Thommy Berggren was born in Sweden in 1937. He is best known for his role as the army officer in the romance, “Elvira Madigan” in 1967. “Parlemor” in 1961 was his first film. ” His international movies include “The Adventurers” in 1969 and “The Ballad of Joe Hill” in the title role in 1971.
IMDB entry:
Thommy Berggren was born on August 12, 1937 in Mölndal, Västra Götalands län, Sweden as Tommy William Berggren. He is an actor and director, known for Elvira Madigan (1967), Sunday’s Children (1992) and Raven’s End (1963). He has been married to Monika Ahlberg since 1980. They have three children. Spouse (1) Monika Ahlberg (1980 – present) (separated) (3 children) Trivia (1) Close friend and collaborator with director Bo Widerberg for over 30 years. Personal Quotes (1) My father is my inspiration. He always said, ‘Thommy make sure that you have something meaningful to do, that you are helping people.’ I still respect him for that.
Yvonne Furneaux was born in Roubaix, France in 1928.
Her movies include “Lisbon” in 1956 with Ray Milland and Maureen O’Hara, “La Dolce Vita” and in 1965, Polanskii’s “Repulsion” with Catherine Deneuve.
Yvonne Furneaux
IMDB entry:
Yonne Furneaux was born on May 11, 1928 in Lille, Nord, France as Elisabeth Yvonne Scarcherd. She is an actress, known for La Dolce Vita (1960), Repulsion (1965) and The Mummy (1959). She was previously married to Jacques Natteau)
She is now retired from acting and lives in Lausanne, Switzerland. [January 2005]
Yvonne Furneaux
Guardian obituary in 2024
The actor Yvonne Furneaux, who has died aged 98, considered her decision to adopt a French screen name as the “great mistake” of her career.
Having been born to British parents in Roubaix, near Lille, as Elisabeth Yvonne Scatcherd, she adopted her mother’s birth name when she began performing. “This, combined with my rather continental appearance, has always worked against me in getting British roles,” she told the New York Daily News in 1958.
Not that her CV was shabby. When she was cast in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), she had already been directed by Peter Brook in The Beggar’s Opera (1953), starring Laurence Olivier, and by Michelangelo Antonioni in Le Amiche (1955), where she was one of the five girlfriends who lend that film its title.
She later played the more stable, sexually uninhibited older sister to Catherine Deneuve, who disintegrates mentally in their shared west London flat, in Roman Polanski’s nightmarish Repulsion (1965), and starred with Anthony Perkins in Claude Chabrol’s thriller The Champagne Murders (1967).
Before Fellini called, she was best known for playing the dual roles of a 4,000-year-dead princess and the wife of a British archaeologist in the Hammer horror film The Mummy (1959), with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. She displayed, said John Baxter, “a considerable ability to cringe, flinch and moan”.
Yvonne Furneaux wearing a Hardy Amies gown for a studio publicity shot in 1955. Photograph: John Drysdale/Getty Images
La Dolce Vita catapulted her to international stardom. She played Emma, the understandably aggrieved, insecure live-in girlfriend of the philandering journalist Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni). In her first scene, she is discovered by him at their home after having taken an overdose. Emma later accompanies him on various trips, including one to a village outside Rome where children claim to have seen the Virgin Mary, and another to the home of a friend and his family, a visit that prefaces a tragedy.
In their most dramatic scene, Emma and Marcello quarrel late at night while parked on wasteland. She declares her love for him, protests that he is unable to love anyone, and asks: “What have I done to be treated this way? Not even a dog gets treated like this”. He responds by decrying her “aggressive, sticky, maternal love” and accusing her of trying to turn him into a “spineless worm”.
The scene is rendered eerie and tense by the prowling camera, the low, tremulous hum of Nino Rota’s score, and the sudden visual desolation in a film that is otherwise brimming with detail and vitality. The argument escalates into violence – as Marcello tries to throw Emma out of the car, she bites his hand, then he slaps her – and only ends when he drives off alone. As the sky lightens, she is seen clutching wild flowers picked from the roadside. Marcello zooms into view, and she gets into the car without a word. By the end of the movie, she has apparently been forgotten by him
Fellini adored Furneaux’s performance, and speculated later that she was overlooked in favour of Anita Ekberg and Nadia Gray in the same film because her character “was complete, with so little room for further speculation, while the other two, who remained mysterious, were thus more intriguing”.
Furneaux’s experience with Polanski was less edifying. The director cultivated a tense atmosphere on set, provoking his actors into anger at him and each other. Furneaux felt especially victimised, and pleaded with the executive producer Michael Klinger: “Tell that little bastard to leave me alone.”
“Why are you giving the girl such a hard time?” Klinger asked the film-maker. “Michael, I know she’s a nice girl,” Polanski replied. “She’s too bloody nice. She’s supposed to be playing a bitch. Every day I have to make her into a bitch.”
She was born to Amy (nee Furneaux) and Joseph, who worked for Lloyds Bank in Roubaix. The family moved to the UK when she was 11. She read modern languages at Oxford University and later enrolled at Rada before working widely in theatre
In January 1953, she was part of a Vogue magazine spread entitled the Young Look in the Theatre, for which she was photographed by Norman Parkinson alongside Natalie Wood, Jill Bennett and others. An adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae in 1953 was the first of three films she made in quick succession with Errol Flynn; the others were Crossed Swords (1954) and The Dark Avenger (1955).
Prior to their release, the Manchester Evening News described her speciality as “bold, black-eyed minxes who love not wisely but too well” while confiding that she was “almost embarrassingly unminxlike” in person. “I’m so nervous,” she told the paper. “I always think this part is going to be my last.”
Ray Milland directed and co-starred with her in Lisbon (1956), the first Hollywood production shot in Portugal. She had already appeared in her first Italian film, the historical swashbuckler The Prince with the Red Mask, in 1955, but went on to make many more in the wake of La Dolce Vita, including the wartime comedy Some Like It Cold and Via Margutta AKA Run with the Devil (both 1960), a story of young bohemian life.
In 1962, she married the cinematographer and former pilot Jacques Natteau, whom she met on the set of The Count of Monte Cristo (1961), in which she starred opposite Louis Jordan. They lived together in Paris and in a small castle 30 miles outside Rome.
She retired from acting in the early 1970s, making the briefest of comebacks with Donald Pleasence in the lamentable comedy Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie (1984).
Jacques died in 2007. She is survived by their son, Nicholas.
Francoise Rosay was a French actress who had a long career on stage and film. She was born in Paris in 1891. She achieved fame in 1934 in “Pensions Mimosas”.
Francoise Rosay
Her US films include “September Affair” with Joan Fontaine in 1949 and “The Sound and the Fury” in 1958.
In Britian she made “The Brothers” with Patricia Roc in 1944. She died in 1974.
IMDB entry:
Françoise Rosay was born on April 19, 1891 in Paris, France as Françoise Bandy de Nalèche.
Had three sons with Jacques Feyder: Marc, Paul and actor/producer Bernard, who appeared on films as Bernard Farrel. Attempted briefly a career as an opera singer. Sang four soprano roles at the Paris National Opera during the season 1919-1920.
Francoise Rosay
Studied acting and singing at the Paris Conservatoire in 1913.
During the Second World War, she, and her director-husband Jacques Feyder, fled from occupied France to North Africa.
Francoise Rosay
There, she worked for Radio Algiers, broadcasting propaganda messages on behalf of the Free French government-in-exile. For her efforts, she was awarded the Legion d’honneur after the war.
Joanna Pacula was born in Poland in 1957. She made her film debut in 1983 opposite William Hurt in “Gorky Park”. Her other movies include “Escape from Sobibor” and “Not Quite Jerusalem”.
TCM Overview:
This dark-haired beauty honed her craft on stage in her native Poland. Graduating from drama school at age 17, Joanna Pacula joined the Polish Repertory Company of Warsaw and distinguished herself in productions of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, “Othello” and “As You Like It”. She also found work in a handful of films, including Krzysztof Zanussi’s “Barwy Ochronne/Camouflage” (1977). Pacula was caught in Paris when Poland declared martial law in late 1981 and she eventually landed in the USA where she has specialized in playing European temptresses since her feature debut opposite William Hurt in Michael Apted’s “Gorky Park” (1983). She acted the part of the exotic beauty in numerous American TV series and movies, including the Holocaust drama “Escape From Sobibor” (CBS, 1987), “E.A.R.T.H. Force” (CBS, 1990) and “The Colony” (ABC, 1996). In features, Pacula was particularly effective as a model living under a curse in “The Kiss” (1986). More recently, she was featured in “Tombstone” (1993) as Doc Holliday’s lover Kate, “The Haunted Sea” (1997) and “Virus” (1999), playing a Russian scientist.
This TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Vicky Leandros was born in 1952 in Corfu, Greece. She represented Luxemburg in 1968 in the Eurovision Song Contest singing “Love Is Blue”. It did not win the contect but the song became an international hit. In 1972 she represented Luxemnurg again and won the contect with the song “Apre’s Toi”. Her TV work include s “Ses Les”.
IMDB entry:
Vicky Leandros was born on August 23, 1952 in Paleokastritsa, Corfu, Greece as Vasiliki Papathanasiou. She is an actress, known for The Eurovision Song Contest (1972), The Eurovision Song Contest (1967) and Der deutsche Vorentscheid 2006 – 50 Jahre Grand Prix (2006). She has been married to Enno Freiherr von Ruffin since May 1986. They have two children. She was previously married to Ivan Zissiadis. Her children’s names are Leandros ‘Leo’ Zissiadis (born 6 June, 1980), Maximiliane ‘Milana’ (born born 31 January 1985) and Alessandra ‘Sandra’ (stage name Sandra von Ruffin; (born 2 December 1986). Her parents are Leo and Boubou Papathanassiou. Her father Leo Leandros was famous as singer, composer, lyricist and producer of many songs. Is fluent in Greek, German, English and French. Although she is the daughter of Greek parents and has lived in Germany since 1957, she became the Luxemburg entry at the Eurovision Song Contest twice. In 1972, her song “Après toi” (the English version was called “Come What May”) won the competition. One of the most successful singers all over the world in the 1970s. To date, she has sold about 150 million records. Was elected town councilor of Piraeus on the Pasok List (15 October 2006), and is also deputy mayor of Piraeus.
Gerard Philipe was one of the major actors in French cinema. He was born in 1922 in Cannes. He made his film debut in 1943 and won stunning acclaim for his performance in “Devil in the Flesh” in 1947. Other movies include “La Ronde” in 1950, “Fanfan La Tulipe” and “Les Belles de Nuit”. Tragically he died at the age of 36 in 1959.
IMDB entry:
In 1940 Gerard left school and his parents wanted him be a lawyer. But soon his mother noticed that he was only interested in acting, although his father was against the idea. After timely intervention from Mark Allégret, who decided he showed some promise, Gerard’s debut was in Claude Dauphin’s play “One plain girl”. After this, Gerard decided to get into the conservatory. He was wonder even in music. He himself used to find necessary sounds – exact, unexpected, and unforeseen. All this helped him to portray amazing characters. Millions of people were inspired by him.
One day Georges Lacombe offered Philipe a part in his movie “Land Without Stars”. Critical reaction was very favourable and he became a star, taking on prominent roles in films such as “The Idiot”, “Devil in the Flesh”, “The Charterhouse of Parma”, “Such a Pretty Little Beach”, “Juliette, or The Key of Dreams”, “Fan-Fan the Tulip”, “Beauties of the Night”, “The Red and the Black”, “The Best Part” and “The Gambler”.
In 1951 Gerard Philipe married Annie. He dreamed of his own home and family, children. Their first child, Ann-Marie, was born in 1954, and in 1956 came Olivie. In 1959 Gerard returned to France. He seemed to be very tired. Doctors then gave him the bad news that he had a liver cancer. “He’ll live 15 days or 6 months”, – they decided. After that Gerard waited for death very calmly. On November 25, 1959 he died.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Tea B.,mpicc@caucasus.net
Introduced to the stage in 1942 by actor Claude Dauphin, rave reviews in a 1945 production of “Caligula” opened the doors for him to film stardom.
Dying in 1959 at the peak of his stardom, a French commemorative stamp was issued only two years after his death. Only one other French star, Raimu, has had that honor bestowed upon him.
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Couverture du PARIS MATCH n°143 du 15 décembre 1951 : Gérard PHILIPE de face, dans son costume du “Cid”, lors du week-end de Suresnes avec le TNP, novembre 19
Betsy Von Furstenberg was born in 1931 in Germany. She made her debut on film in Germany and came to the U.S. in 1951. Her film career has been totally on television and include “Adventure in Paradise” in 1960 and “The Defenders” in 1963.
IMDB entry:
This elegant, ladylike 50s Broadway star was born in Heiheim Heusen, German on August 16, 1931, the daughter of Count Franz-Egon von Furstenberg and his wife Elizabeth (Johnson). A lady of privilege, Betsy moved to America growing up and attended Miss Hewitt’s Classes and New York Tutoring School. With designs on acting, she prepared for the theater at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner and made her stage debut in New York at the Morosco Theatre in 1951 with “Second Threshold.” She went on to create a gallery of breezy and stylish debutantes and society girls and enjoyed her first major hit playing Myra Hagerman in “Oh, Men! Oh, Women!” in 1953. Her role would be played by Barbara Rush in the 1957 movie version. Betsy continued with prime roles throughout the 1950s in such plays as “The Chalk Garden,” “Child of Fortune,” “Nature’s Way,” “Wonderful Town” and “Much Ado About Nothing,” among others. At the same time she also graced a number of live and taped TV dramas, including ‘Playhouse 90,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “Kraft Television Theatre” and a variety of talk shows.
In the 1960s Betsy appeared in another sparkling comedy hit playing the role of Tiffany in “Mary, Mary” starring Barbara Bel Geddes and Barry Nelson. Again, however, when it came time to film the movie version, Betsy was replaced…this time by then-popular TV star Diane McBain. Making her first and only film appearance in the Italian-made _Donne senza nome (1949)_ [Women Without Names], one can only surmise the film career she might have had, had she been able to recreate some of her lovely stage roles. In the 1970s Betsy was seen opposite Maureen Stapleton in “The Gingerbread Lady” and played Sybil in a production of “Private Lives.” Light comedies also came her way with “There’s a Girl in My Soup” (with Don Ameche and Taina Elg), “Absurd Person Singular,” “Status Quo Vadis” and “Avanti!”
Married to Guy Vincent de la Maisoneuve, she retired from the stage in later years but was glimpsed quite often in high society gatherings and theater benefit functions.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Rosemary Murphy was born in 1927 in Munich, Germany. She studied acting in New York at the Neighbourhood Playhouse. She made her stage debut in Germany in 1949 in “Peer Gynt”. Her Broadway debut came in 1950. She gave an incisive performance in the movie “To Kill A Mockingbird” in 1962 and also featured in “Walking Tall” in 1973. She died in July 2014.
Her “Hollywood Reporter” obituary:
Rosemary Murphy, who played the neighbor Miss Maudie in the 1962 classic To Kill a Mockingbird and earned an Emmy Award and three Tony nominations during her distinguished career, has died. She was 89.
Murphy, who won her Emmy for portraying the mother of Franklin Delano Rooseveltin the 1976 ABC miniseries Eleanor and Franklin, died Saturday in her Upper East Side apartment in New York City, her longtime agent, Alan Willig, told The Hollywood Reporter. She recently was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
In To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), the acclaimed film drama based on Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Murphy played Maudie Atkinson, who lives across the street from attorney Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) and helps teach his children lessons about racism and human nature.
“You knew you were in something special. It was a fascinating experience,” Murphy said about making the film in a 2012 interview with The Daily Beast. “I was very respectful of where I was and thrilled to be there. Gregory Peck was accessible and a real gent.”
With her death, Robert Duvall is believed to be the last adultMockingbird castmember still alive.
After Eleanor and Franklin, Murphy collected a second Emmy nom for playing Sara Ann Delano Roosevelt in the follow-up telefilm Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977).
Murphy’s Tony noms, all for best actress in a play, came in 1961 for her work as Dorothea Bates inTennessee Williams’ Period of Adjustment; in 1964 for Any Wednesday, in which she starred opposite Gene Hackman; and in 1967 for Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, which also starredHume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy.
She appeared in more than a dozen Broadway productions, from 1950’s The Tower Beyond Tragedythrough 1999’s Waiting in the Wings, written by Noel Coward.
On film, Murphy stood out as prostitute Callie Hacker in the Joe Don Baker revenge tale Walking Tall(1973). She also appeared in The Young Doctors (1961); the 1966 film version of Any Wednesday that starred Jane Fonda; the killer rodent sequel Ben (1972); 40 Carats (1973), with Liv Ullmann; Julia (1977), again with Fonda; September (1987), with Elaine Stritch; Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite(1995); and Synecdoche, New York (2008).
In the 1976 NBC telefilm A Case of Rape, Murphy played a ruthless D.A. who cross-examines a rape victim (Elizabeth Montgomery) and wins acquittal for the man who attacked her. She also had a regular role in the 1970s NBC drama series Lucas Tanner, starring David Hartman.
Her TV résumé also includes playing kleptomaniac Loretta Fowler on the NBC daytime drama Another World and guest-starring stints on such shows as The Virginian, Ben Casey, The Fugitive, Cannon,Medical Center, Trapper John, M.D., Murder, She Wrote and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
Murphy was born in Munich, the daughter of a U.S. diplomat. She studied acting in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio.
She never married. Survivors include her sister Mildred and nephew Greg. A memorial will be held in Manhattan in September, her nephew said.
Nina Van Pallandt was born in 1932 in Denmark. She and her husband were a famous folk duo in the early 1960’s and were known as ‘Nina and Frederick’. She had a leading role in 1973 in Robert Altman’s Philip Marlowe Private Eye’s “The Long Goodbye” with Elliot Gould. She also starred with Paul Newman in “Quintet” in 1979 and “American Gigolo” opposite Richard Gere in 1980.
IMDB Entry:
Nina Van Pallandt became famous in the United States in the early 1970s as the mistress of hoaxer Clifford Irving, who went to jail when his biography of Howard Hughes, allegedly written with Hughes’ co-operation, proved to be a fake when Hughes himself came out of seclusion to repudiate the work. Van Pallandt helped expose Irving’s fraud by revealing that he was vacationing with her in Mexico at the time he was allegedly interviewing Hughes. She appears, as herself, in Orson Welles‘ non-fiction film “F For Fake” (F for Fake (1973)). Van Pallandt was known in Europe as a singer of folk songs before her involvement with Irving and subsequent film career, having been married to her fellow folk singer, Baron Frederik van Pallandt, with whom she toured Europe and had many hit records as “Nina & Frederik”. The height of Van Pallandt’s film career was her appearance in four Robert Altman movies: The Long Goodbye (1973), A Wedding (1978), Quintet (1979) and O.C. and Stiggs (1985).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Guy Lazarus
Frederick obituary from 1994 in “The Independent”:
Frederik had not performed together for nearly 30 years. But the death of Frederik van Pallandt in what police in the Philippines have described as a mysterious professional killing, brings to a final end an era of sweet, slightly folk-tinged singing that, in their heyday, placed van Pallandt and his then wife Nina at the top of the international popular music tree, with sell-out Royal Albert Hall concerts, and at least five chart entries (one song twice) between 1959 and 1961.
Nina & Frederick
They first made their mark in Britain at Christmas 1959 with a revival of ‘Mary’s Boy Child’, which had been a hit for Harry Belafonte two years earlier, followed by another religious song, ‘Little Donkey’, which was in the charts for 10 weeks between November 1960 and February 1961. It reached No 3. They released two different albums called Nina and Frederik, the first of them reaching the Top 10 for albums in February 1960, and the second No 11 in April/May 1961.
Much was made of their aristocratic origins. Frederik was a baron, and the son of a former Ambassador for the Netherlands to Denmark, and Nina had simliar connections with the Danish and American social registers. Though they principally used material from the Third World – like another Belafonte hit, ‘Long Time Boy’, in September 1961, and ‘Sucu Sucu’ the following month – they were really part of the soft underbelly of folk, represented by a number of such duos – one thinks immediately of the Israeli Ofarim, who had a similarly glamorous woman partner with a pretty-boy male counterpart – whose hegemony was decisively put to an end by the tongue-in-cheek antics of Sonny and Cher, as well as the more carefully crafted tones of Peter Paul and Mary.
But it was not a shift in musical tast that dislodged them from their brief pinnacle of fame. Never particularly fond of the spotlight that success shone upon their lives, Frederik broke up the partnership by insisting that they retire, though Nina carved out a solo career for herself thereafter, followed by acting roles in films such as Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) and A Wedding (1979), and Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo (1980).
Frederik invested his chart profits in a number of ventures, farming for a while in Ibiza – where Nina was a close neighbour – and becoming owner of Burke’s Peerage for a short time in 1979.
Though the couple separated and eventually divorced in 1976, they remained friends until Frederik’s death, from gunshot wounds, along with his second wife, Susannah. It was a measure of their continuing closeness that Nina flew out to the Philippines to bring his body home to Europe.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
