European Actors Archives

Corinne Calvet

Corinne Calvet obituary in “The Guardian” in 2001.

Corinne Calvet was born in Paris in 1925. She made her Hollywood debut opposite Burt Lancaster in “Rope of Sand”. She starred opposite some of the major stars e.g. James Stewart in “The Far Country”, ” Alan Ladd in “Thunder in the East”, James Cagney in “What Price Glory” and Danny Kaye in “On the Rivera, Her last film was “The Sword and the Sorcerer” in 1982. Corinne Calvet died in Los Angeles in 2001

“Guardian” obituary:French actress who built a glamorous career in Hollywood

Ronald Bergan

Corinne Calvet, who has died aged 76, was one of the very few French actresses with an extensive career in Hollywood. Only Leslie Caron could claim to have made as many American movies. But, whereas Caron played up her asexual gamine qualities, Calvet brought serious oo-la-la to her roles.Almost all Calvet’s pictures were made in the 1950s, when Hollywood used foreign stars to appeal to the diminishing international market. In 1952, Calvet filed a million-dollar slander suit against Zsa Zsa Gabor, charging that Gabor had told a leading Hollywood columnist, among others, that she was not actually French. The case was thrown out, but Calvet’s origins were found to be genuine.

She was born Corinne Dibos in Paris into a wealthy family. Her mother was one of the scientists who contributed to the invention of Pyrex glassware. A bright pupil, Corinne studied criminal law at the Sorbonne before turning to acting. (She had appeared at the age of 12 in a short film about billiards called Super Cue Men.)

“A lawyer needs exactly what an actor needs, strong personality, persuasive powers and a good voice,” she remarked years later. Unfortunately, Hollywood being Hollywood, it seldom utilised these qualities in her.

After the Sorbonne, she appeared in a few stage productions and a couple of post-war French features, before coming to the attention of producer Hal Wallis. Calvet’s Paramount movies for Wallis were largely mediocre, including her debut film Rope Of Sand (1949), a South Africa-set adventure yarn. As the only woman in a cast that included Burt Lancaster and Claude Rains, the curvaceous 23-year-old Calvet could not help but be noticed. Also in the cast was handsome 27-year-old John Bromfield, whom she soon married.

This didn’t stop Wallis from making a play for her, suggesting he would help her husband’s career. “I had his destiny between my legs,” Calvet said of Bromfield. She rebuffed Wallis, who punished her by cancelling Bromfield’s contract and putting her in My Friend Irma Goes West (1950) starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. “I couldn’t believe he would cast me in such a script,” she recalled in anger.

“Rope of Sand had made me a valuable property,” she said. “Doing this film would ruin my chances of rising higher as a dramatic star.” What she objected to most were her scenes with an amorous chimpanzee. Wallis cast her again opposite Martin and Lewis in Sailor Beware (1952) against her will.

Calvet’s few films made for Darryl F Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox were somewhat better, two of them under John Ford, though they were among the director’s weakest works: When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950), in which she played a French underground leader who woos soldier Dan Dailey, and as a vivacious barmaid fought over by soldiers Dailey and James Cagney in What Price Glory? (1952). Also at Fox, Calvet was a spirited partner of Danny Kaye in a nightclub act in On The Riviera (1951).

Back at Paramount, Calvet, at the behest of Wallis, vainly attempted comparison with Marlene Dietrich in Peking Express (1951), a lame remake of Shanghai Express, updated to Red China. Meanwhile, after playing opposite Alan Ladd in Thunder In The East (1953), Calvet divorced Bromfield, explaining that “he had an addiction to sex, which he needed to satisfy in order to sleep”. Her second marriage was to minor actor Jeffrey Stone.

Now free from the Hal Wallis contract, Calvet was better used in two films for Universal in 1955: So This Is Paris, adding some spice to the insipid musical of three sailors on leave in Paris, and The Far Country, one of Anthony Mann’s finest westerns. In the latter, unusually, she plays a hoydenish freckle-faced girl in checked shirt and jeans, for whom James Stewart gradually falls.

In the 1960s Calvet went into semi-retirement, appearing only in a few TV shows between another three marriages and liaisons. In 1967 her longtime boyfriend, millionaire Donald Scott, sued her to recover assets that he had put under her name in an effort to hide them from his wife in a divorce battle. He claimed that Calvet had used voodoo to control him, but their differences were settled after a bitter two-week trial.

In the 1980s, Calvet made a brief comeback as a victim of Oliver Reed in Dr Heckle and Mr Hype (1980), and in The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982). In 1983, the actress, who is survived by a son from her fourth marriage, attacked the way Hollywood misused her in her memoirs, Has Corinne Been a Good Girl? Readers and filmgoers were left to make up their own minds as to the answer.

Corinne Calvet, actress; born April 30 1925; died June 23 2001

Elisabeth Bergner.

“Her fans compared her with Garbo. C.B. Cochran proclaimed her ‘the greatest actress in the world’ and many critics agreed. But then such as been the happy lot of several middle European actresses. In films, Elisabeth Bergner with her pixie features and gurgling infectious laughter was pure drindl.” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The Golden Years”. (1970).

Elisabeth Bergner was born in Drohobycz (which is now part of the Ukraine) in 1897. She established herself as a Shakespearian actress on the Continent. In the early 1930’s she moved to London and gained favourable notices for her performance on stage in “The Boy David” by J.M. Barrie.She made the film “Escape Me Never” for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.

She made one film in Hollywood “Paris Calling” in 1941. Throughout the remainder of her career she acted on stage while making the occasional film. The character Margo Channing in “All About Eve” is rumoured to have been based on Elisabeth Bergner. She died in 1986 in London. An extensive review of Ms Bergner’s career on “The Jewish Woman’s Chronicle” can be found here.

“Quinlan’s Movie Stars”:

Polish born actress with wispy blonde hair whose brief popularity in England failed to survive long under the triple strain of her own advancing years, her quickly outdated persona (elfin, fey, almost little-girlish) and the imminence of 40s realism. Margaret Sullavan had much the same trouble. She did her best acting work in later years in the theatre. Married to director Paul Zinner. Was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in “Escape Me Never”.

TCM overview:

A fey, wistful, international stage and screen star, Elisabeth Bergner rose to prominence in 1924 playing the title role in Max Reinhardt’s Berlin production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan”. Considered one of the finest actresses of her generation, this blonde performer entered films in Germany in 1923 but her career was cut short by the rise to power of the Nazis. In 1933, Bergner and her husband, the Czech director Paul Czinner, fled to Britain where she continued to alternate between stage and screen.

ESCAPE ME NEVER, Elisabeth Bergner, 1935

In the United Kingdom, Bergner landed her first English-language production, the title role in the biopic “Catherine the Great” (1934), although it was banned in Nazi Germany for featuring “emigre Jews”, cutting into its box office potential. She did earn a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of an unwed mother who marries a ne’er-do-well composer in “Escape Me Never” (1935) and offered a memorable Rosalind opposite Laurence Olivier in “As You Like It” (1936)

. Relocating to the USA, Bergner enjoyed greater success on stage but only made one Hollywood film, “Paris Calling” (1942), an exciting story of the French Resistance movement.

After touring Australia, the actress returned to Europe where she found it difficult to find decent screen roles. Indeed, it was over 20 years before she was again before the cameras, ironically in Germany, in “Die Gluckliche Jahre der Thorwalds” (1962). She was already past 70 when she played a witch summoning Satan to avenge Vincent Price in the British-made “Cry of the Banshee” (1970) and her last big screen appearance was in the 1982 German-language “Feine Gesellschaft”.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Lilli Palmer IMDB

Lilli Palmer was a sophisticated German actress who made many Hollywood and international films from the 1930’s up to the 1980’s. Her first major breakthrough came in British films and she went with her husband Rex Harrison to Hollywood in 1945. Notable films she made there included “Clock and Dagger” with Gary Cooper , “Body and Soul” with John Garfield and “But Not for Me” with Clark Gable. In Britain in 1959 she made “Consipracy of Hearts” as the mother superior of an Italian convent hiding Jewish children from the Nazi. She published her autobiography “Change Lobsters and Dance”. Lilli Palmer died in Los Angeles in 1986. Interesting blog on Lilli Palmer can be found here.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

A charming, elegant and exceedingly popular international film star with a gentle, understated beauty, actress Lilli Palmer was born on May 24, 1914, as Lillie Marie Peiser, the daughter of a German-Jewish surgeon and Austrian-Jewish actress. In addition to her native German, she grew up becoming fluent in French and English as well. Of her two sisters, older sister Irene Prador became an actress and singer in her own right. Lillie studied drama in Berlin and made her theatrical debut there in 1932 at age 18. Within a short time, however, the family was forced to flee their native homeland with the rise of Hitler and settled in Paris. Eventually Lilli moved to England to rebuild the career she had started on stage and film.

She made her British movie debut co-starring in the “B” mystery drama Crime Unlimited(1935), playing the distaff member of a syndicate of jewel thieves who becomes a romantic pawn for a policeman (Esmond Knight) who has infiltrated the crime ring as a plant. Throughout the rest of the decade she upped the value of her name in both “A” and “B” material, notably Alfred Hitchcock‘s Secret Agent (1936), Silent Barriers (1937) and The Man with 100 Faces (1938) where she provided the usual element of feminine mystery.

Lillie’s career took a major upswing during the early to mid 1940s. Several of her pictures centered around the omnipresent war, particularly Thunder Rock (1942), her film career-maker), which starred Michael Redgrave as an anti-fascist journalist who retreats to Canada, and Notorious Gentleman (1945), with Rex Harrison as a idle bounder who sees the error of his ways and becomes a war sacrifice. This was Lilli’s first movie with husband Harrison; they married in 1943 and she bore him a son, Carey Harrison, the following year. Carey grew up to became a writer and director.

EVT5775999 THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY, poster art, l-r: Fred Astaire, Lilli Palmer, Debbie Reynolds, Tab Hunter; (add.info.: THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY, poster art, l-r: Fred Astaire, Lilli Palmer, Debbie Reynolds, Tab Hunter); Everett Collection.

The family moved to America in 1945 to further their careers. Rex and Lilli became a prominent acting couple, appearing together on the early 50s Broadway stage with “Bell, Book and Candle” (1950), “Venus Observed” (1952) and “The Love of Four Colonels” (1953), the last mentioned directed by Harrison. In movies, they co-starred in the murky crimer The Long Dark Hall (1951) and the vastly superior The Four Poster (1952), which later gave rise to the musical adaptation “I Do! I Do!”. Lilli was award the Venice Film Festival Award for this performance and represented herself well with other handsome male acting partners, notably Gary Cooper in her debut American film Cloak and Dagger(1946) and John Garfield in the classic boxing film Body and Soul (1947), leaving audiences enthralled with one of its newer foreign imports. At one point, she was given her own own (short-lived) TV show to host, The Lilli Palmer Show (1953).

Somewhat typecast by this time as heartless cads and opportunists on film, “Sexy Rexy”, as husband Harrison was known in the tabloids, developed quite a reputation off-camera as well. A particularly disastrous romance with actress Carole Landis led to that actress’s tragic suicide in 1948. Lilli took the high road and came off the better for it in the public’s eye. She eventually called it quits, however, with both Harrison and Hollywood and returned to Europe in 1954. In 1956 Lilli filmed Between Time and Eternity (1956) [Between Time and Eternity] and fell in love with handsome Argentine co-star Carlos Thompson, who had developed matinée idol status in Germany. They married in September of 1957, several months after her divorce from Harrison became final. This marriage endured.

Lilli matured gracefully in films, the epitome of poise and class, but she lost any potential for top stardom after leaving Hollywood. She made international productions for the rest of her career, primarily German and French, but they did not live up to her early successes and were not seen all that much outside of Europe. She managed to work, however, opposite a “Who’s Who” of European male stars of the time, including Curd Jürgens, James Mason, Louis Jourdan, Jean Gabin, Jean Marais, Jean Sorel, Gérard Philipeand Klaus Kinski. Of those few movies she made in Hollywood, she played the prickly wife of Clark Gable, who has a May-December affair with young Carroll Baker in But Not for Me (1959); was a sparkling and witty standout in the ensemble cast of The Pleasure of His Company (1961); and proved quite moving in the William Holden spy thriller The Counterfeit Traitor (1962). On TV here, she was touchingly effective as Mrs. Frank in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank (1967) with Max von Sydow, and enjoyed one of her last roles in the acclaimed miniseries Peter the Great (1986).

The final decade and a half played out rather routinely with supporting roles in such films as diverse as Oedipus the King (1968), De Sade (1969), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). She demonstrated her writing talents with her popular bestselling biography “Change Lobsters and Dance” in 1975, and later published a novel “The Red Raven” in 1978. Dying of cancer in 1986 at age 71 in Los Angeles, Lilli’s surviving second husband Thompson, who had abandoned acting in the late 60s and turned to turned TV writing/producing, committed suicide four years later back in his native Argentina.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Jean-Pierre Aumont obituary in “The Guardian” in 2001.

In 1934, the tall, handsome, muscular, blond-haired and blue-eyed Jean-Pierre Aumont, who has died aged 92, auditioned for the lead in Marc Allégret’s Lac aux Dames. As the role was that of a swimming instructor at a mountain lake resort, the director and his lover, André Gide, felt justified in asking the young French actor to strip. Aumont was immediately offered the part that made him a star. In the film, he is involved with three women; a former girlfriend, a rich socialite and a mysterious child of nature, Simone Simon.
It reflected Aumont’s own life, in which he had the reputation as a ladies’ man. While in Hollywood, he had brief flings with Joan Crawford, Grace Kelly and Barbara Stanwyck, and was engaged to Hedy Lamarr. His three marriages were to actresses Blanche Montel, Maria Montez and Marisa Pavan.

Born Jean-Pierre Salomons into a wealthy Parisian French family – his father owned a chain of department stores – Aumont followed his actress mother’s calling at the age of 16, studying drama at the Paris Conservatory and making his stage debut at 21. His first film, a year later, was Jean de la Lune (1931), and his career took off in 1934 with Lac aux Dames, and as Oedipus in the first production of Jean Cocteau’s La Machine Infernale.

In the next few years, Aumont worked with some of the great names of French cinema: Madeleine Renaud and Jean Gabin in Julien Duvivier’s Maria Chapdelaine (1934), Harry Baur in Taras Bulba (1936), and Michel Simon and Louis Jouvet in Marcel Carné’s Drôle de Drame (1937), set in Edwardian London, in which he played an amorous milkman. Carné cast him again in Hotel Du Nord (1938), where he and Annabella were immensely touching as a young couple in a suicide pact.

Just as he was becoming established, war broke out. Aumont served with the Free French forces in Tunisia, Italy and France, earning the Légion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre for his bravery. By 1943, he had moved to Hollywood, where he got a series of unchallenging roles as archetypal Frenchman. His first was in Assignment In Brittany (1943), as a pilot sent to occupied France to pose as a Nazi agent of which Variety magazine commented: “Aumont is good looking enough to suit the femmes, and he underplays agreeably.” In the same year, he appeared in The Cross of Lorraine, playing a French soldier in a German prisoner-of-war camp.

In 1946, Aumont married Montez, with whom he had a daughter, Tina Aumont, who became an actress. Aumont himself starred in an outrageously camp biopic, Song Of Sheherazade (1947), in which he played mariner Rimsky-Korsakov, writing melodies for a dancer (Yvonne de Carlo) in a Moroccan nightclub. “Me, oh, my, sounds like the buz- zing of a bee,” she says of one of his numbers. A year later, he and Montez co-starred for the only time in Siren of Atlantis. Aumont played a legionnaire who falls hopelessly in love with Montez as the cruel ruler of a legendary lost city. After the tragically premature death of Montez at the age of 31, Aumont retired from acting for two years. He returned in Lili (1953), as the dashing magician who infatuates waif Leslie Caron. From then on, he became an international star, moving easily between Europe and America. He was in two of Sacha Guitry’s all-star historical comedies, Si Versailles m’était Conté (1954) and Napoléon (1955), in the epic John Paul Jones (1959) with his third wife, Marisa Pavan, and supported Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra in The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1961).

In 1962, Aumont played opposite Vivien Leigh in the Broadway musical, Tovarich. Though neither was a skilled dancer or singer, they got by on sheer personality in the roles of Russian royals exiled in Paris. Leigh was in one of her blackest periods, and Aumont helped her through until the run ended because of her mental breakdown.

Few of Aumont’s films were particularly distinguished over the next decades, some exceptions being Sidney Pollack’s Castle Keep (1969), in which he played an impotent aristocrat, and François Truffaut’s Day For Night (1973), where he was the charismatic male lead who dies during the shooting. He also dies halfway through Claude Lelouche’s Cat And Mouse (1975), playing Michèle Morgan’s philandering husband.

Aumont continued to work through the 1990s, appearing in James Ivory’s Jefferson In Paris (1995) and in Ismail Merchant’s The Proprietor (1996), still exuding the dignity and charm for which he was known in real life.

Jean-Pierre Aumont, actor, born January 5 1909; died January 30 2001.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian” can be accessed here.

Oliver Tobias IMDB

Oliver Tobias has an international film and television career. He was born in Switzerland and came to live in Britain at the age of eight. In 1968 he starred in the London production of “Hair”. His first film role was in “Romance of a Horse Thief” with Yul Brynner. He scored a big success as King Arthur in 1972 in “Arthur of the Britons”. He made “Luke’s Kingdom” in Australia directed by Peter Weir. Another successful series was “Smuggler” set in Cornwall.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

A remote and rather prevailing sullenness has only enhanced the mystique and charisma found in dashingly handsome Oliver Tobias, who has enjoyed over a three decade-long career on stage, screen and TV. Born Oliver Tobias Freitag in Zurich, Switzerland on August 6, 1947, he was the son of Swiss actor Robert Freitag and German actress Maria Becker, who subsequently divorced when he was young. Living in England from age 8, he was sent to boarding school and was later encouraged by his mother to study at the East 15 Acting School (1965-1968) which coincided with dance training at the Ecole de Dance in Zurich. In 1968 he appeared in the original London production of “Hair” playing the prime rebel role of Berger. The following year he starred, staged and choreographed the rock opera in Amsterdam and again helmed a production in 1970 in Tel Aviv. Oliver continued his shaggy-haired, counterculture musical career with the role of Judas in a German touring company of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Around this time he started making an impression in films with the international productions of Romance of a Horsethief (1971), _Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1971)_, which co-starred Charlotte Rampling, and The God King (1974) in a Mephistophelean-styled role. On TV he enhanced a number of classic, age-old stories from Sherlock Holmes to Robin Hood. He earned TV stardom as King Arthur in the series Arthur of the Britons(1972), then again played the youthful ruler of Camelot in King Arthur, the Young Warlord (1975) on film. From there he graced a number of colorful costumers, includingArabian Adventure (1979) and on TV portrayed composer Johann Strauss in an equally colorful outing. Despite this attention he did not give up his musical roots, showing his prowess in the title role of the rock opera “Peer Gynt” in Zurich, and in the role of The Pirate King in “The Pirates of Penzance” at London’s Drury Lane Theatre.

As a stretch he also appeared as Bassa Selim in the Mozart opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” in 1988 and 1989, then appeared in a non-musical, the powerful AIDS drama “The Normal Heart,” shortly after. Oliver’s taste in movies have been eclectic to say the least, and not always tasteful. He appeared in Joan Collins‘ scurrilous, soft-core flick The Stud (1978) as an amorous waiter who sleeps his way to the top, and was part of the cast in the costumed romp Mata Hari (1985) which focused more on the disrobing of its star Sylvia Kristel than anything else.

For variety he portrayed a Vietnam veteran in Operation Nam(1986), a galactic dictator in Nexus 2.431 (1994), and a U-boat captain in The Brylcreem Boys (1998). In 1999 he again returned to musical limelight, this time in London as King Roderick in “La Cava,” based on the Dana Broccoli novel. He returned to the role a second time in 2001. In 2003 he was Percival Brown in the 50th anniversary production of “The Boyfriend” and the very next year toured in the rock musical “Footloose.”

Divorced from Camilla Ravenshear, he has two daughters, Angelika and Celeste. In 2001 he married Polish-born Arabella Zamoyska. The rugged charmer is in the process of writing a tell-all autobiography.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

For the Oliver Tobias Website, please click here.

Elsa Martinelli obituary in “The Guardian” in 2017.

For more than a decade from the mid-1950s, the film star Elsa Martinelli, who has died aged 82, was one of the most prominent female Italian exports to Hollywood, along with her compatriots Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale. In addition, Martinelli’s appearance seemed to be the sine qua non of Italian co-productions of period epics, romantic comedies, erotic sketch movies and spaghetti westerns.

It was during Hollywood’s international years that Martinelli starred opposite Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Charlton Heston and Anthony Quinn, and, both in the US and Italy, worked with directors such as André De Toth, Guy Hamilton, Dino Risi, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles. Her slim, elfin looks led to her being described by one newspaper in the 1950s as a “kind of Audrey Hepburn with sex appeal”.

Her film break was thanks to the wife of Kirk Douglas, who owned a fashion house and drew the actor’s attention to the elegant model, who had appeared in Vogue and on the cover of Life magazine. Douglas put her under contract for his newly formed production company, casting her opposite himself in De Toth’s left-of-centre The Indian Fighter (1955).

As Onahti, daughter of the Sioux chief Red Cloud, Martinelli was introduced to international audiences while frolicking modestly nude in a mountain stream. As she then had only basic English, it helped that her character, who falls for Douglas, had very little to say.

Martinelli was born Elisa Tia in the Tuscan city of Grosseto. Her father, Alfredo, worked at the railway station, while her mother, Santina, was kept occupied with her eight children. One of 12-year-old Elisa’s jobs was delivering groceries. At 16, she got her first modelling job in Rome.

The Indian Fighter, poster, Elsa Martinelli, poster art, 1955. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

When the contract with Douglas came to nothing after The Indian Fighter, Martinelli returned to Italy to take the title role in Mario Monicelli’s Donatella (1956), as a humble secretary in a wealthy household mistaken by a visiting lawyer for the heiress to the family fortune. Her charming performance, in a film that was reminiscent of US romantic comedies of mistaken identity, won her the best actress award at the Berlin film festival.

Her cosmopolitan career was further boosted by the British-made Manuela (1957), directed by Hamilton. Martinelli is the naive titular stowaway on a tramp ship captained by the surly, hard-drinking Trevor Howard. At first he is against her remaining aboard, until she melts his heart.!

One of Martinelli’s few art films was Mauro Bolognini’s La Notte Brava (Night Heat, 1959) in which she played a prostitute. Pier Paolo Pasolini, who wrote the cynical and sharply observed script, wanted the director to cast nonprofessional actors, but Bolognini insisted on rising young stars such as Martinelli, Jean-Claude Brialy, Laurent Terzieff and Mylène Demongeot.

Her subsequent films were an eclectic bunch, among them Blood and Roses (1960), Roger Vadim’s vampire movie in which Martinelli, engaged to Mel Ferrer’s decadent count, is a target of her jealous rival; and the swashbuckler Captain Blood (1960), starring Jean Marais in the title role, in which she was, according to one French critic, “une belle contessa, Mamma mia!”.

Elsa Martinelli tourne le dernier Vadim “Et mourir de plaisir”

Martinelli’s biggest Hollywood hit was Hawks’s Hatari! (1962) in which she plays a freelance wildlife photographer in Africa, holding her own in a macho group of animal trappers led by John Wayne. Naturally, he objects to her presence and they bicker constantly, which signifies, in Hawksian terms, that they really love each other.

She was very much at home as the daughter of an Italian partisan in Nazi-occupied Rome in the comedy-drama The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962), opposite Heston as a GI spying on the Germans. In the same year, Martinelli had the brief role of Hilda, the wife of a courtroom guard who tries to seduce an unresponsive Anthony Perkins as Josef K in Welles’s The Trial. She then appeared alongside Welles as his bimbo protege mistress in The VIPs (1963), supporting Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. In Rampage (1963), back in Africa, Martinelli is a mistress again, this time of the much older Jack Hawkins, who is insanely jealous of big-game trapper Mitchum.

Two of Martinelli’s sketch movies were The Oldest Profession, in which she played a Roman empress, and Vittorio De Sica’s Woman Times Seven (both 1967). She was red-haired and freckled in the title role of The Belle Starr Story (1968), said to be the only spaghetti western directed by a woman (Lina Wertmüller). One of her last films before retiring was the Italian representative in the episodic comedy If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969).

Apart from her busy film career, Martinelli was a member of the glitterati, with friends such as Maria Callas, Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Kennedy. In 1957 she married Count Franco Mancinelli Scotti di San Vito, but her mother-in-law was so against the marriage that she expelled her son from their Rome palace.

The couple separated in 1960 but, because there was no divorce in Italy, it took six years to get an annulment so that Martinelli could marry the Paris Match photographer Willy Rizzo, which she finally did in 1968. Willy died in 2013. She is survived by her daughter, Cristiana, from her first marriage.

• Elsa Martinelli (Elisa Tia), actor, born 30 January 1935; died 8 July 2017

Sylvia Koscina obituary in “The Independent”.

Sylva Koscina was a beautiful Yugoslav actress who was featured in many Italian epics of the late 1950’s onwards. She starred opposite Steve Reeves in “Hercules”. By the mid 1960’s she was making international films including two films in Hollywood, “The Secret War of Harry Frigg” with Paul Newman and “A Lovely Way to Die” with Kirk Douglas. She did not remain in the USA and returned to European filmmaking. She died aged 61 in 1994.

Sweet, smiling, curvaceous Sylva Koscina was a symbol of the Italy of the Sixties, incarnating the optimism of the years of the Italian economic miracle.

Throughout that period, Koscina was Italy’s version of a Hollywood glamour queen, and movie posters never failed to enhance her ample bosom. But she was no maneater. Even at the peak of her success, there was often a touch of sadness in the famous smile.”She had the typical melancholy of the Slavs,” recalled Dino Risi, who directed her in a series of comedy roles. “I never managed,” she herself admitted, “to unite the actress and the woman in a single person.” Most of her friends agreed Koscina’s problem was that she always fell in love with the wrong man. They believed that “She always wanted to redeem them and it isn’t easy to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

Koscina was born in Zagreb and brought to Italy during the Second World War by her sister, who had married an Italian. In Naples, she graduated from high school and studied physics at the local university.

Her film career began by chance, after one of her teachers had persuaded her to be among the girls who greeted the winner of one of the stages of the bicycling Tour of Italy. The photograph of the beautiful young woman kissing the ace cyclist Rik Van Steenbergen ended up in all the Italian papers, attracting the attention of various Italian film-makers.

Pietro Germi, one of Italy’s most famous and most controversial directors, picked Koscina to play opposite himself in his neo-realist masterpiece Il ferroviere (“The Railwayman”, 1956), in which he portrayed a railwayman struggling against poverty and injustice.

In 1957, Koscina starred in The Labours of Hercules, by Pietro Francisci, until then an obscure director, the film that started the revival of a typically Italian genre and made mythological giants such as Hercules, Ursus, Maciste and Samson famous throughout the world. The first of the Hercules series, Le fatiche di Ercole, like many of its followers, grossed a fortune in Italy and in the US, luring many American businessmen into investing in the genre and turning the Cinecitta studios, in Rome, into Hollywood on the Tiber. This film and others of the same genre made Koscina one of Italy’s best-loved stars.

Afterwards, Koscina starred in many, mostly second-rate,comedies that were popular for over a decade, including Dino Risi’s Nonna Sabella (1957) and Luigi Zampa’s Ladro Lui, Ladro Lei (1958), where she starred opposite Alberto Sordi.

Italy’s cinema then centred on the male and, between 1959 and 1968, most starring roles went to a small group of actors including Ugo Tognazzi (62 films), Enrico Maria Salerno (40), Alberto Sordi (34), Vittorio Gassman (33) and Nino Manfredi (32). It is easier to understand Koscina’s popularity if one considers that, with 46 films, she was the only female who starred in as many films as the top men.

In 1965, she played the role of Juliet (Giulietta Masina)’s sister in Federico Fellini’s Giulietta degli Spiriti (“Juliet of the Spirits”), probably the most important of all her films.

Koscina had a brief, largely unsuccessful stint in Hollywood, during which she starred opposite Kirk Douglas in A Lovely Way to Die (1968).

As an actress, Koscina took herself very seriously, and was made fun of by friends for her habit of always referring to herself in the third person. But, by the time she had learnt to act, her career was almost over. Unlike other Italian actresses, including the likes of Sophia Loren and Silvana Mangano, whose careers were boosted by their producer-husbands Carlo Ponti and Dino de Laurentiis, Koscina received no help from her own husband, Raimondo Castelli, who only pushed her to act in as many films as possible.

Koscina had created a major scandal in Italy when she was indicted for bigamy, after a Mexican marriage to Castelli, who was already married. The marriage ended badly, some years later.

“For too long I worked like a madwoman, doing eight to ten films a year, just to make money and then spend it all,” Koscina once said. “I played the role of the vamp without ever believing in it.”

In the 1970s, Koscina became the first Italian actress to appear in the American edition of Playboy magazine. She appeared in various television series in the Seventies and the odd film or two in the Eighties. In recent years, she was a frequent guest ontelevision talk-shows where she was invited as an “ambassadress of beauty and good taste”.

Koscina contracted breast cancer a few years ago. After a first operation, she had always minimised the seriousness of her condition and had not hesitated to talk about her sickness, in order to send a message of hope to other women.

“The Independent” obituary can also be accessed on-line here.

Tribute

2014

Swords, Sandals and Serial Killers – Remembering Sylva Koscina (1933 – 1994)

Sweet looking with a fair degree of talent, Sylva Koscina had a film career I’ve always found interesting. Mixing Hollywood, European and Art-house, for three decades Sylva certainly kept herself busy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Born in Yugoslavia on August 23rd 1933, Sylva moved to Italy during the Second World War, later studying physics at university. She was spotted in a photo by controversial director Pietro Germi, who cast Koscina in his 1956 feature ‘The Railwayman’. With her career taking off, Sylva’s early films were low-brow Italian comedies and sword & sandal pictures, such as ‘Hercules’ (‘58) and its 1959 sequel ‘Hercules Unchained’, both starring Steve Reeves. A couple of cult features followed, with George Franju’s pulp crime pic ‘Judex’ (’63), playing an acrobat aiding the hero at the movie’s climax, and then as Giulietta Masina’s saucy sister, in Fellini’s colourful fantasy ‘Juliet of the Spirits’ (’65).

Sylva ventured to England at this time to co-star in a couple of spy comedies directed by Ralph Thomas. The first; ‘Hot Enough for June’ (’64) starred Dirk Bogarde as writer travelling to Prague, where he is assigned a beautiful tour guide, played by Koscina. The second was the enjoyable Bulldog Drummond adventure ‘Deadlier than the Male’ (’67), alongside Richard Johnson and Elke Sommer. Flirting with Hollywood, Sylva was paired with Kirk Douglas in the watchable 1968 drama ‘A Lovely Way to Die’, in which she played a widow accused of her wealthy husband’s murder. Also that year she starred in Jack Smight’s enjoyable WWII comedy ‘The Secret War of Harry Frigg’, playing an Italian countess romanced by Paul Newman’s US soldier. Back in Italy Sylva bared all in the obscure drama ‘He and She’ (’69) with Laurence Harvey, before being cast as Rock Hudson’s love interest in the WWII drama ‘Hornets’ Nest’ (’70). An ok actioner, Hudson plays an injured American commando rescued by a gang of orphans who, along with Koscina’s reluctant German medic, nurse him back to health in order for him to teach the kids how to shoot, so they can defend their village from the Nazi’s. Also that year, Koscina co-starred with Monica Vitti in the Italian comedy ‘Ninì Tirabusciò’, which saw the pair in a brief but memorable topless duelling scene.

A scandal arose in 1967 when Sylva married her long-term partner Raimondo Castelli (who was already married at the time), although they would later divorce bitterly in 1971. Koscina is largely remembered for her appearances in a handful of early Seventies giallo entries. In 1972’s ‘So Sweet, So Dead’, she co-starred with Farley Granger in a sordid serial killer tale, while also that year she made the excellent ‘Crimes of the Black cat’ (’72), a colourful mystery which reveals Sylva as the killer of various fashion models at her photographic studio. Around this time Koscina had the distinction of being the first Italian actress to appear in the American edition of Playboy, which was probably no big deal to Sylva as she hated wearing bra’s in real life, and would only wear them in movies that required her to.

1975 saw Sylva re-team with Elke Sommer for Mario Bava’s controversial and bizarre horror; ‘Lisa and the Devil’, which had Sylva running over her aristocratic husband’s body with her car. A flesh-baring role came in ‘Casanova & Co.’ (’77), a below-par romp with Tony Curtis and euro-babes Marisa Mell, Olivia Pascal and Britt Ekland. Koscina’s last movie of note was the ambitious international comedy ‘Sunday Lovers’ (’80), after which her film career pretty much stalled, with only a few appearances in the odd TV movie in the 1980’s.

Sadly, having been diagnosed with breast cancer some years prior, Sylva died in Rome on Boxing Day 1994, aged 61. With a fascinating and varied career lasting nearly forty years, the beautiful Sylva Koscina was one of Italy’s most famous screen queens. A kind, caring person who always took her work seriously, Sylva remains to this day, a popular cult figure in Italy and around the world

Hardy Kruger. TCM Overview.

Hardy Kruger first came to international notice with his leading role in the British film “The One that Got Away” in 1957. This was the story of the only German prisioner-of-war to escape from Britain and return to Germany during World War Two. He went to Hollywood in 1965 to make “The Flight of the Phoenix”. He has featured in several major films including “Barry Lyndon”, “A Bridge Too Far” and “The Wild Geese”. His daughter and son are both actors.

TCM Overview:

Rugged, blond and blue-eyed, Hardy Kruger ideally reflected the archetypal German revered in the Third Reich and frequently portrayed German soldiers over the course of his long international acting career.

As a teenager in Berlin in 1944, Kruger appeared in the film “Young Eagles” at the age of 15 before being drafted into military service the following year.

In 1949, Kruger returned to film and worked steadily in West Germany in a variety of films including the 1952 drama “Illusion in Moll,” with Hildegard Knef, and in the 1953 Otto Preminger comedy, “Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach.” Proficiency in English and French made Kruger extremely marketable and in 1957 he broke out onto the world stage in the first of three notable British productions, “The One That Got Away,” as an arrogant German flight officer shot down over England.

After the equally successful romantic comedy “Bachelor of Hearts” in 1958, Krugerâ¿¿s popularity spread to America with his co-starring role with John Wayne in “Hatari!,” directed by Howard Hawks. Kruger then appeared in the French dark romance “Sundays and Cybele” and “Le Gros Coup” in 1964, before returning to Hollywood in 1965 with “The Flight of the Phoenix,” co-starring alongside Jimmy Stewart in 1965. Kruger worked in Germany, France and the U.S. throughout the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in “Barry Lyndon” in 1975 and the American 1989 television series “War and Remebrance.”

At the age of 82, Kruger appeared in the 2011 German television series “Libe, Shuld und Tod.”

To view Hardy Kruger Website, please click here.

Nicole Maurey. (Wikipedia)

Nicole Maurey was born in Paris in 1925. She made movies in France and in 1953 she made “Little Boy Lost” with Bing Crosby on location in Paris. She then went to Hollywood where she made anumber of films including “Secret of the Incas” with Charlton Heston and “The Jayhawkers”.

In the 60’s she made many British films and TV series. Nicole Maurey retired and lived in France until her dath at the age of 90 in 2016.

“Wikipedia” entry:

Nicole Maurey (20 December 1925 – 11 March 2016) was a French actress, who has appeared in 65 film and television productions between 1945 and 1997.

Born in Bois-Colombes, a northwestern suburb of Paris, she was originally a dancer before being cast in her first film role in 1944.

She remains most noted as Charlton Heston‘s leading lady in Secret of the Incas (1954), often cited as the primary inspiration for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). She starred in films with Alec Guinness, Bette Davis, Bing Crosby, Jeff Chandler, Fess Parker, Rex Harrison, Robert Taylor and Mickey Rooney, among numerous others. She was the leading lady in the original 1962 science fiction cult film The Day of the Triffids.