCanopus (YouTube).
Sources: Biosstars (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and .
French postcard by E.D.U.G, no. 325, presented by Corvisart, Epinal. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Spanish postcard by Torro de Bronce, no. 196. Photo: Unifrance Film / Sam Lévin.
The Gendarme's beautiful daughter
Geneviève Gabrielle Grad was born in 1944 in Paris. Her father was a typographer for the newspaper France-Soir. She trained in dance, but at 15 she was spotted for the film.
She made her film debut as an extra in Les dragueurs/The Dredgers (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1959) starring Jacques Charrier and Charles Aznavour . She changed her career plans and took acting classes from Beatrice Dussanne.
Geneviève played the teenage daughter of Martine Carol in in the crime drama Un Soir sur le plage/One Night at the Beach (Michel Boisrond, 1961). That same year, she played the female lead in the French swashbuckler Le Capitaine Fracasse/Captain Fracasse (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1961), featuring Jean Marais and Philippe Noiret .
In Italy, she starred in the Peplum Il conquistatore di Corinto/The Centurion (Mario Costa, 1961) set in 146 BC in Greece. In this French/Italian historical drama, set against the back-drop of the Battle of Corinth, she played Hebe, the daughter of a local governor with anti-Roman sentiments, who falls in love with a Roman centurion named Caius Vinicius ( Jacques Sernas ). She stayed in Italy for I normanni/Attack of the Normans (Giuseppe Vari, 1962), set in England in the early 9th century. Viking incursions play a central role in this film starring Cameron Mitchell.
Grad also participated in another European genre of the 1960s, the Eurospy film. She co-starred in the French thriller Gibraltar (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1964) with Hildegard Knef and Gérard Barray , who played a secret agent going undercover to infiltrate smugglers between Tangiers and Gibraltar.
Then she played her best known role Nicole Cruchot, the beautiful daughter of Marshal Ludovic Cruchot ( Louis de Funès ) in the comedy Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez/The Troops of St. Tropez (Jean Girault, 1964). It is was the first film in The gendarme series, comedies situated in Saint-Tropez, a fashionable resort on the French Riviera.
Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez was a huge box office hit and spawned five sequels. Grad only appeared in the first three films. The other two were: Le gendarme à New York/Gendarme in New York (Jean Girault, 1965) and Le gendarme se marie/The Gendarme Gets Married (Jean Girault, 1968). She also recorded the songs Douliou Douliou Saint-Tropez (1964) and Les Garçons, les filles et l'amour (The boys, the girls and love) (1966).
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 130.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 294. Retail price: 1,50 Lei. Photo: publicity shot for Le gendarme se marie/The Gendarme Gets Married (Jean Girault, 1968) with Louis de Funès and Geneviève Grad.
The era of sexual liberation
Geneviève Grad had a nervous breakdown and retired for a while. She departed from her image as the beautiful daughter of De Funès with her next films.
In the era of sexual liberation and social revolution, she played a lead role in the French film Flash Love, with Paul Guers as her partner. The film was first limited released in 1968, got a wider release in 1972 and was re-released in 1977 as Libertés sexuelles/Love-Making: Hot Style (Max Kalifa, 1977).
She also played the lead role in the Brazilian-French drama O Palácio dos Anjos/Palais des anges érotiques et des plaisirs secrets/The Palace of Angels (Walter Hugo Khouri, 1970) with Luc Merenda. The film, about a French girl living in São Paulo, who decides with two friends to transform a little apartment into a luxury bordello, was entered into the 1970 Cannes Film Festival.
Apart from these films, she appeared on stage and in several made for TV films and TV series during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Grad - not yet 40 - made her final film in 1983. She played a supporting part in the Darry Cowl comedy Ça va pas être triste/It's going to be sad (Pierre Sisser, 1983).
Later, she worked as a production assistant for TV 1, as an antiques dealer and for the city of Vendôme. Geneviève Grad has a son, Dimitri Bogdanoff (1976), with former boyfriend, Igor Bogdanoff, a controversial scientist and television-show host.
Since 1993, Geneviève Grad is married to architect Jean Guillaume. They live in Vendôme in France.
Spanish postcard by Editorial Filasol in the series Sexy vintage girls.
Trailer for Sandokan, la tigre di Mompracem/Sandokan the Great (Umberto Lenzi, 1963) with Steve Reeves. Source: Sleaze-O-Rama (YouTube).
Geneviève Grad sings Douliou Douliou Saint-Tropez in Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964). Source: SuperCanopus (YouTube).
Sources: Biosstars (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and .
July 22, 2015
Oleg Yankovsky
Acclaimed Russian actor Oleg Yankovsky (1944-2009) excelled in psychologically sophisticated roles of modern intellectuals. He is best known in the west for his parts in two of Andrei Tarkovsky's most haunting and poetic films: Zerkalo/The Mirror (1975) and Nostalghia (1983). In 1991, he became the last person to be named a People's Artist of the USSR.
Russian postcard.
Russian postcard.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.
Aristocratic Bearing and Handsome Features
Oleg Ivanovich Yankovsky or Yankovskiy (Russian: Олег Иванович Янковский) was born in the village Jezkazgan, Kazakh SSR, USSR (now Jezkazgan, Kazakhstan) in 1944. He was born into a noble family of Polish origin. His father, a former tsarist army officer who joined the Red Army, was exiled and later died in a Gulag labour camp during Josef Stalin's crackdown on Trotskyites in the military.
After Stalin's death in 1953, the family settled in Saratov, in southern Russia. In 1957 Oleg's older brother Rostislav, an actor, went to Minsk. Back in Saratov, Oleg intended to become a dentist but a casual visit to the Slonov Theater Academy, the local drama school where his brother had studied changed his mind.
After marrying fellow student Ludmilla Zorina, he graduated in 1965 with an appearance in The Three Sisters before joining the Saratov Drama Theatre. A year later, aged 22, he appeared in his first film, O lyubvi/A Ballad of Love (Mikhail Bogin, 1966), and immediately impressed with his aristocratic bearing and handsome features.
His film career was launched, when he was cast in two films about World War II, Shchit i mech/The Shield and the Sword (Vladimir Basov, 1968) in which he played an arrogant German officer, and Sluzhili dva tovarishcha/Two Comrades Were Serving (Yevgeni Karelov, 1968).
About Sluzhili dva tovarishcha, Ronald Bergan wrote in his obituary of Yankovskiy in The Guardian : “Yankovsky played a student who joins the Red Army during the civil war, fighting for the revolution not only with his gun, but with his camera. The performance demonstrated Yankovsky's skill in playing heroic roles with a certain irony, without resorting to the larger-than-life mannerisms in Soviet cinema of the 1950’s. However, despite the ‘Thaw’ period following Khrushchev's famous speech in 1956 attacking Stalin's ‘cult of personality’, a new era of repression had set in by the time Yankovsky made his screen debut.”
Russian postcard, no. 2129783, 1980. Photo: publicity still for Shchit i Mech/The Shield and the Sword (Vladimir Basov, 1968).
Russian postcard.
Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 109/77, 1977. (This postcard was printed in an edition of 200.000 cards. The price was 5 kop.). Publicity still for Slovo dlya zashchity/A Word for the Defense (Vadim Abdrashitov, 1977).
Intensely Personal, Dreamlike and Somewhat Hermetic
In the west we have only little idea of how much Oleg Yankovsky was revered in his own country, in both Soviet and post-Soviet times, equally on stage and in films. In 1973, he joined Mark Zakharov's Lenin Komsomol Theatre in Moscow, and became one of its leading actors.
He starred in the TV versions of such Lenkom productions as Obyknovennoye chudo/An Ordinary Miracle (Mark Zakharov, 1978) and Tot Samyy Myunkhgauzen/The Very Same Munchhausen (Mark Zakharov, 1979). Despite the mediocrity of the majority of the films he appeared in during the stagnant Brezhnev years, he managed to humanise historical figures by expressing certain deep emotions, lifting his portrayals of Communist Party leaders above the popular film stereotypes. In 1974, he played a Communist Party official in Premiya/The Bonus (Sergei Mikaelyan, 1974), a film that generated international attention for its frank examination of mismanagement and fraud in the Soviet construction industry.
In the west we know Oleg Yankovsky only from a handful of films. He was cast to play the father in Tarkovsky's intensely personal, dreamlike and somewhat hermetic Zerkalo/The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975). Philip Riley in his obituary of Yankovsky in The Independent : “a multi-layered oneiric autobiography, Yankovsky played a loose depiction of the hero's father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, whose verses are heard on the soundtrack. The complex layering included casting various members of Tarkovsky's family and, as one of the children, Yankovsky's son Philip.”
Zerkalo was the first of his films to be shown widely in the west. But he had to wait another eight years, for the main role in Tarkovsky's Nostalghia/Nostalgia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983), before he was internationally recognised again. Ronald Bergan: “Thankfully, This time he played the lead role – a Russian poet and musicologist doing research at a spa in the Tuscan hills. As an obscure act of faith, Yankovsky crosses an ancient sulphur pool from one side to the other carrying a lighted candle. With his lean, ascetic face and dark eyes, he was ideal as a man in extremis, through whom Tarkovsky, in his first film made outside the Soviet Union, expressed his melancholy and homesickness”.
Other of his internationally known films are Moy laskovyy i nezhnyy zver/The Shooting Party (Emil Loteanu, 1978), based on the Anton Chekhov story, where he was superb as Kamyshev, an intellectual crushed by the pettiness and false morality of a small provincial town; Polyoty vo sne i nayavu/Flights in Dreams and Reality (Roman Balayan, 1982), electrifying as a complacent adulterer painfully forced to reassess his life; Vlyublyon po sobstvennomu zhelaniyu/Love at His Own Choice (Sergei Mikaelyan, 1983), as a former champion bicyclist who is rescued from his drunken ways by a plain-looking librarian; Kreytserova sonata/The Kreutzer Sonata (Sofiya Milkina, Mikhail Shvejtser, 1987), adapted from Leo Tolstoy, where his portrayal of jealousy erupting into hate is a tour de force; and Pasport/The Passport (Georgi Daneliya, 1991), about a case of mistaken identity which leaves a Russian man stranded in Israel.
Russian postcard.
Russian postcard.
Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 106/72, 1972. Photo: Ter-Ovanesova. (This postcard was printed in an edition of 260.000 cards. The price was 6 kop.).
People's Artist of the Soviet Union
Oleg Yankovsky’s few western films are reportedly not among his best. In Tsareubiytsa/Assassin of the Tsar (Karen Shakhnazaro, 1991) he played a psychiatrist who is a look-alike of Tsar Nicholas II treating a man (Malcolm McDowell), who thinks himself the regicide. Mute Witness (Anthony Waller, 1994) is a British thriller set in a Russian film studio. While Sally Potter's transatlantic gypsy melodrama The Man Who Cried (2000) divided critics, Yankovsky impressed as Christina Ricci's Jewish father, who emigrates to the US from Russia.
In 1991, Yankovsky was the last actor to be awarded the title of People's Artist of the Soviet Union. He continued to receive awards for his work with several Nika Awards from the Russian Film Academy for his directorial debut Prikhodi na Menya Posmotret/Come Look At Me (Oleg Yankovskiy, 2001) and for his role in Lyubovnik/The Lover (Valery Todorovsky, 2002).
Starting in 1993, Yankovsky ran the Kinotavr Film Festival in Sotchi. He appeared as Count Pahlen in the drama Bednyy, bednyy Pavel/Poor, Poor Pavel (Vitali Melnikov, 2004) and as Komarovsky in a TV adaptation of Doktor Zhivago/Doctor Zhivago (Aleksandr Proshkin, 2006). His penultimate role was as Karenin in a television adaptation of Anna Karenina (Sergei Solovyov, 2009).
The last film Yankovsky appeared in was Tsar (Pavel Lungin, 2009) which was presented in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, just three days before his death. He was being highly praised for his dignified and spiritual performance of the Metropolitanate Philipp, childhood friend and adviser of Ivan the Terrible (Pyotr Mamonov), and his only adversary.
In 2009 Oleg Yankovsky died of pancreatic cancer in Moscow, aged 65. He is survived by his son, the actor and film director Filipp Yankovsky, who appeared as a young child in The Mirror, and his wife, the Lenkom actor Lyudmila Zorina.
Original trailer for Zerkalo (1975). Source: Whimpysinger (YouTube).
English DVD-trailer of Nostalghia (1983). Source: Peaseporridge (YouTube).
Trailer of Assassin of the tsar (1993). Source: PeterShop.com - Russian Movie (YouTube).
Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), John Riley (The Independent), Bloomberg News (The New York Times), Wikipedia and .
Russian postcard.
Russian postcard.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.
Aristocratic Bearing and Handsome Features
Oleg Ivanovich Yankovsky or Yankovskiy (Russian: Олег Иванович Янковский) was born in the village Jezkazgan, Kazakh SSR, USSR (now Jezkazgan, Kazakhstan) in 1944. He was born into a noble family of Polish origin. His father, a former tsarist army officer who joined the Red Army, was exiled and later died in a Gulag labour camp during Josef Stalin's crackdown on Trotskyites in the military.
After Stalin's death in 1953, the family settled in Saratov, in southern Russia. In 1957 Oleg's older brother Rostislav, an actor, went to Minsk. Back in Saratov, Oleg intended to become a dentist but a casual visit to the Slonov Theater Academy, the local drama school where his brother had studied changed his mind.
After marrying fellow student Ludmilla Zorina, he graduated in 1965 with an appearance in The Three Sisters before joining the Saratov Drama Theatre. A year later, aged 22, he appeared in his first film, O lyubvi/A Ballad of Love (Mikhail Bogin, 1966), and immediately impressed with his aristocratic bearing and handsome features.
His film career was launched, when he was cast in two films about World War II, Shchit i mech/The Shield and the Sword (Vladimir Basov, 1968) in which he played an arrogant German officer, and Sluzhili dva tovarishcha/Two Comrades Were Serving (Yevgeni Karelov, 1968).
About Sluzhili dva tovarishcha, Ronald Bergan wrote in his obituary of Yankovskiy in The Guardian : “Yankovsky played a student who joins the Red Army during the civil war, fighting for the revolution not only with his gun, but with his camera. The performance demonstrated Yankovsky's skill in playing heroic roles with a certain irony, without resorting to the larger-than-life mannerisms in Soviet cinema of the 1950’s. However, despite the ‘Thaw’ period following Khrushchev's famous speech in 1956 attacking Stalin's ‘cult of personality’, a new era of repression had set in by the time Yankovsky made his screen debut.”
Russian postcard, no. 2129783, 1980. Photo: publicity still for Shchit i Mech/The Shield and the Sword (Vladimir Basov, 1968).
Russian postcard.
Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 109/77, 1977. (This postcard was printed in an edition of 200.000 cards. The price was 5 kop.). Publicity still for Slovo dlya zashchity/A Word for the Defense (Vadim Abdrashitov, 1977).
Intensely Personal, Dreamlike and Somewhat Hermetic
In the west we have only little idea of how much Oleg Yankovsky was revered in his own country, in both Soviet and post-Soviet times, equally on stage and in films. In 1973, he joined Mark Zakharov's Lenin Komsomol Theatre in Moscow, and became one of its leading actors.
He starred in the TV versions of such Lenkom productions as Obyknovennoye chudo/An Ordinary Miracle (Mark Zakharov, 1978) and Tot Samyy Myunkhgauzen/The Very Same Munchhausen (Mark Zakharov, 1979). Despite the mediocrity of the majority of the films he appeared in during the stagnant Brezhnev years, he managed to humanise historical figures by expressing certain deep emotions, lifting his portrayals of Communist Party leaders above the popular film stereotypes. In 1974, he played a Communist Party official in Premiya/The Bonus (Sergei Mikaelyan, 1974), a film that generated international attention for its frank examination of mismanagement and fraud in the Soviet construction industry.
In the west we know Oleg Yankovsky only from a handful of films. He was cast to play the father in Tarkovsky's intensely personal, dreamlike and somewhat hermetic Zerkalo/The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975). Philip Riley in his obituary of Yankovsky in The Independent : “a multi-layered oneiric autobiography, Yankovsky played a loose depiction of the hero's father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, whose verses are heard on the soundtrack. The complex layering included casting various members of Tarkovsky's family and, as one of the children, Yankovsky's son Philip.”
Zerkalo was the first of his films to be shown widely in the west. But he had to wait another eight years, for the main role in Tarkovsky's Nostalghia/Nostalgia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983), before he was internationally recognised again. Ronald Bergan: “Thankfully, This time he played the lead role – a Russian poet and musicologist doing research at a spa in the Tuscan hills. As an obscure act of faith, Yankovsky crosses an ancient sulphur pool from one side to the other carrying a lighted candle. With his lean, ascetic face and dark eyes, he was ideal as a man in extremis, through whom Tarkovsky, in his first film made outside the Soviet Union, expressed his melancholy and homesickness”.
Other of his internationally known films are Moy laskovyy i nezhnyy zver/The Shooting Party (Emil Loteanu, 1978), based on the Anton Chekhov story, where he was superb as Kamyshev, an intellectual crushed by the pettiness and false morality of a small provincial town; Polyoty vo sne i nayavu/Flights in Dreams and Reality (Roman Balayan, 1982), electrifying as a complacent adulterer painfully forced to reassess his life; Vlyublyon po sobstvennomu zhelaniyu/Love at His Own Choice (Sergei Mikaelyan, 1983), as a former champion bicyclist who is rescued from his drunken ways by a plain-looking librarian; Kreytserova sonata/The Kreutzer Sonata (Sofiya Milkina, Mikhail Shvejtser, 1987), adapted from Leo Tolstoy, where his portrayal of jealousy erupting into hate is a tour de force; and Pasport/The Passport (Georgi Daneliya, 1991), about a case of mistaken identity which leaves a Russian man stranded in Israel.
Russian postcard.
Russian postcard.
Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 106/72, 1972. Photo: Ter-Ovanesova. (This postcard was printed in an edition of 260.000 cards. The price was 6 kop.).
People's Artist of the Soviet Union
Oleg Yankovsky’s few western films are reportedly not among his best. In Tsareubiytsa/Assassin of the Tsar (Karen Shakhnazaro, 1991) he played a psychiatrist who is a look-alike of Tsar Nicholas II treating a man (Malcolm McDowell), who thinks himself the regicide. Mute Witness (Anthony Waller, 1994) is a British thriller set in a Russian film studio. While Sally Potter's transatlantic gypsy melodrama The Man Who Cried (2000) divided critics, Yankovsky impressed as Christina Ricci's Jewish father, who emigrates to the US from Russia.
In 1991, Yankovsky was the last actor to be awarded the title of People's Artist of the Soviet Union. He continued to receive awards for his work with several Nika Awards from the Russian Film Academy for his directorial debut Prikhodi na Menya Posmotret/Come Look At Me (Oleg Yankovskiy, 2001) and for his role in Lyubovnik/The Lover (Valery Todorovsky, 2002).
Starting in 1993, Yankovsky ran the Kinotavr Film Festival in Sotchi. He appeared as Count Pahlen in the drama Bednyy, bednyy Pavel/Poor, Poor Pavel (Vitali Melnikov, 2004) and as Komarovsky in a TV adaptation of Doktor Zhivago/Doctor Zhivago (Aleksandr Proshkin, 2006). His penultimate role was as Karenin in a television adaptation of Anna Karenina (Sergei Solovyov, 2009).
The last film Yankovsky appeared in was Tsar (Pavel Lungin, 2009) which was presented in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, just three days before his death. He was being highly praised for his dignified and spiritual performance of the Metropolitanate Philipp, childhood friend and adviser of Ivan the Terrible (Pyotr Mamonov), and his only adversary.
In 2009 Oleg Yankovsky died of pancreatic cancer in Moscow, aged 65. He is survived by his son, the actor and film director Filipp Yankovsky, who appeared as a young child in The Mirror, and his wife, the Lenkom actor Lyudmila Zorina.
Original trailer for Zerkalo (1975). Source: Whimpysinger (YouTube).
English DVD-trailer of Nostalghia (1983). Source: Peaseporridge (YouTube).
Trailer of Assassin of the tsar (1993). Source: PeterShop.com - Russian Movie (YouTube).
Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), John Riley (The Independent), Bloomberg News (The New York Times), Wikipedia and .
July 21, 2015
Imported from the USA: Jane Fonda
American actress Jane Fonda (1937) is a two-time Academy Award winner for the crime thriller Klute (1971) and the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Roger Vadim's psychedelic Science Fiction spoof Barbarella (1968) made her one of the icons of the European cinema of the 1960s.
German postcard by ISV, Sort. 19/6. Publicity still for La Ronde/Circle of Love (Roger Vadim, 1964).
Yugoslavian postcard by Cik Razgledinica. Photo: publicity still for Barbarella (Roger Vadim, 1968).
British postcard by Pyramid, Leicester, no. PC 8095. Photo: publicity still for Barbarella (Roger Vadim, 1968).
Lady Jayne
Jane Fonda was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda in New York in 1937. She was the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw, née Seymour. She has a brother, actor Peter Fonda, and a maternal half-sister, Frances.
Her mother committed suicide when Jane was 12. The suicide was kept from her as a teenager, and she was told that her mother had died of heart failure. Fonda learned the truth months later while leafing through a movie magazine in art class at Vassar.
Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by director Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of The Country Girl.
Before starting her acting career, Fonda was a fashion model, gracing the cover of Vogue twice. In 1958, she met Lee Strasberg and she went to study acting in earnest at the Actors Studio. In 1960, she made her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received the first of two Tony Award nominations.
Later the same year, she made her screen debut in the romantic comedy Tall Story (Joshua Logan, 1960), in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. In Walk on the Wild Side (Edward Dmytryk, 1962), she played a prostitute, and earned a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer.
She rose to fame in such films as Period of Adjustment (George Roy Hill, 1962), Sunday in New York (Peter Tewksbury, 1963), Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) opposite Lee Marvin, and Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967), co-starring Robert Redford.
Fonda also worked in France. She appeared opposite Alain Delon in the delightful sexy thriller Les félins/Joy house (René Clément, 1964) and that same year, she was among the all-star cast of the anthology film La Ronde/Circle of Love (Roger Vadim, 1964), based on the classic Austrian novel Der Reigen by Arthur Schnitzler. Fonda astonished everyone (none as much as her father) by becoming one of the first major American actresses to appear nude in a foreign film.
Director Roger Vadim became her first husband in 1965. He featured her as a sex goddess in his next films, La curée/Tears of Rapture (Roger Vadim, 1966) with Michel Piccoli , and a segment of the anthology film Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim, 1968), an adaptation of three horror stories by Edgar Allan Poe. In Vadim's segment, Metzgernstein, Fonda played a decadent contessa who falls in love with her pure cousin (played by her brother Peter Fonda).
In 1968, Jane played the title role in Vadim's psychedelic SF spoof Barbarella, which established her status as a sex symbol. Despite the striptease-in-vacuum beginning and the kinky costumes, Barbarella is now a rather innocent and campy film. Brian J. Dillard at AllMovie : "Although it often pops up on 'Worst Movies Ever' lists, it's actually something of a treat if one approaches it with the right attitude. From the eye-popping plasticity of the production design to the gentle grooviness of the Bob Crewe Generation's campy lounge soundtrack, Barbarella is a defiantly trivial film. But Fonda's studied vacuity, Anita Pallenberg's kinky glamour, and John Phillip Law's bronzed pecs and hippie truisms keep things sexy, sweet, and funny. Fonda has spent more than three decades trying to live down the zero-gee peep show that opens the film, but besides a few bare breasts and countless double entendres, nothing here crosses the line between erotic comedy and pornography."
A turning point in her career was the American social drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They (Sydney Pollack, 1969). She played one of the contenders in a desperate dance marathon in 1932, during the Great Depression. Fonda herself considers They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as one of her best films. She went on to win the Best Actress Oscar for the crime thriller Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971). In France, Fonda next starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972). A year later, she divorced from Vadim.
Spanish postcard by Ediciones Tarje Fher, no. 305. Deposito legal BI 1100-63. Photo: MGM.
Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor, no. 367. Photo: publicity still for The Chapman Report (George Cukor, 1962) with Efrem Zimbalist.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. 16/71. Photo: Steffen.
French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 461. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by Editions P.I., offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 1135. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Workout
Jane Fonda is a seven-time Academy Award nominee. She won her second Best Actress Oscar for the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for her portrayal of the playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia (Fred Zinnemann, 1977), The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979) opposite Michael Douglas, On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981) with Katherine Hepburn and her father Henry Fonda, and The Morning After (Sidney Lumet, 1986) with Jeff Bridges.
In 1982, Jane Fonda released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling video of the time. It would be the first of 22 workout videos released by her over the next 13 years which would collectively sell over 17 million copies.
Divorced from her second husband, the politician Tom Hayden in 1990, she married media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting. Divorced from Turner in 2001, she returned to acting with her first film in 15 years with the comedy Monster in Law (Robert Luketic, 2005) opposite Jennifer Lopez.
Subsequent films have included Georgia Rule (Garry Marshall, 2007) with Lindsay Lohan, the French drama Et si on vivait tous ensemble?/All Together (Stéphane Robelin, 2011), The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013) as First Lady Nancy Reagan, and This Is Where I Leave You (Shawn Levy, 2014).
In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 45 year absence, in the play 33 Variations, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, while her recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012-2014), has earned her two Emmy Award nominations. She also released another five exercise videos between 2010 and 2012.
Jane Fonda has been an activist for many political causes. Her counterculture era opposition to the Vietnam War included her being photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, which was very controversial. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women, and describes herself as a feminist. In 2005, she, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organization.
Jane Fonda published the autobiography My Life So Far in 2005. In 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time. She has two children, daughter Vanessa Vadim (1968) with Roger Vadim, and Troy O'Donovan Hayden (aka Troy Garity) (1973) with Tom Hayden.
At the moment of writing, Jane Fonda is expected to appear in several new films and series. I am curious about the film Youth (2015), directed by Paolo Sorrentino. The film stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as two old friends, a retired composer and conductor and a still working film director, who are on vacation in an elegant hotel at the foot of the Alps. Someone wants at all costs to hear the retired conductor conduct again. Last May, the film premiered in Italy.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/353. Photo: Sam Levin.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/244.
Italian postcard in the Artisti di Sempre series by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 344.
French postcard by EDUG, no. 377. Photo: Sam Levin.
American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, Ca., no. Personality #61, 1981. Photo: Annie Leibovitz.
Sources: Brian J. Dillard (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
German postcard by ISV, Sort. 19/6. Publicity still for La Ronde/Circle of Love (Roger Vadim, 1964).
Yugoslavian postcard by Cik Razgledinica. Photo: publicity still for Barbarella (Roger Vadim, 1968).
British postcard by Pyramid, Leicester, no. PC 8095. Photo: publicity still for Barbarella (Roger Vadim, 1968).
Lady Jayne
Jane Fonda was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda in New York in 1937. She was the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw, née Seymour. She has a brother, actor Peter Fonda, and a maternal half-sister, Frances.
Her mother committed suicide when Jane was 12. The suicide was kept from her as a teenager, and she was told that her mother had died of heart failure. Fonda learned the truth months later while leafing through a movie magazine in art class at Vassar.
Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by director Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of The Country Girl.
Before starting her acting career, Fonda was a fashion model, gracing the cover of Vogue twice. In 1958, she met Lee Strasberg and she went to study acting in earnest at the Actors Studio. In 1960, she made her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received the first of two Tony Award nominations.
Later the same year, she made her screen debut in the romantic comedy Tall Story (Joshua Logan, 1960), in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. In Walk on the Wild Side (Edward Dmytryk, 1962), she played a prostitute, and earned a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer.
She rose to fame in such films as Period of Adjustment (George Roy Hill, 1962), Sunday in New York (Peter Tewksbury, 1963), Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) opposite Lee Marvin, and Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967), co-starring Robert Redford.
Fonda also worked in France. She appeared opposite Alain Delon in the delightful sexy thriller Les félins/Joy house (René Clément, 1964) and that same year, she was among the all-star cast of the anthology film La Ronde/Circle of Love (Roger Vadim, 1964), based on the classic Austrian novel Der Reigen by Arthur Schnitzler. Fonda astonished everyone (none as much as her father) by becoming one of the first major American actresses to appear nude in a foreign film.
Director Roger Vadim became her first husband in 1965. He featured her as a sex goddess in his next films, La curée/Tears of Rapture (Roger Vadim, 1966) with Michel Piccoli , and a segment of the anthology film Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim, 1968), an adaptation of three horror stories by Edgar Allan Poe. In Vadim's segment, Metzgernstein, Fonda played a decadent contessa who falls in love with her pure cousin (played by her brother Peter Fonda).
In 1968, Jane played the title role in Vadim's psychedelic SF spoof Barbarella, which established her status as a sex symbol. Despite the striptease-in-vacuum beginning and the kinky costumes, Barbarella is now a rather innocent and campy film. Brian J. Dillard at AllMovie : "Although it often pops up on 'Worst Movies Ever' lists, it's actually something of a treat if one approaches it with the right attitude. From the eye-popping plasticity of the production design to the gentle grooviness of the Bob Crewe Generation's campy lounge soundtrack, Barbarella is a defiantly trivial film. But Fonda's studied vacuity, Anita Pallenberg's kinky glamour, and John Phillip Law's bronzed pecs and hippie truisms keep things sexy, sweet, and funny. Fonda has spent more than three decades trying to live down the zero-gee peep show that opens the film, but besides a few bare breasts and countless double entendres, nothing here crosses the line between erotic comedy and pornography."
A turning point in her career was the American social drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They (Sydney Pollack, 1969). She played one of the contenders in a desperate dance marathon in 1932, during the Great Depression. Fonda herself considers They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as one of her best films. She went on to win the Best Actress Oscar for the crime thriller Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971). In France, Fonda next starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972). A year later, she divorced from Vadim.
Spanish postcard by Ediciones Tarje Fher, no. 305. Deposito legal BI 1100-63. Photo: MGM.
Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor, no. 367. Photo: publicity still for The Chapman Report (George Cukor, 1962) with Efrem Zimbalist.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. 16/71. Photo: Steffen.
French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 461. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by Editions P.I., offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 1135. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Workout
Jane Fonda is a seven-time Academy Award nominee. She won her second Best Actress Oscar for the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for her portrayal of the playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia (Fred Zinnemann, 1977), The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979) opposite Michael Douglas, On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981) with Katherine Hepburn and her father Henry Fonda, and The Morning After (Sidney Lumet, 1986) with Jeff Bridges.
In 1982, Jane Fonda released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling video of the time. It would be the first of 22 workout videos released by her over the next 13 years which would collectively sell over 17 million copies.
Divorced from her second husband, the politician Tom Hayden in 1990, she married media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting. Divorced from Turner in 2001, she returned to acting with her first film in 15 years with the comedy Monster in Law (Robert Luketic, 2005) opposite Jennifer Lopez.
Subsequent films have included Georgia Rule (Garry Marshall, 2007) with Lindsay Lohan, the French drama Et si on vivait tous ensemble?/All Together (Stéphane Robelin, 2011), The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013) as First Lady Nancy Reagan, and This Is Where I Leave You (Shawn Levy, 2014).
In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 45 year absence, in the play 33 Variations, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, while her recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012-2014), has earned her two Emmy Award nominations. She also released another five exercise videos between 2010 and 2012.
Jane Fonda has been an activist for many political causes. Her counterculture era opposition to the Vietnam War included her being photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, which was very controversial. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women, and describes herself as a feminist. In 2005, she, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organization.
Jane Fonda published the autobiography My Life So Far in 2005. In 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time. She has two children, daughter Vanessa Vadim (1968) with Roger Vadim, and Troy O'Donovan Hayden (aka Troy Garity) (1973) with Tom Hayden.
At the moment of writing, Jane Fonda is expected to appear in several new films and series. I am curious about the film Youth (2015), directed by Paolo Sorrentino. The film stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as two old friends, a retired composer and conductor and a still working film director, who are on vacation in an elegant hotel at the foot of the Alps. Someone wants at all costs to hear the retired conductor conduct again. Last May, the film premiered in Italy.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/353. Photo: Sam Levin.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/244.
Italian postcard in the Artisti di Sempre series by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 344.
French postcard by EDUG, no. 377. Photo: Sam Levin.
American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, Ca., no. Personality #61, 1981. Photo: Annie Leibovitz.
Sources: Brian J. Dillard (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
July 20, 2015
Mila Parély
Charismatic, mysterious Mila Parély (1917-2012) was a French actress of Polish ancestry. She was best known for the roles as Geneviève in Renoir's La Règle du jeu (1939) and as Belle's sister in Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête (1946).
French postcard by Edition P.I., Paris, no. 6. Photo: Star.
One of the greatest films in the history of cinema
Mila Parély was born as Olga Colette Peszynsky in Paris in 1917. She was of Polish ancestry.
In 1932 Parély started her career in the short film Vive le sport/The Freshman, now considered as lost. In the following years she played several small roles, like a typist in the fantasy Liliom (Fritz Lang, 1934), ‘Marceline’ in Mister Flow (Robert Siodmak, 1936), a dancing girl in Le drame de Shanghaï/The Shanghai Drama (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1938), and a servant in Remontons les Champs-Élysées (Sacha Guitry, 1938). During this period, she also worked as a singer and made an American tour with the orchestra of Rudy Vallee.
She had her breakthrough in the cinema as Geneviève, the mistress of married Robert ( Marcel Dalio ) in La Règle du jeu/The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939). Renoir’s masterpiece is a comedy of manners that depicts members of upper-class French society and their servants just before the beginning of World War II, showing their moral callousness on the eve of impending destruction.
La Règle du jeu was the most expensive French film up to that time, with its original budget of 2.5 million francs increased to five million, but it proved to be a critical and financial disaster. Although the original negative was destroyed in World War II, La Règle du jeu was restored under Renoir's supervision to its original length (minus one short scene) in the late 1950s, debuting to great acclaim at the 1959 Venice Film Festival. Since then La Règle du jeu has often been called one of the greatest films in the history of cinema.
Another interesting film was Les anges du péché/Angels of Sin (1943), the first feature film directed by Robert Bresson. Parély also appeared in the drama Le Lit à colonnes/The Four-poster (Roland Tual, 1942), starring Fernand Ledoux and Jean Marais .
She married the handsome Marais that year but they divorced in 1944. Jean Marais was homosexual and the long-term lover of French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Cocteau blessed their marriage, because he wanted Marais to be happy. After their divorce Parély and Marais co-starred in Cocteau’s romantic fantasy La Belle et la Bête/Beauty And The Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946). Parély played the sister of Belle ( Josette Day ).
Mark Pittillo at AllMovie : “[Jean Cocteau] gives the film a shimmering, romantic look, and the brilliant costume and set design. The Beast's makeup, in particular, works beautifully; it's just realistic enough to be convincing, while allowing Marais to emote through his eyes and subtle facial tics. The unforgettable sets, which include human-arm candelabras and moving statues, are a marvel of impressionistic romanticism, filled with symbolism that hints at the story's darker implications. Forget Disney -- this is the closest anyone's come to capturing the essence of a fairy tale on film.”
French postcard by A. Noyer (A.N.), Paris, no. 1233. Photo: R. (Raymond) Voinquel.
French postcard by E. C., Paris, no. 105. Photo: Pathé.
A small-town whorehouse
In 1947, Mila Parély married Scottish racing driver Tomas ‘Taso’ Mathieson. Between 1930 and 1955, he entered more than 30 races, including multiple times the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The couple would stay together till his death in 1991.
Parély continued to play supporting parts in French and British films like Dernier refuge/Last Refuge (Marc Maurette, 1947), based on Le Locataire by Georges Simenon, the British thriller Snowbound (David MacDonald, 1948) starring Dennis Price , and the drama Mission à Tanger/Mission in Tangier (André Hunebelle, 1949) starring Raymond Rouleau .
Her best film of the 1950s is the anthology Le Plaisir/House of Pleasure (1952) directed by Max Ophüls and based on three stories by Guy de Maupassant. In the episode La Maison Tellier, Parély played one of the employees of a small-town whorehouse, who go out on for a day to the country to visit the communion of the niece of the Madame. She also played the female lead in the British crime film Blood Orange/Three Stops to Murder (Terence Fisher, 1953) opposite Tom Conway.
After that she only worked for television and played in the thriller Jet Storm (Cy Endfield, 1958), but her footage ended on the floor of the editing room. In the late 1950s, Parély retired in order to take care of her husband Taso Mathieson, who had been seriously injured in a near-death accident.
After living in England and Portugal, they moved to Vichy, France, where Parély organized several cultural and artistic events. Mathieson concentrated on his writing and his collection of photographs, together with Parély. He wrote various authoritative books, including Grand Prix Racing 1906-1914.
In the late 1980s, Parély returned to acting briefly. She played a countess in the film Comédie d'été/Summer Interlude (Daniel Vigne, 1989) with Maruschka Detmers, and also appeared in a TV film. In 1997 followed her final role in a short film, just like how her career had started.
Mila Parély died in 2012, aged 94, in Vichy.
French postcard by Editions E.C., Paris, no. 50. Photo: U.F.P.C.
French postcard by Edition d'Art BelFrance, no. 905. Photo: Sirius-Gaumont. Publicity still for Le cavalier noir/The black knight (Gilles Grangier, 1945).
Sources: Mark Pittillo (AllMovie), Yvan Foucart (Les Gens du Cinéma - French), Wikipedia (French and English) and .
French postcard by Edition P.I., Paris, no. 6. Photo: Star.
One of the greatest films in the history of cinema
Mila Parély was born as Olga Colette Peszynsky in Paris in 1917. She was of Polish ancestry.
In 1932 Parély started her career in the short film Vive le sport/The Freshman, now considered as lost. In the following years she played several small roles, like a typist in the fantasy Liliom (Fritz Lang, 1934), ‘Marceline’ in Mister Flow (Robert Siodmak, 1936), a dancing girl in Le drame de Shanghaï/The Shanghai Drama (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1938), and a servant in Remontons les Champs-Élysées (Sacha Guitry, 1938). During this period, she also worked as a singer and made an American tour with the orchestra of Rudy Vallee.
She had her breakthrough in the cinema as Geneviève, the mistress of married Robert ( Marcel Dalio ) in La Règle du jeu/The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939). Renoir’s masterpiece is a comedy of manners that depicts members of upper-class French society and their servants just before the beginning of World War II, showing their moral callousness on the eve of impending destruction.
La Règle du jeu was the most expensive French film up to that time, with its original budget of 2.5 million francs increased to five million, but it proved to be a critical and financial disaster. Although the original negative was destroyed in World War II, La Règle du jeu was restored under Renoir's supervision to its original length (minus one short scene) in the late 1950s, debuting to great acclaim at the 1959 Venice Film Festival. Since then La Règle du jeu has often been called one of the greatest films in the history of cinema.
Another interesting film was Les anges du péché/Angels of Sin (1943), the first feature film directed by Robert Bresson. Parély also appeared in the drama Le Lit à colonnes/The Four-poster (Roland Tual, 1942), starring Fernand Ledoux and Jean Marais .
She married the handsome Marais that year but they divorced in 1944. Jean Marais was homosexual and the long-term lover of French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Cocteau blessed their marriage, because he wanted Marais to be happy. After their divorce Parély and Marais co-starred in Cocteau’s romantic fantasy La Belle et la Bête/Beauty And The Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946). Parély played the sister of Belle ( Josette Day ).
Mark Pittillo at AllMovie : “[Jean Cocteau] gives the film a shimmering, romantic look, and the brilliant costume and set design. The Beast's makeup, in particular, works beautifully; it's just realistic enough to be convincing, while allowing Marais to emote through his eyes and subtle facial tics. The unforgettable sets, which include human-arm candelabras and moving statues, are a marvel of impressionistic romanticism, filled with symbolism that hints at the story's darker implications. Forget Disney -- this is the closest anyone's come to capturing the essence of a fairy tale on film.”
French postcard by A. Noyer (A.N.), Paris, no. 1233. Photo: R. (Raymond) Voinquel.
French postcard by E. C., Paris, no. 105. Photo: Pathé.
A small-town whorehouse
In 1947, Mila Parély married Scottish racing driver Tomas ‘Taso’ Mathieson. Between 1930 and 1955, he entered more than 30 races, including multiple times the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The couple would stay together till his death in 1991.
Parély continued to play supporting parts in French and British films like Dernier refuge/Last Refuge (Marc Maurette, 1947), based on Le Locataire by Georges Simenon, the British thriller Snowbound (David MacDonald, 1948) starring Dennis Price , and the drama Mission à Tanger/Mission in Tangier (André Hunebelle, 1949) starring Raymond Rouleau .
Her best film of the 1950s is the anthology Le Plaisir/House of Pleasure (1952) directed by Max Ophüls and based on three stories by Guy de Maupassant. In the episode La Maison Tellier, Parély played one of the employees of a small-town whorehouse, who go out on for a day to the country to visit the communion of the niece of the Madame. She also played the female lead in the British crime film Blood Orange/Three Stops to Murder (Terence Fisher, 1953) opposite Tom Conway.
After that she only worked for television and played in the thriller Jet Storm (Cy Endfield, 1958), but her footage ended on the floor of the editing room. In the late 1950s, Parély retired in order to take care of her husband Taso Mathieson, who had been seriously injured in a near-death accident.
After living in England and Portugal, they moved to Vichy, France, where Parély organized several cultural and artistic events. Mathieson concentrated on his writing and his collection of photographs, together with Parély. He wrote various authoritative books, including Grand Prix Racing 1906-1914.
In the late 1980s, Parély returned to acting briefly. She played a countess in the film Comédie d'été/Summer Interlude (Daniel Vigne, 1989) with Maruschka Detmers, and also appeared in a TV film. In 1997 followed her final role in a short film, just like how her career had started.
Mila Parély died in 2012, aged 94, in Vichy.
French postcard by Editions E.C., Paris, no. 50. Photo: U.F.P.C.
French postcard by Edition d'Art BelFrance, no. 905. Photo: Sirius-Gaumont. Publicity still for Le cavalier noir/The black knight (Gilles Grangier, 1945).
Sources: Mark Pittillo (AllMovie), Yvan Foucart (Les Gens du Cinéma - French), Wikipedia (French and English) and .
July 19, 2015
Robert Le Vigan
French actor Robert Le Vigan (1900-1972) appeared in more than 60 films between 1931 and 1943, almost exclusively in supporting or small roles. The extravagant actor specialized in louche, menacing or diabolical characters, and was seen in several classics of the poetic realism. During the occupation, he was a collaborator with the Nazis and he openly expressed his fascist attitudes. After the liberation his career was finished.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 177. Photo: Star.
Infused with poetic realism
Robert Le Vigan was born Robert-Charles-Alexandre Coquillaud in Paris, in 1900. His father was a veterinary. Robert was interested very early in the dramatic art and entered the Conservatoire de Paris (Academy of Paris). He won the second prize for comedy in his first year, but left the academy, when he learned that he would never obtain the first prize because of his military engagement.
He decided to find employment in variety and played minor parts to pay for acting lessons. In 1920, he becomes Robert Le Vigan, but during his career he was also credited as R. Le Vigan, Robert Levigan, and Le Vigan, and he was called ‘Vigue’ by his friend, the author Louis-Ferdinand Celine.
He interpreted Molière and Jean-François Regnard in Belgium, and later played Molière and George Bernard Shaw in the stage companies of Gaston Baty and Louis Jouvet . In 1927, he appeared with Arletty in sketches.
Director Julien Duvivier spotted him on stage and engaged him for his film Les Cinq Gentlemen maudits/The Five Accursed Gentlemen (Julien Duvivier, 1931) starring Harry Baur and René Lefèvre . In the following decade, Le Vigan would often work again with Duvivier, such as at the drama La Bandera/Escape from Yesterday (Julien Duvivier, 1935) with Annabella and Jean Gabin , and La charrette fantôme/The Phantom Wagon (Julien Duvivier, 1939) with Pierre Fresnay and Louis Jouvet . Like Duvivier's other works of the period, these films are infused with poetic realism.
In 1933, Le Vigan co-starred in the French-German science fiction film Le tunnel/The Tunnel (Kurt Bernhardt, 1933) with Jean Gabin and Madeleine Renaud . It told the story of a construction of a vast tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean connecting Europe and America. It was the French language version of the German film Der Tunnel, with a different cast and some changes to the plot. Such Multiple-language versions were common in the 1930s following the introduction of sound, and before the practice of dubbing had come to dominate international releases. Germany and France made a significant number of films together during the decade.
The next year, he appeared in the historical drama Madame Bovary (Jean Renoir, 1934), adapted from Gustave Flaubert's 1857 novel Madame Bovary. The film starred Valentine Tessier and Pierre Renoir , son of painter Claude Renoir and the older brother of the director.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ
A highlight in Robert Le Vigan's career was his role as Jesus Christ in Golgotha (Julien Duvivier, 1935), a French film about the death of Jesus Christ, released in English-speaking countries as Behold the Man. The film co-stars Harry Baur as Herod, and Jean Gabin as Pontius Pilate.
Le Vigan's performance marks the first direct portrayal of Christ in a sound film. For the most part, Jesus is shown from a respectful distance as was later also the case in Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951), The Robe (Henry Koster, 1953) and Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959), but there are also a few closer shots and even close-ups. The British Board of Film Censors did not allow British eyes to see the film, but the film did play throughout Europe and in the US. The American National Board of Review named the film the sixth best foreign film of 1937. This role earned him many praises and established Le Vigan as a sought-after character player.
The next year, he played an alcoholic actor in the drama Les Bas-fonds/The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936), based on a play of the same title by Maxim Gorky. A glimpse into the lives of several people living at the bottom of the social heap, focuses on a petty criminal ( Jean Gabin ), the woman he loves ( Suzy Prim ), and a bankrupt newcomer ( Louis Jouvet ) to the slum where the story is set. The film, a highlight of the poetic realism in the French cinema, received the first Louis Delluc Prize in 1937.
Le Vigan also worked with director Marcel L’Herbier at the drama La citadelle du silence/The Citadel of Silence (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937) starring Annabella , and with Marcel Pagnol at the drama Regain/Harvest (Marcel Pagnol, 1937), starring Fernandel .
Le Vigan also played a supporting character in another classic of poetic realism, Le Quai des brumes/Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, 1938) with Jean Gabin , Michel Simon and Michèle Morgan . The film was the 1939 winner of France's top cinematic prize, the Prix Louis-Delluc. He also acted with Fernand Gravey , Michel Simon and Corinne Luchaire in the drama Le Dernier tournant/The Last Turning (Pierre Chenal, 1939), based on novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain, and the French musical Louise (Abel Gance, 1939) with Grace Moore.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ. The verso of this card promotes the screening of this film at the Omnia Pathé in Paris between 18 and 24 October 1935.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.
Collaborator with the Nazis
In the Encyclopedia of European Cinema , Ginette Vincendeau calls Robert Le Vigan "a brilliant, extravagant actor, (...) specialised in louche, menacing or diabolical characters". During the occupation of France, the actor himself was a collaborator with the Nazis and made anti-Semitic propaganda on Radio Paris. He became a member of the Parti Populiste Français (French Populist Party), a right-wing pro-fascist party, and claimed his anti-Semitism and advocated total collaboration with the German authorities.
Le Vigan played a supporting part in the first film produced by Continental Films, the drama L'Assassinat du père Noël/Who Killed Santa Claus? (Roger Chapatte, Christian-Jaque, 1941) with Harry Baur . Continental was a German-controlled film production company, which stood as the sole authorized film production organization in Nazi-occupied France. Established in October 1940, it was entirely bankrolled by the German government, with its finances, production and distribution tightly integrated with the German film industry. Continental released 30 features before ending production four years later.
He also appeared in the Charles Trenet musical Romance de Paris (Jean Boyer, 1941) and Goupi Mains Rouges/It Happened at the Inn (Jacques Becker, 1943) starring Fernand Ledoux. He played the role of informer-thief Jéricho in Les Enfants du Paradis/Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945). The film’s production was delayed again after the Allies landed in Normandy and Sicily. Carné and Prévert had hidden some of the key reels of film from the occupying forces, hoping that the liberation of Paris would have occurred when the film was ready for release.
When Paris was liberated in August 1944, Le Vigan was sentenced to death by the Resistance for collaborating with the Nazis, and had to flee, along with his friend, the fascist author Céline, to Sigmaringen in Germany. He was replaced in Les Enfants du Paradis/Children of Paradise by Pierre Renoir , and most of the scenes had to be redone.
One scene featuring Le Vigan survives in the middle of the second part, when Jericho snitches to Nathalie. Les Enfants du Paradis was the third most popular film at the French box office in 1945 and was voted ‘Best Film Ever’ in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals in 1995.
In 1946, Le Vigan was tried and convicted as a Nazi collaborator. He was sentenced to forced labour for ten years but after three years he was released under condition and went in exile, first to Spain, and then Argentina. In Argentina, he made his last films, including Rio turbio (Alejandro Wehner, 1952). Later he lived in misery and sold cakes in the streets of Buenos Aires. At the end of the 1960s, François Truffaut contacted him to rehabilitate him as an actor, but the shaken Le Vigan did not dare to withdraw from his retirement.
In 1972 Robert Le Vigan died in Argentina, in the city of Tandil. He was 72.
Crucifixion scene from Golgotha (1935). Source: lolo pelle (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.
French trailer for Quai des Brumes (1938). Source: Chaîne de MADEINFRENCH (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.
Opening scene from L'Assassinat du père Noël/Who Killed Santa Claus? (1941). Source: Luc Edouard (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.
Sources: Ginette Vincendeau (Encyclopedia of European Cinema), (IMDb), Donatienne (L’encinémathèque – French), Wikipedia (English and French), and .
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 177. Photo: Star.
Infused with poetic realism
Robert Le Vigan was born Robert-Charles-Alexandre Coquillaud in Paris, in 1900. His father was a veterinary. Robert was interested very early in the dramatic art and entered the Conservatoire de Paris (Academy of Paris). He won the second prize for comedy in his first year, but left the academy, when he learned that he would never obtain the first prize because of his military engagement.
He decided to find employment in variety and played minor parts to pay for acting lessons. In 1920, he becomes Robert Le Vigan, but during his career he was also credited as R. Le Vigan, Robert Levigan, and Le Vigan, and he was called ‘Vigue’ by his friend, the author Louis-Ferdinand Celine.
He interpreted Molière and Jean-François Regnard in Belgium, and later played Molière and George Bernard Shaw in the stage companies of Gaston Baty and Louis Jouvet . In 1927, he appeared with Arletty in sketches.
Director Julien Duvivier spotted him on stage and engaged him for his film Les Cinq Gentlemen maudits/The Five Accursed Gentlemen (Julien Duvivier, 1931) starring Harry Baur and René Lefèvre . In the following decade, Le Vigan would often work again with Duvivier, such as at the drama La Bandera/Escape from Yesterday (Julien Duvivier, 1935) with Annabella and Jean Gabin , and La charrette fantôme/The Phantom Wagon (Julien Duvivier, 1939) with Pierre Fresnay and Louis Jouvet . Like Duvivier's other works of the period, these films are infused with poetic realism.
In 1933, Le Vigan co-starred in the French-German science fiction film Le tunnel/The Tunnel (Kurt Bernhardt, 1933) with Jean Gabin and Madeleine Renaud . It told the story of a construction of a vast tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean connecting Europe and America. It was the French language version of the German film Der Tunnel, with a different cast and some changes to the plot. Such Multiple-language versions were common in the 1930s following the introduction of sound, and before the practice of dubbing had come to dominate international releases. Germany and France made a significant number of films together during the decade.
The next year, he appeared in the historical drama Madame Bovary (Jean Renoir, 1934), adapted from Gustave Flaubert's 1857 novel Madame Bovary. The film starred Valentine Tessier and Pierre Renoir , son of painter Claude Renoir and the older brother of the director.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ
A highlight in Robert Le Vigan's career was his role as Jesus Christ in Golgotha (Julien Duvivier, 1935), a French film about the death of Jesus Christ, released in English-speaking countries as Behold the Man. The film co-stars Harry Baur as Herod, and Jean Gabin as Pontius Pilate.
Le Vigan's performance marks the first direct portrayal of Christ in a sound film. For the most part, Jesus is shown from a respectful distance as was later also the case in Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951), The Robe (Henry Koster, 1953) and Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959), but there are also a few closer shots and even close-ups. The British Board of Film Censors did not allow British eyes to see the film, but the film did play throughout Europe and in the US. The American National Board of Review named the film the sixth best foreign film of 1937. This role earned him many praises and established Le Vigan as a sought-after character player.
The next year, he played an alcoholic actor in the drama Les Bas-fonds/The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936), based on a play of the same title by Maxim Gorky. A glimpse into the lives of several people living at the bottom of the social heap, focuses on a petty criminal ( Jean Gabin ), the woman he loves ( Suzy Prim ), and a bankrupt newcomer ( Louis Jouvet ) to the slum where the story is set. The film, a highlight of the poetic realism in the French cinema, received the first Louis Delluc Prize in 1937.
Le Vigan also worked with director Marcel L’Herbier at the drama La citadelle du silence/The Citadel of Silence (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937) starring Annabella , and with Marcel Pagnol at the drama Regain/Harvest (Marcel Pagnol, 1937), starring Fernandel .
Le Vigan also played a supporting character in another classic of poetic realism, Le Quai des brumes/Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, 1938) with Jean Gabin , Michel Simon and Michèle Morgan . The film was the 1939 winner of France's top cinematic prize, the Prix Louis-Delluc. He also acted with Fernand Gravey , Michel Simon and Corinne Luchaire in the drama Le Dernier tournant/The Last Turning (Pierre Chenal, 1939), based on novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain, and the French musical Louise (Abel Gance, 1939) with Grace Moore.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ. The verso of this card promotes the screening of this film at the Omnia Pathé in Paris between 18 and 24 October 1935.
French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.
Collaborator with the Nazis
In the Encyclopedia of European Cinema , Ginette Vincendeau calls Robert Le Vigan "a brilliant, extravagant actor, (...) specialised in louche, menacing or diabolical characters". During the occupation of France, the actor himself was a collaborator with the Nazis and made anti-Semitic propaganda on Radio Paris. He became a member of the Parti Populiste Français (French Populist Party), a right-wing pro-fascist party, and claimed his anti-Semitism and advocated total collaboration with the German authorities.
Le Vigan played a supporting part in the first film produced by Continental Films, the drama L'Assassinat du père Noël/Who Killed Santa Claus? (Roger Chapatte, Christian-Jaque, 1941) with Harry Baur . Continental was a German-controlled film production company, which stood as the sole authorized film production organization in Nazi-occupied France. Established in October 1940, it was entirely bankrolled by the German government, with its finances, production and distribution tightly integrated with the German film industry. Continental released 30 features before ending production four years later.
He also appeared in the Charles Trenet musical Romance de Paris (Jean Boyer, 1941) and Goupi Mains Rouges/It Happened at the Inn (Jacques Becker, 1943) starring Fernand Ledoux. He played the role of informer-thief Jéricho in Les Enfants du Paradis/Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945). The film’s production was delayed again after the Allies landed in Normandy and Sicily. Carné and Prévert had hidden some of the key reels of film from the occupying forces, hoping that the liberation of Paris would have occurred when the film was ready for release.
When Paris was liberated in August 1944, Le Vigan was sentenced to death by the Resistance for collaborating with the Nazis, and had to flee, along with his friend, the fascist author Céline, to Sigmaringen in Germany. He was replaced in Les Enfants du Paradis/Children of Paradise by Pierre Renoir , and most of the scenes had to be redone.
One scene featuring Le Vigan survives in the middle of the second part, when Jericho snitches to Nathalie. Les Enfants du Paradis was the third most popular film at the French box office in 1945 and was voted ‘Best Film Ever’ in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals in 1995.
In 1946, Le Vigan was tried and convicted as a Nazi collaborator. He was sentenced to forced labour for ten years but after three years he was released under condition and went in exile, first to Spain, and then Argentina. In Argentina, he made his last films, including Rio turbio (Alejandro Wehner, 1952). Later he lived in misery and sold cakes in the streets of Buenos Aires. At the end of the 1960s, François Truffaut contacted him to rehabilitate him as an actor, but the shaken Le Vigan did not dare to withdraw from his retirement.
In 1972 Robert Le Vigan died in Argentina, in the city of Tandil. He was 72.
Crucifixion scene from Golgotha (1935). Source: lolo pelle (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.
French trailer for Quai des Brumes (1938). Source: Chaîne de MADEINFRENCH (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.
Opening scene from L'Assassinat du père Noël/Who Killed Santa Claus? (1941). Source: Luc Edouard (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.
Sources: Ginette Vincendeau (Encyclopedia of European Cinema), (IMDb), Donatienne (L’encinémathèque – French), Wikipedia (English and French), and .
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