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Crew

Françoise Dorléac – what might have been

Around 1965. Françoise Dorléac in a bodystocking.

Sexy, stylish and sparky, full of joie de vivre, Françoise Dorléac was, in the words of Vogue magazine, a “gamine fatale.”  Add to that cocktail her distinctive husky voice and ability to come across totally naturally on screen and it’s no surprise that she didn’t have to wait around for her career as a movie star to achieve lift-off.

During that short career, she made 21 films as well as working as a catwalk model for Dior in her teens:

A photographer asked if I would model for some fashion pictures and I said fine. A producer saw my pictures in the press and hired me for a small role for a film during the school holidays.

Perhaps it was her brush with the fashion world that led her to obsessively cultivate her image, aiming to “keep a certain class, but look erotic”:

I want to dress so that everybody tries to dress like me, and nobody can. I love it when you are completely dressed and you look naked. I wear chain belts to look fragile, like a slave. Every time I go out, even if it’s six o’clock in the morning, when nobody can see, it’s still important.

But she was always going to be an actress. Her parents, Maurice Dorléac and Renée Simonot, were both actors themselves (Renée was born Deneuve but adopted Simonot as her stage name). The latter was one of the first to enter the field of dubbing American films for the French market, becoming the voice of, among others, Olivia de Havilland, Sylvia Sidney, Judy Garland, Donna Reed and Esther Williams.

Françoise first appeared on screen in the movie short Mensonges (1957) but her career proper began in 1960. It took off in 1964 with François Truffaut’s romantic drama La peau douce (The Soft Skin) and Philippe de Broca’s spy spoof That Man from Rio. Those two movies showcase both her range and her potential as an actress and make her premature death all the more poignant.

1966. Françoise Dorléac and Donald Pleasance in Cul-de-sac.

Françoise Dorléac – from dead end to dead

I first came across Françoise Dorléac many years ago starring opposite Donald Pleasance in Roman Polanski’s weird and wonderful black comedy, Cul-de-sac (1966). In case English is not your first language and you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, a cul-de-sac is a no-through road or dead end.

In her third appearance in a non-French film, Françoise is cast as Teresa, a bored and hedonistic wife with little time for or interest in her weak and pathetic husband George, played by Donald Pleasance. As the film opens, a couple of sinister crooks with overtones of Laurel and Hardy arrive on Lindisfarne, the remote island on which George and Teresa have made their home. He is simultaneously indignant and cringing, she is self-obsessed and capricious. The subsequent action plays out through a series of grotesque twists and turns, the product of director Roman Polanski’s fertile and lurid imagination, seemingly inspired in part by the plays of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. 

According to Françoise:

Polanski is completely preoccupied with film; he doesn’t think about the actors as human beings at all. But I do not mind it; he is a brilliant director.

She’s right. It’s quite a movie and deservedly wins the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival.

A year later, she jumps into the Renault 10 she’s been renting during her fortnight’s break in Saint-Tropez. She needs to be back in London for the English-dubbed premiere of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (more on that later). It’s 60 miles to Nice Airport, from which she’ll catch a plane to Paris Orly and then a connecting flight to London. But she’s left it late, she’s in a rush and as she heads for the airport a light drizzle begins to fall.

Less than ten miles to go and after a long dry spell the road surface is slippery. Françoise pulls out to overtake the car in front of her and as she pulls back across the road she loses control of the car, it goes into a spin and crashes into a signpost at the side of the road. By the time the driver of the car she’s overtaken has pulled over to help, it’s too late. The Renault is already on fire and the heat too intense for him to get near. He sees Françoise beating her fists against the driver’s window in a desperate attempt to escape before the car explodes. She was just 25 years old.

When the police arrive, they find among the wreckage the bodies of a young woman and a small dog, and in a charred handbag among the luggage in the boot the burnt remnants of a driver’s license and a chequebook.

1960. Françoise Dorléac (right) with her younger sister Catherine Deneuve.

Françoise Dorléac, Catherine Deneuve and François Truffaut

Arguably the two most important people in Françoise Dorléac’s life are her sister Catherine Deneuve and director François Truffaut.

It is largely thanks to Françoise’s initiative that Catherine becomes an actress. In her second feature film, Les portes claquent (1960) the producers need to find someone to play Françoise’s character’s younger sister. Who could be better than her younger sister in real life, she suggests. So Catherine makes her screen debut. But why does she have a different surname?

It was impossible for me to have the same name as my sister Françoise. Or at least, that’s what my family said at the time… If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t make that decision! I love my mother dearly but I don’t like her maiden name. It’s hard to pronounce. I prefer my real name.

Françoise and Catherine make an intriguing pair and you can judge for yourself by watching Jacques Demy’s 1967 tribute to the Hollywood musical, Les demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort) in which they co-star as twin sisters.

For all their similarities, according to Catherine, “[Françoise] used to say that the two of us together would make one complete woman because we were so different.” To put it another way, they’re like two sides of the same coin.

Françoise is effervescent, spirited and adventurous, while Catherine is cool, reserved and cautious. Their mother remembers Françoise throwing herself at everything “with passion” while describing Catherine as a “tender, fragile little girl who loved candy.” Their clothes reflect their personalities. Françoise is into the metallics and prints so fashionable around the mid-1960s, Catherine goes for a more sophisticated, classic look. In a 1966 interview Catherine declares:

1969. François Truffaut goes out with Catherine Deneuve. Read more.

She claims she always looks like she has nothing in the closet and I look like I have six closets. She wears casual things but she has 100 casual things and I have three subtle things.”

But appearances can be deceptive. Underneath her extrovert character, Françoise has her insecurities: “I find that with each picture, I become less confident about my ability to do good work.” It’s only at the insistence of her mother that in 1965 she finally moves out of the family home. Even then, it’s only to an apartment across the street, which her mother finds for her.

François Truffaut collaborates with Françoise on just one film, La peau douce, but that belies his significance to her. Initially, things look far from promising:

I met Truffaut and realised how good it would be to make a film with him. The trouble was I disliked him on sight and it wasn’t long before he told me the same. In fact, he found me unbearable. We had a few tense months together before we realised our first impressions were wrong and found the beginnings of mutual discovery.

In fact they become lovers for a while and subsequently remain close friends.

Truffaut draws from Françoise a truly wonderful performance as Nicole, an air hostess who has an affair with Pierre (Jean Desailly), a publisher and literary celebrity. To achieve that, he encourages her to relax (he reckons her movements are too jerky) and slow down, not least in terms of the way she talks. The film is a perceptive and tender depiction of its characters’ dreams, insecurities and vulnerabilities. The story is of deep personal significance to Truffaut, whose marriage is breaking up and who has himself embarked on an affair with Françoise. Afterwards, the pair remain close friends. On its release, La peau douce appeals more to critics than to audiences but its reputation has grown over time and it is definitely worth looking out.

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francoise dorleac la peau douce

1. La peau douce (1964)

Pierre (Jean Desailly) is mesmerised by Nicole as she takes to the dance floor.

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francoise dorleac donald pleasance cul-de-sac

2. Cul-de-sac (1966)

The entire film – from Criterion, no less. Don’t miss this one!

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francoise dorleac catherine deneuve documentary

3. Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)

A behind-the-scenes documentary. Although it’s mostly in French, you can view English subtitles by clicking on the CC button at the bottom of the image.

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francoise dorleac catherine deneuve demoiselles

4. Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)

A trailer for the movie.

Françoise Dorléac – a tribute

It is Truffaut who should have the last word about Françoise Dorléac. She clearly made a huge impression on him and, following her death, he wrote movingly of her in Cahiers de Cinéma. I’ve done my best to translate his words into English, but there are subtleties, plays on words here that pretty much defy translation. So in one particular case, I’ve added the original French should you wish to see it.

1960. Françoise Dorléac, 17, in her dressing room at the Théâtre Antoine. She’s been cast as Gigi in the eponymous play by Colette. Photo by François Gragnon.

Her name was Françoise

I ask for permission to post one or two photos of Françoise Dorléac who died on 26 June last year in a car accident en route to Nice Airport. For the public, it was just a news item, all the more cruel because it involved a very beautiful 25-year-old girl, an actress who had not yet had time to become a star. For everyone who knew her, Françoise Dorléac represented more, the kind of person one meets only rarely in one’s life, an exceptional young woman whose charm, femininity, intelligence, grace and incredible moral force made her unforgettable to anyone who spoke for an hour with her.

Her strong, even bossy, personality, was in contrast to her fragile and lithe physique, which had the quality of seaweed or a greyhound. Françoise Dorléac was, in my opinion, an actress insufficiently appreciated. In her thirties she would have won the hearts of the general public – they would then have adored her in the same way as did all those who had the chance to work with her.

The challenge for a young actress is to transition smoothly from girl to woman, from juvenile to adult roles; I believe that Françoise Dorléac, a precocious woman, mature beyond her years, her face and figure already blossoming and her looks, as we say in the trade, made to last [son visage et son corps déjà construits et, comme on dit dans les studios, construits en dur et pour durer], was the only young actress one might have expected to get better and better.

Ever since she was a teenager, she took two cold showers a day, asserting that “You prepare for your forties in your twenties.” When she was impatient to find roles and make films, I tried to convince her that she had nothing to fear from the passage of the years and that time was on her side. I told her that we would make a film every six years and I booked her appointments for 1970, 1976, 1982.

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Françoise Dorléac with Jean-Pierre Cassel

Françoise Dorléac with Jean-Pierre Cassel

1961. Françoise Dorléac and Jean-Pierre Cassel co-star in La gamberge (from which this is likely a scene) and Arsène Lupin contre Arsène Lupin. Cassel falls in love Françoise and remembers the affair as “a terrible, destructive passion.” There is an International Magazine Service copyright stamp on the back of the photo.

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Françoise Dorléac in That Man from Rio

Françoise Dorléac in That Man from Rio

1964. In Philippe de Broca’s L’Homme de Rio (That Man from Rio, 1964), Françoise Dorléac stars opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo. It’s a spoof spy movie apparently inspired by the Tintin comics and proves to be a big box-office success.

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Françoise Dorléac at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival

Françoise Dorléac at the Cannes Film Festival

May 1964. Françoise Dorléac at the Cannes Film Festival. There are Reporters Associés and International Magazine Service copyright stamps on the back of the photo. There is a copy of this photo at Getty Images.

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Françoise Dorléac in a floral dress

Françoise Dorléac in a floral dress

1964. There is an International Magazine Service copyright stamp on the back of the photo. Photo by Chris Kindahl/Dalmas.

Every time I wrote to her, I put on the envelope “Mademoiselle Framboise* (Raspberry) Dorléac”* to make sure she would read my letter with a smile. Françoise Dorléac was resolute, bordering on obstinate, she was principled, her interviews were rich in aphorisms, and she was demanding in matters of life and love. She could suddenly cast a very severe look in the direction of someone who raised her suspicions.

Until then, only smiles, laughs and giggles and that’s what makes June 26 last year unacceptable, those great cascades of laughter cut short.

* Probably inspired by Bob Lapointe’s 1960 song Avanie et framboise, whose opening lines are:

Elle s’appelait Françoise
Mais on l’appelait Framboise

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Françoise Dorléac does a tree-top fashion shoot

Françoise Dorléac does a tree-top fashion shoot

13 April 1966. Two assistants help Françoise Dorléac to climb a tree in which she is going to pose for a fashion shoot.

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Françoise Dorléac does a tree-top fashion shoot

Françoise Dorléac does a tree-top fashion shoot

13 April 1966. The theme of the shoot seems to be jumpsuits. It is for Dim Dam Dom, a French TV show that focuses on the latest fashion and music trends.

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Françoise Dorléac does a tree-top fashion shoot

Françoise Dorléac does a tree-top fashion shoot

13 April 1966. The jumpsuit she’s wearing here is a rather wonderful print redolent of the period.

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Françoise Dorléac does a tree-top fashion shoot

Françoise Dorléac does a tree-top fashion shoot

13 April 1966. The photos are by Philippe Le Tellier. There are other photos from this shoot at Getty Images.

Want to know more about Françoise Dorléac?

The most compelling account of Françoise Dorléac’s life and death is in The New European. For online facts and figures head over to Wikipedia. Other sources include IMDb, Cinema Scholars, Vogue, Pure France and The Famous People.

If you can understand French, you could take a look at a 50-minute documentary about Françoise Dorléac and listen to François Truffaut talking about her.

In print there are:

  • Elle S’Appelait Françoise by Catherine Deneuve and Patrick Modiano
  • a chapter on Françoise in The Continental Actress 
  • an article, Françoise Dorléac A shooting star of Sixties French cinema, by M Anderson in Film comment, Volume 41 number 4 (2005).

Other topics you might be interested in…

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard
Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard – fiction and friction
Claudine Auger wrapped in fur
Claudine Auger – young, beautiful, trapped, could be dangerous
The sixties – sex, drugs, rock and roll and a whole lot more

Filed Under: Crew, Fashion, Films, Stars Tagged With: Catherine Deneuve, Cul-de-sac, François Truffaut, Françoise Dorléac, Jacques Demy, La peau douce, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, Philippe le Tellier, Roman Polanski

Corinne Calvet – men behaving badly

Around 1946. Corinne Calvet by Sam Lévin. Read more.

Corinne Calvet was a smart and ambitious actress, whose talents were squandered by a Hollywood system that failed to see beyond her obvious sexual allure.

Corinne was no dumb blonde. She hung out in Paris after World War II with Jean Cocteau, Jean Anouilh, Jean-Paul Sartre and the existentialist set. She also had the intellect and eloquence to win a place at the Sorbonne to study criminal law before deciding to become an actress. As she herself pointed out:

A lawyer needs exactly what an actor needs: strong personality, persuasive powers and a good voice.

Now, it has to be said that Corinne was no saint. She was well aware of her very considerable charms and not averse to deploying them when it suited her. If a décolleté dress would increase her chances of gaining the attention of a director or producer who could help her further her career, then so far as she was concerned that was all in a day’s work.

She bares all in Has Corinne Been A Good Girl?, the autobiography she published in 1983. Among other things, it’s a strikingly candid exposé of the predatory behaviour of the moguls, directors and producers who had it in their power to make or break her career. They come across as a group with a sense of entitlement and no moral compass.

Corinne Dibot becomes Corinne Calvet

Corinne Dibot is born in 1925, the youngest of four children. Her father is an impoverished count, her mother, Juliette, an heiress as well as being one of the scientists who contributed to the invention of Pyrex glassware, seemingly at the expense of spending time with her children. Corinne is devastated when Juliette suddenly and unexpectedly dies in 1935. 

She becomes something of a wild child, hanging out with the local boys. Age 15, she’s expelled from the convent school she’s been attending after she’s found with an erotic book from her father’s office. Her sexual adventures result in two very unpleasant backstreet abortions.

1954. Corinne’s friend Martine Carol as Annamaria in La Spiaggia. Photo by G B Poletto. Read more.

By the time she sets out around 1947 to find fame and fortune in Hollywood, she’s had stints at art school, law school, theatrical school and the École du Cinéma; she’s made her stage debut, worked as a radio hostess and had a few small film roles. And she’s adopted the surname Calvet because her father doesn’t want their aristocratic family name associated with acting.

Corinne goes to Hollywood

One day a friend from her student days, Martine Carol, asks Corinne to go with her to a party hosted by Paramount. Apparently they’re looking for a leading lady to play opposite Ray Milland. She’s introduced to him and when she comes to leave, she’s informed that Paramount want her to come to their office the next day. She’s presented with a form:

1949. Corinne Calvet kicks off her career. Read more.

I started filling in the answers, but soon the questions began to probe into my private life, asking for details in personal taste, my thoughts on marriage and children, my sleeping habits. Did I wear pyjamas or a nightgown? What was my preference in men, short, tall, fat, skinny, hairy or bald? … It seemed more like the kind of questionnaire a madam might use in selecting girls to work in a brothel.

She tears up the form and flounces out. In spite of (or perhaps because of) which, Paramount decide to offer Corinne a seven-year contract. Jean-Pierre urges her to accept and put her career first.

On arrival in the New York in 1947, she’s surprised and not entirely delighted that the American press and studios seem to be interested in her almost entirely as a sex symbol. 

I was already encountering the stereotyped notions American men had about French women. Their eyebrows would go up and they would leer sideways as they greeted me. American GIs, soldiers whose experience with French women was usually limited to girls of questionable repute, had been partly responsible for this reaction. But such impressions were entirely false. Most French women were raised with an emphasis on being good wives and mothers, and it was absurd to conclude that they were in any way promiscuous. Immediately I realised that in the minds of many American men, however, French women were decidedly over-sexed, and that I was a prime example of French womanhood.

As she departs on the train for Hollywood she’s warned warned to be on her guard against the wolves she will encounter.

1949. Corinne Calvet in Rope of Sand. Read more.

Corinne Calvet and William Meiklejohn

One night soon after she’s arrived in Hollywood, after dinner at Romanoff’s, William Meiklejohn, Paramount’s head of talent and casting, suggests the party adjourns to the Mocambo. He ushers Corinne into the larger of the two waiting cars and lets the other five studio executives take the other.

15 minutes later, she realises the car is heading neither for Mocambo nor for the house she’s staying at. Meiklejohn tells her he thought they’d go and have a tête-à-tête on the beach. She asks him to have the car turn round and take her home. Instead, he puts his hand between her legs, forcing them apart. She grabs one of his fingers and twists it hard until he tells the driver to make for Mocambo.

Now she’s out of favour at Paramount and her career is on hold.

Corinne Calvet, Rory Calhoun and Harry Cohn

It’s around this time that she falls in love with actor Rory Calhoun and embarks on an affair with him. Then she gets a summons from Harry Cohn, boss at Columbia via his sidekick, Walter Kane. Cohn has plans for four movies in which Rita Hayworth was going to star. But now that she’s left the studio, he’s looking for a replacement. Join him this afternoon on his yacht for a trip to Catalina Island.

When she boards the boat, “Cohn’s snakelike eyes were piercing my clothes, examining each part of my body.” It turns out that Mrs Cohn will not be joining the jaunt. They reach Catalina Island, have dinner and then Kane goes ashore – he says he can’t get to sleep on a rocking boat. With Kane out of the way, Cohn makes to kiss Corinne and she flees to her cabin, only to discover there is no lock on the door. In due course, Cohn turns up in his pyjama bottoms, “his eyes narrowed with lust.” As he approaches her, she knees him in the groin, yells for help and the deckhands arrive.

1950. Corinne Calvet beside her bust. Read more.

“Call the shore boat and get this French bitch off my yacht,” Cohn said with vicious finality.

Our heroine takes the first flight home only to find Rory in the middle of trashing the place, having assumed she’s capitulated to Cohn’s advances. When she tells him what happened, he drives her straight out to the harbour, rents a boat and sails it to Catalina Island (though Corinne has to take the wheel when the conditions deteriorate and Rory gets seasick).

On arrival, Rory moors the boat next to Cohn’s, takes Corinne down to the cabin and undresses her, then takes her back on deck to make noisy love to her. At which point, the lights go on in Cohn’s yacht, the crew emerge and lean over the railing to see what’s going on. When Cohn himself appears, Rory shouts, “Take a good look, Mr Cohn. This is the closest you’ll ever get.”

A few days later, Rory instructs Corinne to buy a new dress and have her hair done. He’ll pick her up at 18:00, take her out for dinner and announce their engagement to the press. But he doesn’t turn up. She waits and she waits. And then she goes in search of him, finally tracking him down at Ciro’s, where he’s at a table with his agent, Henry Willson.

She persuades him to dance with her and asks him why he’s stood her up. Henry has told him that marrying Corinne would be bad for his career. Rory refuses to kiss her and, as the saying goes, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. When the couple return to the table, she pours the open bottle of champagne over Rory’s head and flounces out to her car.

Up the road, she lays in wait for him to leave and then follows him back to Henry’s house. She rings the bell and demands a kiss. She’s parked her car across the drive and won’t move it until she gets satisfaction. Rory goes inside and comes back with a pistol. He fires a warning shot over the bonnet of Corinne’s car, then holds the gun to her head. Henry, meanwhile, is on his knees, holding onto Rory’s leg and pleading with him. Police sirens wail in the distance – the neighbours have heard the shot and called them. Corinne flees to her apartment.

1949. Corinne Calvet as Suzanne Renaud in Rope of Sand. Read more.

Corinne Calvet and Hal Wallis

It’s 1948. When someone reports Corinne to the House Un-American Activities Committee for her association with the existentialist movement in France, the only way she can stick around is to get a US husband. In the teeth of his mother’s opposition, actor John Bromfield comes up trumps. The pair are married in Boulder City and spend their honeymoon night at Las Vegas’ Flamingo Hotel – a venue you’ll be familiar with if you read about Virginia Hill, a seriously bad good-time girl.

On their return from honeymoon to Los Angeles, John is sent off to do location shooting in Arizona. They both have contracts with Hal Wallis Productions and one evening while her husband’s away, Hal Wallis, best known now as the producer of Casablanca, drops by their apartment. After a bit of banter he makes a lunge for Corinne. When she locks herself in the bathroom and points out she’s a married woman, he tells her he told John to propose to her – it was a marriage of convenience to suit the studio. She’s devastated.

Wallis goes on to punish Corinne by cancelling John’s contract and putting her in My Friend Irma Goes West (1950), a comedy starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Rope of Sand [her previous film] had made me a valuable property. Doing this film would ruin my chances of rising higher as a dramatic star.

For his birthday, Corinne gives Wallis a picture she’s painted of him as a clown. In her memoir, she protests that it’s an innocent, well intentioned gift and she’s astonished to hear that he’s furious. Really???

So Wallis puts her into another Martin and Lewis comedy, Sailor Beware (1952). With John out of work, once again she can’t afford to say no to it.

1952. Corinne Calvet. Read more.

On the set one morning as Dean and I were rehearsing our duet, Wallis stopped the routine. The playback had stopped. The set was silent.

“Corinne,” Wallis’ voice boomed. “I’ve told you, I don’t want my actresses to wear falsies.”

“I’m not wearing any.”

“Go and take them out,” he ordered.

“Mr. Wallis, are you calling me a liar?”

I spoke in a menacing tone as I approached him. I grabbed his hand, and in front of everyone, put it inside my dress and made sure he felt that I had nothing there but my own breasts.

“Are you finding anything there but my flesh? No? Then thank you.”

Dropping his hand, I returned to stand next to Dean Martin, who looked extremely amused.

After she completes Flight for Tangier (1953), Wallis reveals that Corinne is one of a number of stars whose contract he will not be renewing.

Two or three years later, she finds herself in a New York club having dinner at the same table as Wallis. When he starts to grope her under the table, she goes off to “powder her nose.” It’s at this point that she realises that she’s running a very high fever and decides it’s payback time. When she returns to the table, she leads Wallis to believe he has a chance with her. She gets him to take her for a romantic ride in a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park, during which she does what it takes to pass her infection on to him. Three days later, she sends him four dozen red roses with an accompanying note: “Next time I’ll give you something worse. Best wishes for your recovery.”

1960. Darry Zanuck (background) shares a table with Juliette Greco and Orson Welles. Read more.

Corinne Calvet and Darryl Zanuck

Back in 1950, Corinne’s agent manages to get her a contract shared between Hal Wallis and Darryl Zanuck, head honcho at 20th Century-Fox. The first movie in which they cast her is When Willie Comes Marching Home. Director John Ford was hoping to get Maureen O’Hara for Corinne’s part, so he’s a bit disappointed and hostile. To make matters worse, Corinne’s interpretation of her role is different from his. It turns out that Zanuck likes her take and tells her to persist with it, so she’s caught in the crossfire between two big egos.

One day, Zanuck summons her to his office.

Zanuck got up from behind his desk. I sat down, and he started to pace up and down in front of me, making small talk.

“Wasn’t the weather cold this week in Los Angeles,” he said, looking out the window. “The Palm Springs sun should be very pleasant.” Dramatically, he turned on his heels and stood a few feet away from me with his erect penis standing proudly out of his unzipped pants.

“How do you like that?” He was smiling proudly.

When Corinne fails to respond as expected, Zanuck implies that if she agrees to have sex with him, he will offer John a contract at 20th Century-Fox. She tells John about the meeting.

And when I finished saying that I was willing to do it with his consent he looked at me in total disgust.

“You bitch. You could have done it without telling me.”

Really, what’s a girl to do?

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corinne calvet martin lewis

1950. My Friend Irma Goes West

This is the movie to which Hal Wallis relegated Corinne as a reprisal for rejecting his advances. It dashed her hopes of becoming a dramatic actress following her success in Rope of Sand.

Her co-stars here are Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who performed in nightclubs and on radio before branching out into TV and films. Popular with US audiences at the time, it feels pretty cringeworthy now.

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corinne calvet tv show

1952. The Name’s the Same

Corinne Calvet tries to stump the panel in this extract from The Name’s the Same.

The host is Robert Q Lewis, the panelists writer Abe Burrows, actress Joan Alexander and composer Meredith Willson.

Here again, there’s lots of embarrassing flirting and suggestiveness. How times have changed!

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corinne calvet argument

1989. Corinne Calvet vs Cesar Romero

Talkshow host Joe Franklin sits down with five Hollywood veterans.

The discussion gets cantankerous around 1:15 when Corinne claims that her career suffered after she fended off the advances of mogul Harry Cohn and producer Hal Wallis. Cesar Romero responds by suggesting that she shouldn’t be making such a fuss about it – that she not they was the problem.

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corinne calvet interview

1992. Corinne Calvet TV interview

The unctuous interviewer is actor and talk-show host, Skip Lowe.

Feel free to skip (pun intended) the unbelievably cheesy introduction and bear in mind that this appears to be an unedited recording, complete with blank screens and off-screen discussion.

What to make of Corinne Calvet?

1952. Corinne Calvet goes to war with Zsa Zsa Gabor. Read more.

Of course, Corinne Calvet gives us only her side of the story. And reading between the lines and taking account of various contemporary articles and reports, she comes across as a pretty feisty and litigious individual, often well able and willing to give as good as she gets. Good for her!

Her writing style can be an obstacle to taking her seriously:

I looked up at Rory Calhoun as he introduced himself. I tumbled into the dazzling whirlpool of his eyes. It was as refreshing as the light green spring meadows when the leaves are still new. There was a fire in the depth of his glance that consumed my resistance. It was too strong, too intoxicating.

Nevertheless… Corinne Calvet’s story is one woman’s case study of the starlet’s dilemma and a reminder of just how exploitative the movie industry was back in the day (which is not to say that it’s exactly spotless today, witness the #MeToo movement). She suffered the same fate as many beautiful women prepared to exploit their physical attributes as part of their acting repertoire, eliciting from critics a kind of lecherous glee on the one hand and sneers of contempt on the other.

On IMDb she has 49 credits as an actress, including appearances in TV series as well as roles in feature films. But sadly, her dreams of a career as a serious dramatic actress went up in a puff of ooh la la, double entendre and mediocre movies. Ultimately, she became known to the public primarily for her combustible private life and a number of headline-grabbing legal battles.

1961. Corinne Calvet at a Beverly Hills party with Don Scott. Read more.

As well as having various love affairs, she had three failed marriages and a son by her second husband. In an interview quoted in the 21 April 1960 edition of the Los Angeles Times, Corinne Calvet wryly observed:

American men make wonderful husbands if you don’t love them. But if you love them, don’t marry them. I don’t mean they are lousy lovers. I just think they are little boys who don’t know what they want. In America, you don’t have romances, you have affairs. And these affairs really lack class.

Want to know more about Corinne Calvet?

The main source of information about Corinne Calvet is her autobiography, Has Corinne Been a Good Girl? I made quite extensive notes as I read it. If you’d like a copy of them, please contact me.

The best factual overviews are at Wikipedia and Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen. You can find obituaries is, among others, The Guardian, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Variety.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy
The paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster
Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls
Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Crew, Stars Tagged With: Corinne Calvet, Corinne Dibot, Darryl Zanuck, Don Scott, G B Poletto, Hal Wallis, Harry Cohn, Henry Willson, John Bromfield, Juliette Gréco, Martine Carol, Rope of Sand, Rory Calhoun, Sailor Beware, Sam Lévin, William Meiklejohn, Zsa Zsa Gabor

Irene Lentz – pioneer of an American luxury fashion brand

When it comes to luxury fashion brands, the US can’t hold a candle to Europe, particularly France. Crucially, the US has no tradition of couture. But, in the mid-20th century, one US luxury brand flickered into life and burned brightly and briefly. Its name: Irene, after its founder, Irene Lentz.

Evening gown by Irene Lentz photographed by Cecil Beaton
1951. Evening gown by Irene. Photo by Cecil Beaton. Read more.

Irene grew up on a ranch. As well as establishing her own brand, she was one of Hollywood’s busiest and most influential costume designers, with two Oscar nominations and 123 credits on IMDb. Those scandalous high-waist shorts and midriff-baring top in which we first encounter Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice are down to Irene.

Irene Lentz managed to build her brand in what was, before the 1960s, a sector dominated by men. That’s a distinction she shares with a handful of talented women, notably Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet, Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparell. In the US back then, the other notable dress designer was Claire McCardell, but she was working behind the scenes and aiming for a more casual, mass market.

Irene was a master of her craft, in touch with the zeitgeist and with a flair for marketing. She’s a remarkable and tragic figure, whose story falls into five chapters.

Chapter 1 – Irene Lentz gets going

Irene Lentz is born in 1901 in Brookings, South Dakota, then, in 1910, moves with her family to Baker, Montana. Nine years later she’s on the move again, this time with her mother and younger brother to Los Angeles.

In 1921, she’s working as a full-time sales girl in a drug store, when F Richard Jones (Dick to his friends) drops by and takes a shine to her. He’s a director of silent films at the Mack Sennett Studio and helps Irene to get a job there, initially as a production assistant, later as a star. IMDb lists eight movies in which she appears between 1921 and 1925. During that time she features as one of Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties – a bevy of scantily-clad (for the period) eye candy who keep popping up in his Keystone comedies and at any other opportunity.

Irene Lentz photographed by John Engstead
Around 1950. Irene Lentz. Photograph by John Engstead. Read more.

During her acting stint, Irene Lentz spots an opportunity to design and sell clothes to the growing movie community and from 1924–26 studies at the Wolfe School of Design. Dick Jones is still there in the background (or perhaps even the foreground, who knows?) and in 1926 they set up their first shop, on South University Avenue.

By 1929, the business is thriving, they relocate the shop to larger premises and get married. Then tragedy strikes. The following year, just 11 months after their wedding, Dick dies of tuberculosis age 37. Irene closes the shop and leaves for Europe, where she discovers the wonderful world of Paris couture.

Irene Lentz’s account of how she got started demonstrates her skill at building a brand story. Here it is, as reported by Frederick C Othman in Behind the Scenes, Hollywood in the 7 June 1942 edition of The Press Democrat:

She left the ranch when she was 16 to study music here at the University of Southern California. Had a roommate who was too timid to attend night school classes in dress design alone. Miss Lentz went along. After two nights she knew she was going to be a dress designer herself. She finished the course, dropped the music and set up a dress shop on the university campus, with the sign, “Irene.” That’s all the name she’s had since then. Just Irene.

“The campus shop was a great success from the beginning,” she said. “The dresses were cheap, and I do think they had a certain flair, but the real reason for my rushing trade was the fact that my store was the only place on the campus where the girls could smoke. Cigarettes were strictly against the rules everywhere else. So I always had a shop full of prospective clients, smoking. The place was so full of smoke so much of the time that my doctor wouldn’t believe it when I told him I didn’t smoke.”

The coeds smoked and bought dresses and received one of their major thrills when Dolores Del Rio walked into the store and bought an evening gown for $45.

“I never did learn how she heard about me,” Irene said. “But she was wonderful. Many a woman would not have told a soul where she’d bought that dress. But Dolores told everybody she knew. After that I got plenty of movie trade.

“One of my best customers was Lupe Velez. She refused to try on dresses in the fitting room. She tried them in the front room, by the plate-glass window. She always had a gallery.”

What a great account and love the sketches of Dolores and Lupe – the two Mexican superstars pretty much at the peak of their popularity. But, interestingly, no mention of Irene’s acting exploits or, indeed, of Dick Jones. Perhaps she feels that these would detract, or at least distract, from the narrative she wants to promote.

Irene’s tale of how “one day I discovered my passion and, through a combination of dedication and luck, built a business” is a kind of blueprint for so many subsequent start-ups. Notable practitioners are the likes of Markus and Daniel, the eponymous creators of Freitag, and Phil Knight whose memoir, Shoe Dog, recounts his adventures as founder of Nike.

Dolores Del Rio, a loyal Irene Lentz customer
1937. Dolores Del Rio, a loyal Irene customer and adovate. Photo by A L Whitey Schafer. Read more.

Chapter 2 – Irene goes into couture

Following the death of her husband, Irene Lentz goes to France for five weeks and while she’s there she visits the salons run by the Paris couturiers. She returns to the US, her head spinning with ideas. In 1931 she opens Irene Ltd on Sunset Boulevard and it’s a big hit. Within two years, it’s being eyed up enviously by the guys at Bullocks Wilshire, a Los Angeles department store that’s the pinnacle of style and opulence. They’re attracted by both the quality of her product and her stellar clientele.

There’s clearly synergy here and they persuade Irene to move her operation to the department store and open up a kind of French salon. This is a ground-breaking development – the first designer/retail store partnership of its kind. From now on, her clothing label, copied from a logo created by Dick Jones, simply reads “Irene.” Could her original inspiration have come from Gilbert Adrian Greenburg, known simply as Adrian, at MGM?

As a customer, the service you receive is as lavish as the clothes you’re buying. You can see Irene’s original creations modelled in-store. As at the salons in Paris, the team you meet for your fitting includes the designer herself as well as a tailor and a pattern cutter. You also get to have shoes and jewellery picked from elsewhere in the store to complement your ensemble.

The Irene brand already has a following in the film community and the move to Bullocks raises its profile, prestige and prices – one of those tailored suits will set you back $400–700. For the remainder of the decade, Irene Lentz continues to build her clientele among the stars and wealthy wives of studio executives as well as landing commissions from production companies to design the wardrobes for their movies. One of the first is Flying Down to Rio (1933), whose leading lady, Dolores del Rio, insists that Irene design her costumes.

Other divas whose film wardrobe she ends up designing include Constance and Joan Bennett, Carole Lombard, Loretta Young, Hedy Lamarr, Claudette Colbert and Ingrid Bergman. By the late-1930s she is travelling to Paris for the spring fashion shows. And by 1941, even British Vogue refers to Irene’s “Californian elegance.”

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irene lentz picking peaches

1. Irene Lentz in Picking Peaches

A chance to see Irene on the silver screen as a flapper. In this scene from Picking Up Peaches (1924), her co-star is Harry Langdon.

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irene lentz for lana turner

2. Irene’s scandalous costume for Lana Turner

Lana in a two-piece by Irene is as sizzling as the steak her co-star John Garfield is supposed to be keeping an eye on in this scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

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irene lentz by lavoi

3. Irene by Greg LaVoi Lookbook

This is Hollywood costume designer Greg LaVoi's Fall 2013 Lookbook Video for his Irene by GV line, taking its inspiration from her creations.

Meanwhile, at a party thrown by her customer, fan and friend, Dolores del Rio, Irene Lentz meets Eliot Gibbons. This is no coincidence. During the 1930s, Dolores is the wife of Cedric Gibbons, the head of MGM’s art department (after their divorce in 1940, he will be seen out with, among others, Carole Landis before getting hitched to Hazel Brooks). Eliot is Cedric’s brother.

Eliot, an erstwhile assistant director, is working as a writer of short stories for newspapers and screenplays for movies. He’s also a keen aviator. So, when Irene expresses an interest in becoming a pilot, he offers to help her finish her required flying hours – a great pretext for spending lots of time together. On New Year’s Eve 1934 he proposes to her and they tie the knot in 1936. The flying lessons continue and, ironically, she gets her private pilot’s license just a couple of days before civilian flying on the West coast is prohibited following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

A member of the wardrobe team makes final ajustments to Ava Gardner’s gown by Irene
1949. A member of the wardrobe team makes final ajustments. Ava Gardner’s gown is by Irene. Read more.

Chapter 3 – Irene Lentz goes to the movies

That attack also proves to be the catalyst for a career change. For a while, Irene has been unhappy with her financial arrangements with Bullocks. She’s been contemplating her next move, including setting up her own manufacturing company. But with the US being drawn into World War II, that seems too risky. So, she’s open to new ideas and approaches.

Louis B Mayer is also in a quandary. He’s facing a raft of departures from his wardrobe team including Adrian, his head costume designer. Irene Lentz is ideally qualified to rescue the situation: she has the talent, she has the profile and she’s not going to be drafted. Encouraged by his wife, one of her many friends and clients, Mayer proposes that Irene join MGM and run its costume department. She accepts but on her own terms.

On arrival, Irene quickly assembles a team around her. The challenges they face are formidable. A multitude of warring individuals and factions to finesse. A hectic and dynamic schedule that requires working all hours. And constant changes of stars, directors and producers that disrupt the best-laid plans.

Easter Parade (1948) is a case in point. When Charles Walters replaces VIncente Minnelli as director, songs have to be rearranged, Judy Garland’s opening scene reworked (so the original costumes for it are no longer needed) and two of Judy’s key ensembles have to be changed. Further wardrobe modifications are required when Ann Miller replaces Cyd Charisse. Then Gene Kelly gets injured and Fred Astaire steps in. Cue further changes to the dance sequences and costumes.

1943. Marlene Dietrich as Jamila in Kismet. Costume by Irene Lentz. Read more.

Another challenge is dealing with stars’ anxieties about their clothes. The studio is full of starlets desperate to impress and established stars worried that their careers may be on the slide. Irene’s combination of empathy and decisiveness are just what’s needed to reassure them.

In spite of all the distractions, though, there are movies for which Irene manages to get her ideas through. In the case of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), one of those ideas is to associate Lana Turner’s character with a colour, as a composer might with a musical theme. So, Cora wears white in every scene except two.

Finally, in June 1949 Irene falls victim to MGM’s internal politics, her departure apparently triggered by her nemesis, Katharine Hepburn (read on for more on her), outraged by Irene’s failure to show up for a fitting. She still seems to be hanging on in there, though, in early 1950, when Doris Koenig’s Vagabondia column in the 2 March edition of Monrovia Daily News Post reports that:

She Is now an executive designer of MGM Studios, besides having her own wholesale manufacturing business – Irene Inc.

So far as her studio is concerned, Irene has no last name. Her driver’s license lists her as “Mrs Eliot Gibbons,” but she has built “Irene” into such a trademark that if you ask the studio operator for “Mrs Gibbons” you draw a blank. Ask for “Irene” and you will be connected with her office…

Consistency is one of the hallmarks of great brands!

Diamond-print suit by Irene Lentz
Early/mid-1950s. Diamond-print suit by Irene Lentz. Read more.

Chapter 4 – Irene goes into ready-to-wear

Back in July 1946, Neiman Marcus let Irene Lentz know that, alongside Christian Dior, Salvatore Ferragamo and Norman Hartnell, she has been chosen as a recipient of their Award for Distinguished Service in the field of fashion. It gets her thinking. She’s sick and tired of dealing with internal politics and having to compromise her designs: “I want to create designs that reflect my taste, rather than cater to those of a director or producer.” She’s also got to the point where she’s established the reputation, the relationships and the team to make her ambition to set up her own manufacturing company realistic.

The one thing Irene lacks is financing. With the help of Harry Cohn at Columbia, she assembles a group of over 20 luxury department stores including Bergdorf Goodman (New York), Marshall Field (Chicago) and Neiman Marcus (Dallas). She keeps 51% of the ordinary shares of Irene, Inc while her backers take the other 49%. As part of the arrangement, the stores get exclusives to her designs.

In 1947, Irene Lentz reveals her plans to begin designing her own range of clothes as well as continuing to work at MGM – she has negotiated a new contract to facilitate this. This time around she will be turning her attention to ready-to-wear rather than couture – “…marketing genius. Upscale stores could offer clients the Irene garments that stars loved,” says Mary Hall, founder The Recessionista.  In its Apr 1, 1948 issue, Vogue US, announces the launch:

NEW DESIGN

It is not news that Irene is a designer. Of all the women who design in America today, her clothes have had, in one sense, the widest public: she makes the screen-life clothes for stars of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where she is head costume-designer. But now the news is that Irene has turned her strong, fresh hand, again, to clothes for private lives, and her first ready-to-wear collection is now in several shops across the country. Consciously limiting her sphere, Irene makes no attempt to cover every phase of her new public’s life; she refuses to touch casual clothes, sports clothes. Instead, she makes the strict but feminine day-suit she is famous for, turns out beguiling afternoon print dresses, establishes her formal evening clothes as events.

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Pale grey suit with shutter neckline by Irene Lentz

Pale grey suit with shutter neckline by Irene Lentz

Late-1940s/early-1950s. The jacket's nipped-in waist seems to show the influence of Christian Dior’s New Look but its structured shoulders and the narrow skirt appear to be moving away from it....

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Check silk day dress with black taffeta trim by Irene Lentz

Check silk day dress with black taffeta trim by Irene Lentz

Late-1940s/early-1950s. The setting for this shoot may have been Irene’s boutique at Bullocks Wilshire. A paper label on the back of the photo reads:

5170 Check silk day dress...

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Brocade-trimmed suit by Irene Lentz

Brocade-trimmed suit by Irene Lentz

Early/mid-1950s. Irene’s trademarks were hand stitching, exquisite buttons and luxurious fabrics such as the brocade for this suit. An Irene garment was not cheap, but it was high quality and...

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Check suit by Irene Lentz

Check suit by Irene Lentz

Early/mid-1950s. Irene suits were designed and constructed to show off a woman’s waist. She used plaids, stripes and seaming to help achieve the effects she was looking for. It’s possible...

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For 15 years Irene continues to head up her own business, latterly being persuaded to design costumes for a select number of leading stars.

Chapter 5 – Irene Lentz throws in the towel

On 15 November 1962, with rave reviews from her latest show ringing in her ears, Irene Lentz heads for Hollywood’s Knickerbocker. It’s not a propitious place. In the early 1940s when it was still glamorous, actress Frances Farmer was tracked down there by police and sent to a mental institution. Later in the 1960s, William Frawley of I Love Lucy fame, will be dragged there to die after he collapses from a heart attack on the street.

Irene checks in to the now-faded hotel under an assumed name. That night she consumes two pints of vodka, tries to slit her wrists, then jumps out of an 11th-floor window. Hours later, her body is found on an awning. She has left a brief note: ““I am sorry to do this in this manner. Please see that Eliot is taken care of. Take care of the business and get someone very good to design. Love to all. Irene.”

Early/mid-1950s. Dark suit by Irene Lentz. Read more.

Why? Why? Why?

When you come across a tragedy like this, you search to make sense of it. How could such a talented woman do this to herself? But then how could the likes of Alexander McQueen and Kate Spade follow in her footsteps? Well, in one sense you can never know what’s going through someone’s mind when they make that decision.

The police suggested that Irene was “despondent over business problems and her husband’s illness.” According to her business manager, “Irene had been under a terrific strain. She had been in ill health for about two years.” What more can we say?

She was a woman operating in a man’s world – a fundamentally lonely undertaking. What’s more, she was working in an incredibly stressful environment with all sorts of budgetary, scheduling and interpersonal pressures quite apart from the need for relentless creativity – a killer in itself. On the surface, Irene was self-confident, but under the surface she had her insecurities. This example from Irene – A Designer from the Golden Age of Hollywood: The MGM Years 1942-49 is shocking in its brutality:

On August 2 1944, Irene and Virginia Fisher, her sketch artist, had a meeting with Katharine Hepburn to discuss the sketches for Without Love. Nothing Irene showed Hepburn seemed to meet with her approval. Before leaving, Hepburn quickly listed her ideas, reiterating sharply that she would return the following Monday and hoping Irene “will have designs that are in keeping with my character in the story.” It was the first time that Virginia saw Irene, who was always self-assured, physically shake. “Intimidation couldn’t describe what I witnessed. Irene was terrified by Hepburn’s stinging remarks,” Virginia confided.

Hedy Lamarr in The Heavenly Body
1943. Hedy Lamarr in The Heavenly Body – gown by Irene. Read more.

In the early days there was Dick Jones, and he seems to have been something of a buttress and a Svengali for her as well as the love of her life. They really do seem to have shared a dream. It’s probably no coincidence that reports of Irene hitting the bottle begin to emerge in the early-1930s – soon after his death. The problem got worse and worse as time went by.

Irene’s motives for marrying Eliot may have been praiseworthy but they proved to be a poor foundation for marriage. Around the time of her engagement, she told friends “I felt a need to take care of him.” Then, a year after their wedding, she had a skiing accident, which caused a miscarriage. She was devastated and never forgave herself.

On the other side of the marriage bed, it’s quite likely that Eliot – also an alcoholic – felt outclassed and overshadowed by his brother. World War II might have provided a distraction for him, but within a month of his return rumours began to circulate that he was going out with other women. Shortly before Irene’s suicide, he suffered a stroke (from which he recovered).

If by that time Irene Lentz had fallen out of love with her husband, she had fallen into love with Gary Cooper, according to her friend Doris Day. In her biography, Doris Day: Her Own Story, she remembers:

Irene designed the clothes for several of my pictures so I got to know her very well. She was a nervous woman, introverted, quite unhappy, and at times she drank more than was good for her. She had an unhappy marriage to a man who lived out of the state and only occasionally came to visit her. One time, toward the end of a long evening, when she had been drinking quite a bit, she confided in me that the love of her life was Gary Cooper. Irene was a very attractive woman, a lovely face, and when she talked about Cooper her face glowed. She said he was the only man she had ever truly loved. There was such a poignancy in the way she said it. It really broke my heart.

After that, she several times confided in me about Cooper. I got the impression that she had never mentioned him to anyone before me, and she was so happy to declare her love for him. Thinking about it now, I cannot honestly say whether Irene’s love was one-sided or whether she and Cooper had actually had or were having an affair. But the way she loved him touched jealousy in me, for I had never loved a man with that much intensity.

Cooper had died the year before Irene’s suicide.

Want to know more about Irene Lentz?

If you’re serious about Irene Lentz, you have to get hold of Frank Billecci and Lauranne Fisher’s Irene – A Designer from the Golden Age of Hollywood: The MGM Years 1942-49. Although it’s mostly about her years at MGM, it contains a well-researched chapter on her life up to that point. It has been the main source for much of this piece.

Online sources I have consulted include:

  • Various articles at Newspapers.com
  • Various articles by Mary Hall at The Recessionista
  • California Couture: Irene at Bullocks-Wilshire by Mary Hall for HuffPost
  • Irene Lentz by Hollis Jenkins-Evans for Vintage Fashion Guild
  • The Chic Life and Tragic Death of a Revered Costume Designer by Elizabeth Snead for The Hollywood Reporter
  • A sequel for Irene Lentz fashion line by Vincent Boucher for the Los Angeles Times.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model.
Andrea Johnson – forgotten supermodel of the 1940s
The Fashion Flight – California comes to Paris
Wilhelmina modelling a chiffon evening dress
Wilhelmina – glamour and tragedy

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Crew, Fashion Tagged With: Cedric Gibbons, Dolores del Rio, Eliot Gibbons, Irene, Irene Gibbons, Irene Lentz, The Postman Always Rings Twice

Monica Vitti – a sad childhood, a glittering career and a bitter old age

1966. Monica Vitti by Bert Stern.

In the early-1960s, director Michelangelo Antonioni made four revolutionary movies with actress Monica Vitti. All of them now have cult status on the arthouse circuit.

Much has been written about Antonioni’s films, but almost all of it takes the form of reviews and critical appraisals. It casts no light on his relationship with Monica Vitti. What’s clear nevertheless is that for him she was both muse and lover. In that sense their relationship is reminiscent of that of Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, their counterparts in France.

And while there’s plenty of material available about Anna Karina, there seems to be almost nothing published in English about Monica Vitti. Searches of the Internet (beyond Wikipedia) and even the British Library prove pretty much fruitless. For the time being at least, she remains for the most part something of a beautiful enigma – unless you can read Italian.

So what can we glean about her to provide a backdrop to the photos showcased here? Well, she was a superbly versatile actress, equally adept at playing the angst-ridden roles in which Antonioni cast her and turning her hand to comedy. Let’s take a look at her through the lens of her career.

Monica Vitti grows up and becomes an actress

Born in Rome in 1931 and christened Maria Luisa Ceciarelli, she has an unhappy childhood, her attention-seeking belittled by her family, her relationship with her mother strained. As the only daughter, she feels she’s treated very differently from her brothers: “I had very strict parents. My two brothers were power and freedom. I was powerlessness and seclusion.” Her experiences as a child will mark her for life – she will never want to have a family and will be wary of marriage.

She makes her stage debut age 14 and acting becomes a form of escapism:

When at fourteen-and-a-half I had almost decided I had had enough of life, I realized that I could act, carry on just pretending to be someone else, and making people laugh as much as possible on the stage and screen; in life it was much more difficult.

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Monica Vitti relaxes on a sofa with a magazine

Monica Vitti relaxes

Around 1963. Monica Vitti relaxes on a sofa with a magazine. On the back of the photo is an Italy's News Photos agency stamp.

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Monica Vitti with Dirk Bogarde

Monica Vitti with Dirk Bogarde

1966. Monica Vitti with Dirk Bogarde, her co-star in Modesty Blaise. This photo probably taken at the movie's premiere. On the back of the photo is an International Magazine Service agency stamp.

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Monica Vitti with Carlo Ponti and Vanessa Redgrave in Cannes

Monica Vitti with Carlo Ponti and Vanessa Redgrave in Cannes

1967. Monica Vitti with Carlo Ponti and Vanessa Redgrave at the Cannes Film Festival for the screening of Blow-Up. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

A 10 414/24
XXè FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DU FILM A CANNES
LA GRANDE-BRETAGNE A PRESENTE, AU FESTIVAL DE CANNES, UN FILM DU CELEBRE METEUR EN SCENE ITALIEN MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI...

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Monica Vitti in Beate Loro

Monica Vitti in Beate Loro

1975. Monica Vitti in Beate Loro (Lucky Them). A caption on the back of the photo reads:

“Lucky them!!!” (Beate Loro) is the title of the film that Claudia CARDINALE and Monica VITTI are filming, for the first time, together. In the romance of Don Quixote now, Monica Vitti is a modern Don Quixote with a ‘Honda’ and Claudia...

When Monica is 18 years old, her family – brothers as well as parents – emigrates to the US. She stays behind and at some point soon after graduating from Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1953, she assumes the stage name Monica Vitti (her mother’s birth name was Vittiglia). Her early career is unremarkable. She tours Germany with an Italian acting troupe and has a role in a stage production of Niccolò Machiavelli’s La Mandragola in Rome. For a few years she’s a struggling actress, combining theatre work with appearances in a miscellany of made-for-TV movies and series.

Around 1962. Michelangelo Antonioni adjusts Monica Vitti’s costume. Photo by Claude Schwartz.

Monica collaborates with Michelangelo Antonioni

Then, in 1957, Michelangelo Antonioni sees her in a Feydeau farce and invites her to dub the voice of reporter Dorian Gray in his forthcoming film Il Grido (The Cry). One day, working in the dubbing studio, Monica is unaware that he has come in and is standing behind her, watching her. After a while, he says, “You have a beautiful neck. You could be in the movies.” Turning point in her life.

His background and situation are very different from hers. He has fond memories of his childhood and is on his way to establishing himself as a film director, having started out writing screenplays and making documentaries. He is intellectual, aloof, meticulous.

Both Michelangelo and Monica are passionate about their work and fall for each other, professionally and personally. Their first collaboration takes two years to come to fruition and produces L’avventura. According to Monica, “Nobody wanted to take a chance on it and on me, an unknown.” The night that it is shown at the 1960 Cannes International Film Festival turns out to be the inflexion point for both their careers. Its screening provokes boos, whistles and catcalls. But the following morning the tables are turned. A group of highly regarded filmmakers and critics, led by Roberto Rossellini, issue a strongly worded statement:

Aware of the exceptional importance of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film, “L’Avventura,” and appalled by the displays of hostility it has aroused, the undersigned critics and members of the profession are anxious to express their admiration for the maker of this film.

L’Avventura goes on to win the Festival’s Special Jury Prize. The following year, in a poll for British film magazine Sight and Sound, 70 critics from around the world nominate it as the second-greatest film ever made, after Citizen Kane. For her performance, Monica Vitti wins the Golden Globe Award for Best Breakthrough Actress in 1961.

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Monica Vitti looks at herself in the mirror

Monica Vitti looks at herself in the mirror

Around 1963. According to Fiorella Mannoia, a stand-in for her in various films, Monica Vitti had an incredible charisma. She could arrive on the set disheveled and without make-up, and pass almost unnoticed. But when she returned having made up and combed her hair, everyone just stopped for a moment. Photo by Angelo Frontoni.

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Monica Vitti arranges her hair

Monica Vitti arranges her hair

Around 1963. Monica Vitti photographed by Angelo Frontoni.

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Monica Vitti with backlit hair

Monica Vitti with backlit hair

Around 1962.Monica Vitti photographed by Angelo Frontoni. Although the photographer's stamp is on the back of this photo, another apparently from the same shoot is published in The Guardian, where it is captioned as "Monica Vitti in L'eclisse" and attributed to Sergio Strizzi.

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Monica Vitti has a think

Monica Vitti has a think

Around 1962. Monica Viti sits pensively in a rattan peacock chair. On the back of the photo is a Roma's Press agency stamp.

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Monica Vitti pouts for the camera

Monica Vitti pouts for the camera

Around 1963. Monica Vitti photographed by Angelo Frontoni.

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Monica Vitti looks at herself in the mirror

Monica Vitti looks at herself in the mirror

Around 1963. Monica Vitti photographed by Angelo Frontoni.

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Monica Vitti pouts for the camera

Monica Vitti pouts for the camera

1962. Monica Vitti looks like she's enjoying posing for the camera. According to Fiorella Mannoia, a stand-in for her in various films, "Monica wanted control over all her photos, she was very careful about how it was shot, the lights. She always told me, "When you present your profile, do so like this…" She taught me a lot. On the back of the photo are Agence Dalmas and International Magazine Service agency stamps.

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Monica Vitti relaxes

Monica Vitti relaxes

1962. Monica Vitti relaxes with a magazine. On the back of the photo are Agence Dalmas and International Magazine Service agency stamps.

So what’s all the fuss about? L’avventura is arguably Antonioni’s first masterpiece. He’s utterly uncompromising in the way he throws down the gauntlet to his audience: no real narrative, minimal tension, almost glacial tempo, desolate landscapes – both physical and emotional. His characters are wrapped up in themselves, incapable of forming relationships, dying of ennui rather than living their lives. It’s an extended meditation on the malaise of privileged contemporary society and the pointlessness of some people’s lives.

It could be dire but it’s not – at least not to the afficionados of the art house cinemas, who relish its sheer audaciousness as well as the wonderful acting, sets and cinematography. At the centre of L’avventura is Monica Vitti. Often she’s sphinx-like, challenging us to make out what’s going through her mind, how she’s feeling. But she can also be mercurial – from time to time emotions flit across her face as her mood lightens and darkens. It’s a mesmerizing performance, bang in line with what Antonioni is looking for:

What happens to the characters in my films is not important. I could have them do one thing, or another thing. People think that the events in a film are what the film is about. Not true. A film is about the characters, about changes going on inside them. The experiences they have during the course of the film are simply things that “happen to happen” to characters who do not begin and end when the film does.

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Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti in Venice

Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti in Venice

1964. Posing alongside Antonioni on a boat on the Grand Canal, Monica Vitti seems to be feeling an autumn chill...

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Monica Vitti and Rossana Rory in L'eclisse

Monica Vitti and Rossana Rory in L’eclisse

1962. Vittoria (Monica Vitti), whose relationship with her boyfriend Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) is on the rocks, visits her neighbour Anita...

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Monica Vitti in Il deserto rosso

Monica Vitti in Il deserto rosso

1964. Il deserto rosso is set against a forbidding industrial landscape around Ravenna. Monica Vitti plays the part of Giuliana,...

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Monica Vitti in Il deserto rosso

Monica Vitti in Il deserto rosso

1964. Il deserto rosso is Michelangelo Antonioni's first colour film, so too bad this shot is in black and white....

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Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni outside the Excelsior Hotel, Venice

Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni outside the Excelsior Hotel, Venice

1962. Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni descend the steps in front of the Excelsior Hotel in Venice. A caption on...

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Monica Vitti with Michelangelo Antonioni at the Venice Biennale

Monica Vitti with Michelangelo Antonioni at the Venice Biennale

1962. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

VENICE SEPTEMBER 1962
ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
...

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Monica Vitti filming a scene for L'eclisse

Monica Vitti filming a scene for L’eclisse

1962. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

ROME/ Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni (l’Avventura – La...

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Monica Vitti with Michelangelo Antonioni at the 1964 Venice International Film Festival

Monica Vitti with Michelangelo Antonioni at the 1964 Venice International Film Festival

1964. Michelangelo Antonioni holds the Golden Lion award he has received for his latest film, Il deserto rosso (Red Desert)....

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L’avventura is the film that puts Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti in the international limelight. It is the first of four they make together over the space of just a few years. The others are La notte (1961), L’eclisse (1962) and Il deserto rosso (1964) – all absolute classics.

With her earnings from L’avventura, Monica buys an apartment in Rome. Michelangelo moves into the apartment directly above hers, with an inside staircase connecting the two flats. Like Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard, Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni are also lovers – their affair lasts a decade before the couple part ways. But before that, Monica does a complete U-turn with her career.

Monica turns to comedy… and tragedy

As Monica Vitti’s fame as an actress grows, offers come rolling in. She’s not interested in going to Hollywood but she’s afraid of getting typecast. So in the mid-1960s she switches from Antonioni’s angst-ridden arthouse films to comedy. In her own words (translated):

I realized I had a talent for comedy when I recited tragic roles in a way that made my friends at the Academy laugh. I understood only later what an extraordinary gift it was.

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Monica Vitti on location

Monica Vitti on location

1966. Monica Vitti on location to film Fai in fretta ad uccidermi... ho freddo! (Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold). A...

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Monica Vitti on location

Monica Vitti on location

1966. Monica Vitti on location to film Fai in fretta ad uccidermi... ho freddo! (Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold). A...

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Monica Vitti on location

Monica Vitti on location

1966. Monica Vitti on location to film Fai in fretta ad uccidermi... ho freddo! (Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold). A...

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Monica Vitti on location

Monica Vitti on location

1966. Monica Vitti on location to film Fai in fretta ad uccidermi... ho freddo! (Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold). A...

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Monica Vitti as Sabina in Le Fate

Monica Vitti as Sabina in Le Fate

1966. Monica Vitti as Sabina in Le Fate, which was released in the US as Sex Quartet. Her co-stars include...

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Monica Vitti relaxes on the beach

Monica Vitti relaxes on the beach

1967. Monica Vitti relaxes on the beach in a break from location shooting for La cintura di castità (The Chastity...

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Monica Vitti as Boccadoro in La cintura di castità

Monica Vitti as Boccadoro in La cintura di castità

1967. Monica Vitti as the beautiful Boccadoro in La cintura di castità (The Chastity Belt). An example of the sex...

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Monica Vitti as Boccadoro in La cintura di castità

Monica Vitti as Boccadoro in La cintura di castità

1967. Monica Vitti plays the beautiful Boccadoro, daughter of a game warden and lusted over by the uncouth and misogynistic...

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In 1960s Italy, commedia all’italiana is all the rage. It’s a movie genre that combines straightforward comedy with biting social satire – Divorzio all’italiana (Divorce Italian Style, 1961) is an early example. Monica is the first woman to establish herself in this genre, which up to now has been dominated by men. Two of her big successes are in La ragazza con la pistola (The Girl with a Pistol, 1968) and Dramma della gelosia: tutti i particolari in cronaca (The Pizza Triangle, 1970).

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. Loosely based on a comic strip and directed by Joseph Losey and characterized by Variety magazine as “one of...

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Monica Vitti looks in the mirror

Monica Vitti looks in the mirror

1966. Monica Vitti looks at herself in a make-up mirror in this publicity shot for Fai in fretta ad uccidermi......

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Monica Vitti on the set of Château en Suède

Monica Vitti on the set of Château en Suède

1963. Château en Suède is directed by Roger Vadim and released in the US as Nutty, Naughty Chateau – classy....

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Monica Vitti on set for La ragazza con la pistola

Monica Vitti on set for La ragazza con la pistola

1968. Monica Vitti on set for La ragazza con la pistola (The Girl with a Pistol). A caption on the...

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. The film's plot in a nutshell… Modesty Blaise is summoned by the British government in a plot to deliver...

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. With its op art sets, music by Johnny Dankworth and throw-away attitude, Modesty Blaise is a perfect period piece...

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. Modesty Blaise is nothing like the runaway box-office success its producers hope it will be on its release. Not...

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. Unlike her male counterparts in other spy thrillers of the time such as James Bond, Modesty Blaise is an...

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During the remainder of the 1960s and through the 1970s she also works with a number of international film directors including Luis Buñuel – Le Fantôme de la Liberté (The Phantom of Liberty, 1974). But outside of Italy and of the arthouse circuit, she’s probably best remembered as the eponymous heroine of Modesty Blaise (1966), in which the criminal-mastermind-turned-secret-agent she plays is the antithesis of the characters she assumed for Antonioni.

In the 1980s she makes a few more films, including a last one with Antonioni, before returning to the theatre both as actress and teacher. She also has an unsuccessful go at writing and directing as her career gradually winds down. In 1995 she marries Roberto Russo, with whom she has been living for ten years, and soon after that she is diagnosed as suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

Monica Vitti died on 2 February 2022.

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l'avventura

1. Monica Vitti talks about L’avventura

More specifically, she talks about the hostile reception the film received the night of its premiere at the 1960 Cannes International Film Festival… and the unexpected critical support it garnered the following day.

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il deserto rosso

2. Il deserto rosso

A news clip of Michelangelo Antonioni at the 1964 Venice International Film Festival followed by a trailer for Il deserto rosso.

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modesty blaise

3. Modesty Blaise

A trailer for the zany, spoof-secret-agent comedy thriller – a rare opportunity to see Monica Vitti in an English-language film.

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comedy vitti style

4. Comedy Vitti Style

An audiovisual essay by Pasquale Lannone including clips from seven Monica Vitti movie comedies. An accompanying note is available online.

Want to know more about Monica Vitti?

If you can get hold of a copy, The Continental Actress – European Film Stars of the Postwar Era by Kerry Segrave and Linda Martin has a brief chapter on Monica Vitti.

Online, as well as Wikipedia there are a few articles worth reading:

  • Monica Vitti compie 85 anni, ecco i dieci motivi per amare quest’attrice unica by Arianna Finos for la Reppublica.
  • Monica Vitti compie 87 anni, ma lei non può festeggiare: ultime notizie at Virgilio.
  • L’eclisse: Antonioni and Vitti by Gilberto Perez for The Criterion Collection.
  • Monica Vitti – Icon, Diva, Comedian! at arsenal.
  • Monica Vitti Alian Elkann interview.
  • A Note on Comedy Vitti Style (2015) by Pasquale Iannone at Necsus.

Russian Information Network promises much but doesn’t seem reliable.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard
Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard – fiction and friction
Claudia Cardinale – up for a challenge
Françoise Dorléac – what might have been
Gina Lollobrigida – the temptress of the Tiber
The paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster
Yvonne Furneaux as Emma in La Dolce Vita
Yvonne Furneaux – glamorous English export

Filed Under: Crew, Films, Stars Tagged With: Cannes International Film Festival, commedia all’italiana, Il deserto rosso, L’avventura, La notte, Michelangelo Antonioni, Modesty Blaise, Monica Vitti

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard – fiction and friction

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard are one of the most celebrated couples of the early-1960s. Their relationship lit up the screen in a succession of stylish and influential films that helped define French New-Wave cinema.

No sooner had they discovered that they couldn’t live without each other, than they found that living with each other was almost impossible too. The relationship was a dream – a dream that couldn’t survive the realities of day-to-day life for more than a few years. In the end, the cinematic chemistry just couldn’t compensate for Jean-Luc Godard’s and Anna Karina’s fundamental incompatibility.

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard
Around 1963. Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina contemplate her new shoes.

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard – a tale of two childhoods

Jean-Luc, one of four children, is born in 1930 into a prosperous and cultured French family. He grows up in Switzerland and later describes his childhood as being like “a kind of paradise.” Age 16, he goes to Paris to study for his baccalauréat with a view to going to engineering school. But he gets distracted initially and then obsessed by films. Although three years later he manages to get a place at the Sorbonne, he drops out and ends up spending most of his time at the cinema with his mates, who include future directors François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette.

Age 19, J-L is in his element, writing complex articles about the nature of cinema and reviews of films and helping Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette with their first short films. For a year or two, he lives a bohemian life in and around Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the place to be for intellectuals, artists and singers in post-World War II Paris. He’s quite prepared to do what it takes to pursue his obsession. To avoid conscription, he claims Swiss nationality and to raise money he steals from his grandfather and from his employers.

For most of the 1950s, J-L works in a variety of roles in and around the film industry. Then, François Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows) triumphs at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and puts French New Wave cinema on the map. The stars are aligning to enable J-L to make his first and breakthrough feature film – À Bout de Souffle (Breathless).

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French new-wave cinema

1. Jean-Luc Godard and French new-wave cinema

In the early days of French new-wave cinema, Jean-Luc Godard creates a unique film aesthetic and transforms his leading ladies into fashion icons. This short M2M video outlines how he establishes this je ne sais quoi attitude and style.
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The mesmerizing Anna Karina

2. Anna Karina’s guide to being mesmerising

This BFI video uses clips from Jean-Luc Godard's films Bande à Part and Vivre Sa Vie to illustrate why Anna Karina becomes such an iconic figure of the early-1960s.
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Interview with Anna Karina

3. An Interview with Anna Karina

Anna Karina comes across as very young and fetchingly shy in this 1962 interview for the French TV programme Cinépanorama. Her modesty and charm are in marked contrast with the interviewer's overly aggressive interjections.

J-L’s approach is nothing if not unorthodox. As his cinematographer, he hires Raoul Coutard, originally personal stills photographer for General de Castries, commander of the French forces around Dien Bien Phu when they were defeated by the Viet Minh in 1954, and a documentary cameraman for the French army’s information service in Indochina. J-L favours a hand-held camera and a minimum of artificial lighting. He writes the dialogue day by day rather than working from the original screenplay. And when it comes to editing, he makes extensive use of jump cuts.

The critics love À Bout de Souffle and so do audiences. The film makes about 50 times its original investment in profits and, thanks in no small part to the publicity campaign he’s orchestrated, much of the attention is focused on J-L himself.

Anna Karina by the Seine
1960. Anna Karina poses by the Seine.

One of the actresses J-L interviews for a part in À Bout de Souffle is Anna Karina. Up to this point, her story could scarcely be more different from his.

Born in Denmark in 1940, Anna Karina has a turbulent childhood – one that could hardly be less like “a kind of paradise.” While she’s still a baby, her father leaves her mother, and her mother leaves little Anna with her grandparents. From age four, she’s in and out of foster homes until, age eight, she moves back to live with her mother and stepfather, who’s now on the scene. Feeling unloved and unwanted, Anna tries time and again to run away, plays truant and leaves school age 14. She finds work as a lift operator, an illustrator’s assistant, as a film extra – she wants to be an actress – but she’s drifting. Then, one evening in 1958, she has a row with her stepfather, he beats her up and that’s it. She ups sticks and heads for Paris with the equivalent of US $15 in her pocket.

There, she lives on the streets until a priest helps her find a room just behind the Bastille. Of course, she finds herself wandering around Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where she’s spotted by photographer Catherine Harlé who is setting up a modelling agency. It’s not long before Anna establishes herself as a top advertising model. She’s on her way and she’s learning to speak French by hanging out at the cinema.

Two shoots help to shape her future. At one she meets Coco Chanel, who tells her she has no chance of breaking into acting so long as she goes by her birth name of Hanna Karin Bayer and rechristens her Anna Karina. The second fateful shoot is for a TV ad for Palmolive soap, which has her in a bath up to her neck in soapsuds. It is here that J-L first comes across her. He makes contact with a view to offering her a part in À Bout de Souffle.

A series of misunderstandings

So why does Anna Karina not appear in À Bout de Souffle? Well, J-L is a geek, all wrapped up in himself. Jean Seberg, the film’s female lead, describes the impression he made on her at their first meeting – “an incredibly introverted, messy-looking young man with glasses,” who didn’t look her in the eye when she talked. When Anna arrives to meet him, he’s again wearing his trademark dark glasses.

With little ado, he tells her she’s got the job, adding offhandedly, “Mind you, you’ll have to take your clothes off.” Anna is outraged. J-L, taken aback, mentions the Palmolive ad. She retorts that underneath the soapsuds she was fully clothed and she doesn’t do nude work. At which point she flounces out.

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Anna Karina by Giancarlo Botti

Anna Karina

1965. A portrait of Anna Karina. Photo by Giancarlo Botti.

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Anna Karina in Alphaville

Anna Karina

1965. Anna Karina in Alphaville.

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Anna Karina by Philippe Le Tellier

Anna Karina

1967. A portrait of Anna Karina. An International Magazine Service stamp on the back reveals that the agency received this print on 11 September 1967. Photo by Philippe Le Tellier.

Not to be deterred, a few months later J-L asks Anna to come back to audition for nothing less than the principal female role in his next film, Le Petit Soldat. Urged on by her friends and impressed by encouraging press reports about À Bout de Souffle, she goes to see J-L a second time. Once again, he does little to put her at her ease or show that he’s taking her seriously. He just looks her up and down and tells her: “Okay, you got the part. You can come and sign the contract tomorrow.” That proves impossible because legally Anna is still a minor. So she has to persuade her mother, with whom she hadn’t been in contact for a year, to sign the contract on her behalf.

Then there’s the advert J-L placed in a trade paper before giving Anna her role.

Jean-Luc Godard who has just finished “Breathless” and who is in pre-production of “Le Petit Soldat” is looking for a young woman between 18 and 27 who will be both his actress (interprète) and his friend (amie).

The first Anna Karina knows of this is when she reads in France Soir, one of the country’s most popular daily newspapers, that Jean-Luc Godard has found his “amie” for his next film. She jumps to the conclusion that “amie” means “girlfriend,” with the implication that she’s slept her way to the role she’s been given. She calls the producer’s office and says she’s pulling out and they can find someone else for the part. It takes J-L, knocking on her front door with 50 red roses and an assurance that she’s misinterpreted the ad, to get her back on side.

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard
Around 1960. Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard in love.

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard get together

It’s spring 1960. In the middle of filming Le Petit Soldat in and around Geneva, there’s a dinner in Lausanne for the whole crew. At the head of the table is Anna’s current boyfriend, flanked by J-L and Anna. Halfway through the meal, J-L passes her a note under the table before getting up to go. It says: “I love you. Rendez-vous at the Café de la Paix at midnight.” Her boyfriend snatches it from her hand, reads it and pleads with her to stay with him. But his pleas fall on deaf ears. When she arrives at the café…

He was sitting there reading a paper, and I was standing in front of him waiting. And I thought it was for hours. Of course it was maybe for three minutes or two minutes. And then suddenly he said, “Oh here you are. Let’s go.”

Game on. When they return to Paris, she moves in with him and they enjoy exploring Paris by night, going to the movies and seeing friends. But it’s not long before cracks in their relationship begin to appear.

A match made in hell

Their backgrounds, personalities and motivations are poles apart. In his professional life, J-L is full of self-confidence. He’s an intellectual and, in his chosen field an uncompromising revolutionary, reclusive by nature and wedded to his work, which leaves little space for Anna. But his desire for Anna to give up acting and his jealousy when she wants to work with other directors suggest that he’s insecure in his private life.

She, on the other hand, is desperate for love, warmth and reassurance in the wake of her unhappy childhood and the father she never knew. She needs someone to pay attention to her, to help her fight the loneliness with which she’s had to struggle. It’s bad enough to be with someone whose mind is elsewhere much of the time he’s with her. Being left at home while he’s away at work is nothing less than a torment.

Anna Karina with Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Une Femme Est Une Femme
1961. Anna Karina with Jean-Claude Brialy (left) and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Une Femme Est Une Femme.

Meanwhile, J-L uses his films to work through his emotional responses to what’s going on between himself and Anna. He originally conceived Une Femme Est Une Femme (1961) as a frothy comedy but ends up adding an autobiographical element to the story and using it as a vehicle to explore aspects of his relationship. Jean-Claude Brialy, who stars opposite Anna Karina in the film, later recounts how: “They tore each other apart, argued, loved each other, hated each other, screamed at each other.”

When Anna gets pregnant, J-L insists on marrying her. Perhaps it suits them both: it gives him more control over her, and her the security she craves. For a time, they go out together with friends but J-L is ill at ease and taciturn in company. Desperate to get back to work, he disappears off the scene.

I could never understand his behaviour. He would say he was going out for cigarettes and then come back three weeks later. And at that time, as a woman, you didn’t have any chequebooks, you didn’t have any money. So he was off seeing Ingmar Bergman in Sweden or William Faulkner in America. And I was sitting around the apartment without any food.

It gets worse. One night, J-L gets home to find Anna has had a miscarriage. She’s covered in blood and freaking out. She’s in such a bad way that she needs not just to go to hospital but to stay there for a while. When she comes home to recuperate, J-L can’t cope and gets some friends to look after her while he goes off for his work.

When he gets back he feels guilty and rents a villa in the south of France so that he and Anna can spend some quiet time together. But on the way, he loses his resolve, turns the car around and tells his wife it’s impossible – he needs to return to his work.

In autumn 1961 while filming Le Soleil Dans L’Oeil (Sun in Your Eyes), Anna has an affair with the film’s director, Jacques Bourdon. When she tells J-L she wants to leave him, he trashes their apartment and she takes a drug overdose. Once again, she’s hospitalized. But in January 1962 the couple are back together again, thanks not least to the prospect of collaborating on J-L’s next film, Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live).

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Jean-Luc Godard with Brigitte Bardot

Jean-Luc Godard with Brigitte Bardot

1963. Jean-Luc Godard and Brigitte Bardot on the set of Le Mépris. Photo by Shahrokh Hatami.

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Jean-Luc Godard with Brigitte Bardot

Jean-Luc Godard in conversation with Brigitte Bardot

1963. Jean-Luc Godard discusses a scene with Brigitte Bardot on the set of Le Mépris. Silhouetted in the foreground, co-star Michel Piccoli has a drink.

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Jean-Luc Godard with Brigitte Bardot

Jean-Luc Godard with Brigitte Bardot

1963. Jean-Luc Godard prepares to shoot a scene for Le Mépris with Brigitte Bardot. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

À Rome Brigitte Bardot a commencé le tournage du film “Le Mépris" d’après l’ouvrage d’Alberto Moravia, sous la direction de Jean-Luc Godard.
24/04/63 821 Deb Ag. Dalmas

For a time after that, Anna and J-L work apart from each other on different films – she with Jacques Rivette on a stage production of La Religieuse (The Nun) and, in Spain, with Pierre Gaspard-Huit on Shéhérazade, he on Les Carabiniers (The Soldiers) and, with Brigitte Bardot in Rome, on Le Mépris (Contempt).

At weekends, they often meet up in Paris and Rome. One night at a nightclub, someone asks Anna for a dance. When she gets back, J-L slaps her face in front of their friends and bystanders. Instead of reacting with anger, she sees this as proof that her husband still loves her – a telling indication of both her state of mind and the state of their relationship.

Late in 1963 the couple separate again, and once again J-L uses a new film as a way of getting back together. There’s a pattern here. The film in this case is Bande à Part (Band of Outsiders). But while he’s off working on pre-production, Anna tries to commit suicide again. She’s rescued by their decorator when he returns to retrieve his keys, which he forgot to take with him when he left for the evening. J-L’s response is to send her to a mental hospital. When she’s cleared to leave, he collects her and tells her that shooting will start in three days’ time. The movie proves to be a lifeline:

I had come out of hospital. It was a painful moment. I had lost the taste for life at that time. In the meantime I had lost weight, I wasn’t doing well, neither in my head nor in my body. It’s true: the film saved my life. I had no more desire to live. I was doing very, very badly. This film saved my life.

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Eddie Constantine, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina

Eddie Constantine, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina

1965. Jean-Luc Godard, flanked by Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina, consults the script of Alphaville.

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Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina prepare to shoot a scene for Alphaville

Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina prepare to shoot a scene for Alphaville

1965. An assistant's arm stretches out holding a mirror as Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina prepare to shoot a scene for Alphaville. Another assistant attends to her dress.

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Anna Karina with Eddie Constantine in Alphaville

Anna Karina with Eddie Constantine in Alphaville

1965. Eddie Constantine is an almost ghost-like presence in the background as the spotlight falls on Anna Karina in Alphaville.

It also effects the reconciliation J-L is seeking. But not for long. Anna’s next two movies are Jean Aurel’s De L’Amour (All About Love) and Maurice Ronet’s Le Voleur de Tibidabo (The Thief of Tibidabo). While filming the latter, Anna has an affair with her director/co-star, she separates from J-L and the couple file for divorce. In spite of which, they agree to collaborate on his next film, Alphaville. Once again, J-L’s preoccupations with his relationship percolate through, with Eddie Constantine’s character trying to teach Anna’s character to say the words “I love you.”

Anna Karina in Pierrot le Fou
1965. Anna Karina in Pierrot le Fou

Next up for the ex-couple is Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot the Madman), in which J-L casts Anna as an unscrupulous floozy who cajoles her now-married ex-lover into eloping with her, leading him on to his ultimate destruction. Based on the plot synopsis, you would imagine that by this time there’s no love lost between the couple. And you’d be absolutely right. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna’s co-star, describes them as “like a cobra and a mongoose, always glaring at each other.” Their last feature film is Made in U.S.A., J-L yet again unable to help himself referencing his relationship with Anna in the film and being mean to her on set. And that’s it for Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina – after seven and a half years, the curtain comes down on both their personal and their professional relationships.

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard go their own ways

Both Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina go on to forge remarkable careers. His place in movie history is assured. John Patterson, writing in The Guardian, puts it like this:

Godard is as revolutionary and influential a hinge-figure in cinema as Joyce was to literature and the cubists were to painting. He saw a rule and broke it. Every day, in every movie. Incorporating what professionals thought of as mistakes (jump-cuts were only the most famous instance), mixing high culture and low without snobbish distinctions, demolishing the fourth wall between viewing himself as a maker of fictional documentaries, essay movies, and viewing his movies as an inseparable extension of his pioneering work as a film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s.

Anna Karina continues to work in the movie business, both as an actress and, on a couple of occasions, as a director. She also has a career as a singer, collaborating with Serge Gainsbourg on a couple of hit songs, Sous le Soleil Exactement and Roller Girl. And she writes several novels.

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Anna Karina filming Luchino Visconti's The Stranger

Anna Karina

1967. Anna Karina filming Luchino Visconti's The Stranger. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

REPORTAGE No 64/67

“The Stranger”, internationally-acclaimed novel by Nobel Prize-winning French author Albert Camus, is at last being brought to the screen.

Directed by Luchino Visconti, it stars Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Karina and Bernard Blier.

Released world-wide by Paramount Pictures, it is being produced by Dino De Laurentis with Mastroianni’s Master Film and Algeria’s own newly-formed production company, Casbah Film.

Marcello Mastroianni and Anna Karina are photographed in a scene shot on a stretch of sand near Gaeta, about 80 miles south of Rome.

Photo by Emilio Lari for the Pierluigi Photographic Agency.

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Anna Karina

Anna Karina

1968. Anna Karina in a floral dress. An International Magazine Service stamp on the back identifies the date this print was received by the agency was 2 August 1968.

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Anna Karina

Anna Karina

1970. Anna Karina wearing a timepiece choker. An International Magazine Service stamp on the back identifies the date this print was received by the agency was 22 June 1970.

But their collaborations are what Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina are best remembered and celebrated for, with Filmmaker magazine describing their movies together as “arguably the most influential body of work in the history of cinema.” In an interview years later, Anna says: “He was and will remain the greatest love of my life.” As for J-L, his feelings for her remain inscrutable behind those dark glasses.

Anna Karina walks away
1966. Anna Karina walks away from a poster advertising Jacques Rivette’s film La Religieuse in which she plays the lead role.

Want to know more about Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard?

If you’re seriously interested, head right over to new wave film.com, which has extensive information on French new-wave cinema as well as Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina. For lots more photos, take a look at Rose’s Anna Karina fansite. IMDb has a comprehensive listing of Jean-Luc Godard’s and Anna Karina’s filmographies.

In her 70s, Anna Karina did a series of interviews with, among others, The Guardian , New York Times and Vogue (all 2016), and with CR (2018). Jean-Luc Godard has written so much about cinema it’s impossible to know where to start. You could take a look at Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews edited by David Sterritt. Or, for something a whole lot more digestible, Jean-Luc Godard: The Rolling Stone Interview (1969).

Other topics you may be interested in…

Françoise Dorléac – what might have been
The paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster
The sixties – sex, drugs, rock and roll and a whole lot more
Veruschka and Rubartelli – a fashion legend

Filed Under: Crew, Films, Stars Tagged With: À Bout de Souffle, Alphaville, Anna Karina, Bande à Part, Brigitte Bardot, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Paul Belmondo, La Religieuse, Le Mépris, Le Petit Soldat, Pierrot Le Fou, Une Femme Est Une Femme

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