Curt Jurgens was a very talented German actor who made a series of big budget Hollywood films at the end of the 1950’s.He was born in 1913 in Munich. He began his career on the stage in Austria and then made European films.He came onto the international scene with his part opposite Brigitte Bardot in the 1956 movie “And God Created Women”. He went on to make “Bitter Victory” with Richard Burton the following year, followed in quick succession by such Hollywood films as “The Enemy Below” with Robert Mitchum, “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” with Ingrid Bergman and Robert Donat, “Me and the Colonel” with Danny Kaye and “This Happy Feeling” with Debbie Reynolds and Alexis Smith. During the next ten years he made many international films. In 1977 he played the villian in the excellent James Bond “The Spy Who Loved Me”. Curt Jurgens retired to Vienna where he died in 1982 at the age of just 66.
His IMDB entry:
Curd Jürgens (commonly billed as “Curt Jurgens” in anglophone countries) was one of the most successful European film actors of the 20th Century. He was born Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens on December 13, 1915, in Solln, Bavaria, in Hohenzollern Imperial Germany, a subject of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Of Franco-German parentage, Jürgens — who was born during the closing days of the second year of the First World War — would abandon the country of his birth after the end of World War II: Jürgens became an Austrian citizen in 1945 and lived part-time in France.
Jürgens entered the journalism profession after receiving his education, and married Louise Basler, an actress. Basler, the first of his five wives, encouraged him to switch careers and become an actor. He learned his new profession on the Vienna stage, which retained his loyalty even after he became an global film star. Jürgens was sent to a concentration camp for “political unreliables” in 1944, due to his anti-Nazi opinions. It was this experience in Nazi Germany that led him to become an Austrian citizen after the war.
His appearance in The Devil’s General (1955) (“The Devil’s General” (1955)), established him as a star of German cinema, and his role as Brigitte Bardot‘s older lover in Roger Vadim‘s …And God Created Woman (1956) (And God Created Woman (1956)) made him an international star.
Always interested in multilingual European actors with good looks and talent, Hollywood beckoned the 6′ 4″ Jürgens, casting him in The Enemy Below(1957) as a WWII German U-boat commander in a duel with American destroyer commander Robert Mitchum.
He constantly was in demand to play Germany military officers (e.g., The Longest Day (1962), the most expensive black-and-white film ever made) — indeed, his last role was as “The General” in the miniseries Smiley’s People(1982) — and Germanic villains (e.g., “Cornelius”, the cowardly and treacherous trading company representative, in Lord Jim (1965)) for the rest of his life.
One of his most famous roles in the English-language cinema was as the James Bond villain, “Karl Stromberg”, in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977); it was Moore’s favorite Bond film.
Jürgens considered himself primarily a stage actor and often performed on the Vienna stage.
Though the world knew him as a cinema actor, he also directed several films and wrote several screenplays and an autobiography, “Sixty and Not Yet Wise” (1975). His death from a heart attack in 1982 in Vienna was front-page news across Austria and Germany.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Fabo was born Fabio Lanzoni in 1959 in Milan. He was originally a model who then featured in the soap “The Bold and the Beautiful”. He appeared in “Scenes from a Mall” with Woody Allen and Bette Midler in a hilarious scene in the lift in the mall. His other films include “Zoolander” with Ben Stiller and “Death Becomes Her” with Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn.
His “Wikipedia” entry:
abio Lanzoni (Italian pronunciation: ; born 15 March 1959), widely known simply as Fabio, is an Italian fashion model, spokesperson, and actor, who appeared on the covers of hundreds of romance novels throughout the 1980s and 1990s.[3]
In 1994, Fabio released an album titled Fabio After Dark, which included soliloquies on his philosophy of love.
Fabio can also be seen posing as the hero Kuros on the cover of the 1989 video game Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Fabio hosted the American reality television series Mr. Romance in 2005. The series featured a dozen male contestants competing for the title of “Mr. Romance” and the opportunity to appear as a romance novel cover model.
In collaboration with Eugena Riley, Fabio has written a series of historical romance novels: Pirate, Rogue, Comanche, Viking and Champion. He wrote three more books in collaboration with Wendy Corsi Staub titled Dangerous,Wild, and Mysterious. Robert Gottlieb became Fabio’s literary agent in 1992.
The above “Wikipedia” entry cn also be accessed online here.
One of Fabio’s most memorable advertising campaigns was for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!. He was the spokesperson for the company since 1994. He was also the spokesperson for the Geek Squad in 2007, Oral-B’s Sensitive Advantage Toothbrush in 2006 (whose ad was featured in Times Square), and one of his most popular ads to date is for Nationwide Insurance. In 2006, the commercial for Nationwide aired during the Super Bowl and was the most viewed commercial for the game, garnering over 1 million views within two weeks. Other endorsements included Wickes Furniture, Ames Hardware, Old Spice, and the American Cancer Society.[4]
On July 26, 2011, Old Spice launched a new campaign on YouTube in which Fabio challenges Isaiah Mustafa to try to replace him as the New Old Spice Guy. The online challenge was entitled Mano a Mano in el Baño (hand-to-hand in the bathroom). Mustafa emerged as the winner, though Fabio’s Old Spice YouTube Channel received more than 9 million views in the week after its debut, rising to Number 4 on YouTube for the week.[5]
Once a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, Lanzoni has recently spoken for the controversial Burzynski Clinic, where his sister was receiving treatment for ovarian cancer. Lanzoni stated in a recent interview “…He is a genius. He definitely, I believe, he has the cure for cancer… They have to let him get his office back and let him do his work…”[6] A response made by David Gorski, MD, PhD at his Respectful Insolence blog reads “No one knows how he or she will react to a loved one dying of cancer. However,… does not entirely excuse the spouting of pure nonsense in the service of an unproven cancer cure that could endanger other patients by enticing them to go to the Burzynski Clinic too.” [7] Fabio’s sister died in August 2013.
In 2003, Fabio launched a clothing line at the Sam’s Club Division of WalMart.[citation needed] The line was casual wear for women. Prior to his clothing line, he wrote a fitness book and created a work-out video called Fabio Fitness. In 2014, he launched Healthy Planet Vitamins, a company selling whey protein, glutamine, and colostrum products. [8]
Fabio Lanzoni’s hobbies include a passion for off-roading and motorcycles. He owns an extensive collection of 200 motorcycles including dirt bikes, racing bikes and a championship Ducati.
On March 27, 1999, Fabio was involved in an accident in Busch Gardens Williamsburg, located in James City County, Virginia. Fabio rode in the first car of Apollo’s Chariot, a roller coaster, during its maiden ride. During the rapid descent on the 210-foot drop after the lift hill, a goose collided with Fabio, leaving his nose covered in blood. He received a one-inch cut on his nose but no one else on the roller coaster was hurt.[2]
The dark, delicate and demure beauty of an Anna Maria Alberghetti is what one envisions a princess to look like and, indeed, she did have a chance to play a couple in her lifetime. Reminding one instantly of the equally enchanting Pier Angeli, Anna Maria’s Cinderella story did not take on a tragic storybook ending as it did for Ms. Angeli. On the contrary, Anna Maria continues to delight audiences today on many levels, particularly on the concert and lecture stages.
She was born in a musical home in Pesaro, Italy, in 1936, the daughter of a concertmaster father and pianist mother. They greatly influenced her obvious talent and by age six she was performing with symphony orchestras with her father as her vocal instructor. World War II had forced the Alberghettis from their homeland and after performing in a European tour, Anna Maria’s pure operatic tones reached American ears via her Carnegie Hall debut at age 14. The family decided to settle permanently in the States. The teenager went on to perform with numerous symphony orchestras during this time.
In 1950 Paramount saw a bright future in the making. Within a short time she was capturing hearts on film, making a magical debut in the eerie but hypnotic Gian Carlo Menotti‘s chamber opera The Medium (1951). Opposite the magnificent Marie Powers in the title role as the fraudulent Madame Flora, Anna Maria was directed by Menotti himself in the independently-produced film. While the movie was appreciated in art house form, Paramount wasted no time in placing the photogenic Anna into mainstream filming. Her budding talent was strangely used, however. She had an extended operatic solo in the breezy Capraesque Bing Crosby/Jane Wyman comedy Here Comes the Groom(1951), and played a Polish émigré befriended by a singer (played by Rosemary Clooney) who discovers the girl has musical talent of her own in the so-so The Stars Are Singing(1953). Anna’s songs included the touching “My Kind of Day” and “My Heart Is Home”. Thereafter, for some strange reason, her vocals were not utilized. She acted instead in such rugged adventures as The Last Command (1955) and Duel at Apache Wells (1957), and in the fluffy comedy Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957) opposite Dean Martin. And, in the end, she was lovely but utterly wasted as the Prince Charming equivalent in the gender-bending Jerry Lewis farce Cinderfella (1960). Not only does she arrive late in the film, but Jerry gave her no songs to sing — he sang them all!
Extremely disillusioned, Anna Maria departed from films in the early 60s and instead sought out work on the Broadway stage. It was here that she found that elusive star. Following a role in the operetta “Rose Marie” in 1960, Anna Maria won the part of a lifetime as the waif-like Lili in the musical “Carnival”, based on Leslie Caron‘s charming title film role. Anna Maria was utterly delightful and quite moving in the role and for her efforts was awarded the Tony Award — tying in her category with Diahann Carroll for “No Strings”. Anna Maria’s sister Carla replaced her when she left the show. Throughout the 60s she continued to impress in musical ingénue showcases — the title role in “Fanny” (1963), Maria in “West Side Story” (1964), Marsinah in “Kismet” (1967) (which was televised), and Luisa in “The Fantasticks” (1968), to name but a few.
As she matured, she made a mark in other facets of entertainment. On TV Ed Sullivanfirst introduced Anna Maria to millions of households and the public was thoroughly taken by this singing angel. She appeared with Sullivan a near-record 53 times. She also graced a number of popular TV shows with non-singing, damsel-in-distress roles on such shows as “Wagon Train” and “Checkmate”. Her recording career has included associations with Capitol, Columbia, Mercury and MGM Records.
In 1964, Anna married TV director/producer Claudio Guzmán who was almost a decade older. The ten-year marriage produced two daughters, Alexandra and Pilar. She began to downplay her career after this in favor of parenting, particularly after her divorce in 1974.
Returning to the theater on occasion, Anna Maria later reintroduced herself back into TV households as the housewife/pitchwoman for “Good Seasons” salad dressing. Her one-woman stage show led to her interest as a cabaret performer. More recent film appearances have included fun roles in the comedies Friends and Family (2001) and The Whole Shebang (2001).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Ferdy Mayne was born in 1916 in Mainz, Germany. He came to Britain before World War Two. He worked for MI5 during the War. His first film was “Meet Sexton Blake” in 1945. Among his other films are “Our Man in Havana” and “Operation Crossbow”. In the 1980’s he moved to Los Angeles where he was a semi-regular on “Cagney & Lacey”. He died in London in 1998 at the age of 81.
“Independent” obituary:
Ferdinand Philip Mayer-Horckel (Ferdy Mayne), actor: born Mayence, Germany 11 March 1916; married 1950 Deirdre de Peyer (two daughters; marriage dissolved 1976); died Lordington, West Sussex 30 January 1998.
A master of charmingly sly villainy, the tall dark and urbane actor Ferdy Mayne will be remembered for the effective menace he provided in countless films and television shows in his 60-year career, though his versality extended well beyond portraying suave duplicity, to include comedies, musicals and classic plays (his favourite role was Trigorin in The Seagull). He was born Ferdinand Mayer-Horckel in Mayence, Germany in 1916. His father was the Judge of Mayence and his mother, who was half- English, a singing teacher. Since the family was Jewish, the teenage Ferdinand was sent to England in 1932 to stay with his aunt Lee Hutchinson, a noted photographer and sculptress. He attended Frensham Heights School prior to training for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Old Vic School. His first stage appearane was as the White Kpropaganda bnight in Alice Through the Looking Glass with the West Croydon Repertory Company, but most of his early work came in radio – his fluent German put him in demand for roadcasts during the Second World War.
His parents had been briefly interned in Buchenwald but were fortunate enough, due to his mother’s lineage, to get to England before the outbreak of war. Mayne’s first West End appearance was in a German role, as Kurt Muller in Lillian Hellman’s powerful anti-Fascist play Watch on the Rhine at the Aldwych (1943), the same year that he made his screen debut (billed as Ferdi) in Old Mother Riley Overseas. In the highly prolific career that followed, Mayne appeared in over 80 films. In one of his earliest, Prelude to Fame (1950), as the hearty peasant father of a child progidy, he was enormously touching in the scene in which he realises he must temporarily give his son up to the wealthy socialiate who can develop the boy’s talent.
Though Mayne’s singing in the film was dubbed, he possessed a fine baritone voice which he displayed to effect in several West End musicals. It was while appearing in the musical Belinda Fair (1949) that he met the actress Deidre de Peyer who became his wife – they named their first daughter Belinda in memory of the show – and though they divorced in 1976 they remained close. He later played a feature role in Richard Rodgers’ musical No Strings (1963) in which as the bored millionnaire dillentante Louis de Pourtal he had a solo number “The Man Who Has Everything (has nothing)”, and in 1965 he took over the role of Max in the long-running Rodgers and Hammerstein hit The Sound of Music. Other stage work included the role of the German officer Hauptman Schultz in Albert RN (1952), the true-life story (later filmed) of prisoners-of- war who substituted a dummy during roll-call for an escaping officer, and Judge Advocate Kunz in John Osborne’s A Patriot For Me (1965) at the Royal Court.
On screeen he was a sheikh in the delightful comedy The Captain’s Paradise (1953) in which Alec Guinness maintained two contrasting wives, one in North Africa and the other in Gibraltar, and in the epic Ben-Hur (1959) played the captain of the vessel which rescues the hero from the wreck of the galley ship. Mayne effectively bared fangs in Roman Polansky’s parody of Dracula movies, Dance of the Vampires (1967), an unsubtle farce which, despite a mixed reception on its initial release, has become a cult favourite, and Polanski used him again in The Pirates (1986), an equally broad pastiche of swashbucklers.
In the war adventure Where Eagles Dare (1968) Mayne had an important role as a traditionalist Nazi general trying to curb the more vicious excesses of the Gestapo, and he worked with Kubrick in Barry Lyndon (1975). His television credits included a leading role in Epitaph for a Spy (1953), a six-part adaptation of Eric Ambler’s espionage story, and a regular role as a chef in the series The Royalty (1957-58), which starred Margaret Lockwood as the owner of a luxury hotel.
In recent years Mayne filmed frequently in Europe (he was a particular favourite of German audiences) and in the mid-1970s he settled in America, working consistently until two years ago on television and in such films as The Black Stallion Returns (1983) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), but with the onset of Parkinson’s Disease he returned to England to be near his family.
– Tom Vallance
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Tribute
2014
More than just a suave villain, German born Ferdy Mayne appeared in a few cult features over the years. In Britain from the early Forties, he took on musicals, comedies and the classics. Although adept at a variety of characters, in his later career it seems he was either playing a villain, vampire or both.
Born into a Jewish family on March 11th, 1916, Mayne was moved from his German birthplace, and sent to the UK to escape the Nazi’s. He made his screen debut in 1943, and spent the next few years in both comedies and dramas, playing such characters as a Sheik in the enjoyable Alec Guinness comedy ‘The Captain’s Paradise’ (’53), and a German officer in the POW drama ‘The Password is Courage’ (’62). Other notable movies at this time included ‘Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines’, and ‘Operation Crossbow’ (both ’65). It would be the following couple of years however that would prove to be the high point of Mayne’s screen career.
In 1967 Mayne achieved international recognition when he played Count von Krolock, who abducts the beautiful Sharon Tate, in Roman Polanski’s cult favorite; ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’. He was wonderful and gives a suitably sinister turn in this beautifully photographed spoof. Mayne is also remembered as the monocled Nazi; Julius Rosemeyer, in ‘Where Eagles Dare’ (’68), playing his part seriously amongst all the ‘boys-own’ derring-do.
After playing a doctor in Hammer’s ‘The Vampire Lovers’ (’70), it was nice to see Ferdy in a rare family role, playing Samantha Eggar’s sympathetic father in the romantic drama ‘The Walking Stick’. Next, he was back on familiar ground playing another count, this time in Freddie Francis’s camp German parody; ‘The Vampire Happening’ (’71). Like many character actors before him Mayne succumbed to the 70’s saucy era, playing a womanizing sheik in the sexploitation piece ‘Au Pair Girls’ (’72). Around this time Mayne was also seen in more respectable films, including spy movies ‘When Eight Bells Toll’ (’71) and the under-rated ‘Innocent Bystanders’ (’72), with Stanley Baker.
Moving to the US in the 1970’s, Mayne occasionally flirted with Hollywood and the mainstream. This included supporting roles in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Barry Lyndon’ (’75) and Billy Wilder’s ‘Fedora’ (’78). In his long career he also had uncredited bits in such classics ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’ (’43), ‘Ben-Hur’ (’59) and John Huston’s ‘Freud’ (’62).
After playing a professor in the Marlon Brando Nazi thriller ‘The Formula’ (’80), Mayne was the father of Jack Palance, in the late-night favourite ‘Hawk the Slayer’. A minor part in Graham Chapman’s ‘Yellowbeard’ (’83) was followed by another turn as a sheik, this time in ‘The Black Stallion Returns’ (also ’83). Other genre fare around this time included the action sequel ‘Conan the Destroyer’ (’84), 1985’s ‘Night Train to Terror’, a cobbled together anthology in which he played God(!), and Roman Polanski’s big budget flop ‘Pirates’ (’86). The following year also saw Ferdy play Dracula in the German TV co-production; ‘Frankenstein’s Aunt’ (’87).
After a small role in the Christopher Lambert chess thriller ‘Knight Moves’ (’92), Mayne’s final movie was another Nazi themed thriller ‘The Killers Within’ (’95), starring alongside cult stars; John Saxon, Meg Foster and Robert Carradine.
After battling Parkinson’s disease, Ferdy Mayne died in London, on 30th January 1998, aged 81. With over 200 screen appearances in British, American and German productions, there doesn’t seem to be much ground Ferdy didn’t cover in his 50 year career. It’s just a shame he never played a Bond villain though, he would have been great.
Zarah Leander was born in Sweden in 1907. She began her career on stage and in film in her native country. In the 1930’s she started appearing on the Austrian stage starting with “Axel an der Himmelstur” in 1936. That same year she was given a contract with the UFA studio in Berlin. She made the film “Premiere” which was the start of her German films. Towards the end of the war she returned to her native Sweden. She died in Stockholm in 1981.
IMDB entry:
Beginning her acting-singing career in provincial Swedish theaters with operetta in 1928 and a success in a touring revue by Ernst Rolf in 1929, she soon worked her way up to starring roles in Stockholm and earned well from records. In 1935 she got a leading operetta role in Vienna, offered by ‘Max Hansen’, despite her initially imperfect command of German.
In 1936 she signed a contract with the Berlin film studio, UFA, that soon would be nationalized by Nazi Germany. In the following years she became the highest-paid star of German cinema. After the war broke out in 1939, she sent her family back to Sweden and shared her time between work in Germany and the family at home. She returned to Sweden in 1942 after finishing her work with the last of her films made in Nazi Germany – and after having declined a proposition by Dr. Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, for German citizenship.
In November 1944, Swedish radio decided to no longer play her records, and her career was definitely in the doldrums. Her home, a manor at the Swedish coast of the Baltic, became sanctuary for many a refugee having escaped over the Baltic in fear of the Soviet rule. After the war she strove to re-establish her career in Sweden, and succeeded in 1949 to overcome producers’ fear for association with an artist that had been a prominent film star in Germany during the war. Her return was greeted enthusiastically by the audience, but in Sweden she would remain considered politically controversial in the eyes of many outside of her faithful audience.
In Austria and Germany her comeback was less difficult, but although the film Gabriela in 1950 was the third biggest box office hit in Germany, later films would prove that her film career had run its course.
In addition to a few musicals and some TV show appearances, concerts would for the rest of her life be her appearance of choice.
Isabelle Huppert was born in 1953 in Paris. She made her film debut in 1972 with “Faustine et le bel ete”. In 1980 she went to Hollywood to make “Heaven’s Gate” which at the time was not a critical success. It is now regarded as a classic.In 1987 she was back in the U.S. to make “The Bedroom Window”. Most recently she was back in New York to guest star in 2010 in an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”.
IMDB entry:
Isabelle Huppert was born in 1953, in Paris, France, but spent her childhood in Ville d’Avray. Encouraged by her mother (who was a teacher of English), she followed the Conservatory of Versailles and won an acting prize for her work in Alfred de Musset‘s “Un caprice”. She then studied at the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique and followed an illustrious theatrical career, which includes Ivan Turgenev‘s “A Month in the Country”,Euripides‘ “Medea” (title role) etc. She made her movie debut in 1971 and soon became one of the top actresses of her generation, giving fine performances in important films, like Claude Goretta‘s The Lacemaker (1977), as a simple-minded girl who falls in love with – and is betrayed by – a student, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Every Man for Himself (1980), as a prostitute, and Maurice Pialat‘s Loulou (1980), as an upper-class woman who is physically attracted by a young vagabond. She made her US debut playing a brothel madam in Michael Cimino‘s disastrous Heaven’s Gate (1980) and has an extremely productive collaboration with Claude Chabrol, who cast her in several movies, includingViolette (1978), in which she played a young woman who murders her parents, and Story of Women (1988), in which she gave an excellent performance as a shameless abortionist, the last woman to be executed in France. More recent good films includePatricia Mazuy‘s The King’s Daughters (2000) and Michael Haneke‘s controversial The Piano Teacher (2001), as a sexually repressed piano teacher.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Thanassis Agathos<thanaga@hol.gr
Nils Asther was born in Denmark in 1897. He was brought up in Sweden. He appeared in Swedish and German silent films from 1918 until 1926. In 1927 he went to Hollywood where he made his first U.S. film “Topsy and Eva”. He made films with Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. In 1933 he made “The Bitter Tea of General Yen” with Barbara Stanwyck. Between 1935 and 1940 he made films in the U.K. He then returned to Hollywood and made films there until 1949. In 1958 he returned to Sweden where he died in 1981 at the age of 84.
IMDB entry:
Nils Asther was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1897 and raised in Malmö, Sweden, by his wealthy Swedish parents. After attending the Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm, he began his stage career in Copenhagen. His film debut came in 1916 when the director Mauritz Stiller cast him in the lead role (as an aspiring actor, appropriately enough) in the Swedish film Vingarne (1916). After working with Victor Sjöström in Sweden and Michael Curtiz in Germany, Asther moved to Hollywood in 1927, where his exotic looks landed him romantic roles with co-stars such as Greta Garbo, Pola Negri, andJoan Crawford. Although his foreign accent was a hindrance in “talkies”, his Hollywood career continued until 1934 when he was blacklisted for breaking a contract and went to Britain for four years. After his return to Hollywood in 1938, his career declined and by 1949 he was driving a truck. In 1958, he returned to Sweden, where he remained until his death, making occasional appearances in television and on stage.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Lyn Hammond
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
TCM Overview:
Dashing, smooth leading man of late silent films and the first decade of talkies, in the USA from 1927. Tall and often mustachioed, Asther proved a capable and attractive romantic lead opposite Greta Garbo in “The Single Standard” (1929) and Barbara Stanwyck in “The Bitter Tea of General Yen” (1933). He continued playing supporting roles into the 1940s.
2470633 Barbe-bleue: BLUEBEARD, Nils Asther, John Carradine, Ludwig Stossel, Jean Parker (top, left row), 1944; (add.info.: Affiche du film Barbe bleue (BLUEBEARD) de Edgar G.); Everett Collection.
Claude Jade was born in 1948 in Dijon, France. Francois Truffaut cast her in 1968 in “Stolen Kisses” and her career was launched. The following year Alfred Hitchcock cast her in “Topaz”. Her other films include “Bed and Board” in 1970 and in 1979 “Love on the Run”. She died in 2006 at the age of 58.
Her obituary in “The Guardian”:
Claude Jade, the 20-year-old who plays the heroine of the film I’ve recently completed, Stolen Kisses, is eight years younger than Catherine Deneuve, and has something of Grace Kelly-Joan Fontaine about her,’ wrote François Truffaut in a letter to Alfred Hitchcock on July 4 1968, recommending his young discovery for a role in Topaz (1969). Thanks to Truffaut, Jade, who has died of cancer aged 58, did get a leading role in that film, and went on to have a distinguished career on stage and screen. Above all, Jade will be remembered for the three films she made for Truffaut, part of his bittersweet semi-autobiographical cycle, following the romantic adventures of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) from the ages of 12 to 30.
When Truffaut saw Jade as Frida in Sacha Pitoeff’s production of Luigi Pirandello’s Henry IV at the Theatre Moderne, he was “completely taken by her beauty, her manners, her kindness, and her joie de vivre,” and cast her as Christine Darbon, the violin student Antoine would court, marry and divorce but always love. Truffaut fell in love with her, and there was talk of marriage.
The director’s love shines through his alter-ego Doinel in Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugal, 1970) and Love on the Run (1978), as Christine puts up with Antoine’s foibles and affairs, patiently waiting for him to face up to the adult consequences of being a husband and father. Memorable scenes pass through the mind like a montage: her teaching Antoine the best way to butter toast in the morning, their writing each other little notes, his calling her “my little mother, my little sister, my little daughter” in a taxi, and she replying she would rather be his wife; her attempts to guess Antoine’s latest job, amusingly suggesting cab driver or water taster, her reaction when Antoine hangs a scissors on her ring finger, his affectionate response to her wearing glasses in bed, the medium tracking shot of her legs as she stops at a shop for tangerines then heads up the stairs, as one of the neighbourhood men longingly admires them.
Born Claude Marcelle Jorré in Dijon, the daughter of university professors, she spent three years at the Dijon Conservatory of Dramatic Art, winning the prix de comédie for her performance as Agnès in Molière’s School of Wives. In 1967, she moved to Paris and studied under Jean-Laurent Cochet and Mary Marquet, in a class with Gérard Depardieu. It was not long before she was discovered by Truffaut.
By 1969, Jade was playing Helena in Jean-Christophe Averty’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream on television; was the spirited lover of Jacques Brel in Eduard Molinaro’s 18th-century romp My Uncle Benjamin; and she also appeared as a French secret agent’s anxious daughter in Topaz, one of Hitchcock’s weakest efforts. Some of her best scenes were edited out when the film was released (they have been restored in the director’s cut). At the same time filming of Tony Richardson’s Nijinsky, with Rudolf Nureyev in the title role and Jade as his wife Romola, was cancelled by producers Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.
But Jade was kept fairly active mostly on television (notably in the series The Island of 30 Coffins), and in minor French films in the 1970s. At the same time, she was a member of Jean Meyer’s theatre company in Lyons, appearing in plays by Jean Giraudoux (La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu [The Trojan War Will Not Take Place] and Intermezzo), Henry de Montherlant (Port Royal), James Joyce (The Exiles) and Jean Racine (Britannicus).
In 1980, she moved to the Soviet Union with her French diplomat husband Bernard Coste, whom she had married in 1972 to Truffaut’s chagrin. In Moscow, she played the Bolshevik Inessa Armand in Sergei Yutkevich’s Lenin In Paris (1980), though it was not possible to show Lenin in love with her, and starred in Tegeran-43 (1981), a spy thriller with Alain Delon among an international cast. On her return to France, Jade appeared in a number of television series and the odd film, such as Jean-Pierre Mocky’s Bon Soir (1992) in the role of a shy lesbian.
In 1998, Jade became a chevalier de la légion d’honneur, and in 2004, published her autobiography Flying Kisses (Baisers envolés). Her last stage role was in Jacques Rampal’s Celimene and the Cardinal, performed in Paris and at festivals this summer. Suffering cancer of the liver, which had spread, she wore a plastic eye for her performances. She is survived by her son.
· Claude Jade (Claude Marcelle Jorré), actor, born October 8 1948; died December 1 2006
he above “Independent” by Ronald Bergan obituary can also be accessed online here.
Mario Adorf was born in Zurich, Switzerland. He made his film debut in 1954 in “08/15”. He has made many fims on the European continent with very occasional forays into international film including “Station Six-Sahara” with Carroll Baker in 1962 and three years later “Major Dundee” with Charlton Heston and Richard Harris.
IMDB entry:
Mario Adorf, a tell-tale name indeed. Mario calls to mind the actor’s Italian roots (his father was a Calabrian surgeon) whereas Adorf reveals his German origins (his mother was a radiologist from German-speaking Alsace). As for the full name Mario Adorf it echoes to perfection the international character of this living legend’s long career. Born in 1930, Mario Adorf was still studying drama at the famous Otto Falkenberg School in Munich when he landed his first role in the first installment of the “O8/15” series in 1954. It was a small part but it didn’t go unnoticed and got him new roles in German films, the most remarkable of which being that of Bruno Lüdke, the mentally retarded serial killer in Robert Siodmak’s 1957 masterpiece “Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam”. It earned him his first prize (the German Film Award of the outstanding young actor of 1958). After this Mario Adorf’s career turned international. His Mediterranean looks, his rugged face, his dark oily frizzy hair and his volubility made him an ideal villain in European-made westerns, spy or mafia films. These flicks – made in the 1960s – were mostly just commercial and Adorf hammed his parts but he did it so brilliantly that he alone made them watchable. From the 1970s on, the quality of his films improved and Adorf could lend his remarkable acting talents to more ambitious works such as “Il Delitto Matteotti”, in which he was a striking Mussolini, or “Die Blechtrommel”, where he was terrifying as a boorish grocer contaminated by Nazism. The list of great directors he worked with is impressive: Robert Siodmak, Volker Schlöndorff, Wolgang Staudte, Michel Deville, Dino Risi, Mikhaïl Kalatozov, Luigi Comencini, Peter Fleischmann, Billy Wilder, John Frankenheimer, Claude Chabrol, Fassbinder… Likewise he served many a great author, either in the theatre (Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Richard Nash) or the big or small screen (Grass, Böll, Schnitzler, Heny Miller, Joseph Conrad, Gorky, Patrick Süskind…). He also sang and wrote books (five novels and one memoir). Hyperactive for more than fifty-five years now, Mario Adorf, still in fine form at the age of seventy-eight, is still … hyperactive!
