Danielle Yvonne Marie Antoinette Darrieux (French pronunciation:[da.njɛli.vɔnma.ʁiɑ̃.twa.nɛtdaʁ.jø]; 1 May 1917 – 17 October 2017) was a French actress of stage, television and film, as well as a singer and dancer.
Beginning in 1931, she appeared in more than 110 films. She was one of France's great movie stars and her eight-decade career was among the longest in film history.
Life and career
Darrieux was born in Bordeaux, France, during World War I, the daughter of Marie-Louise (Witkowski) and Jean Darrieux, a medical doctor who was serving in the French Army.[1][2] Her mother was born in Algeria.[3] Her father died when she was seven years old.
Raised in Paris, she studied the cello at the Conservatoire de Musique.[4] At 14, she won a part in the musical filmLe Bal (1931).[5] Her beauty combined with her singing and dancing ability led to numerous other offers; the film Mayerling (1936) brought her to prominence.[6]
Under the German occupation of France during World War II, Darrieux continued to perform, a decision that was severely criticized by her compatriots. However, it is reported that her brother had been threatened with deportation by Alfred Greven, the German manager of Continental, the only film production company permitted in occupied France. She received a divorce and then fell in love with Porfirio Rubirosa, a Dominican Republic diplomat and notorious womanizer. They married in 1942 in Vichy in a ceremony attended by other diplomats that resided in the city at the time.[7] His anti-Nazi opinions resulted in his forced residence in Germany. In exchange for Rubirosa's freedom, Darrieux agreed to make a promotional trip in Berlin. The couple lived in Switzerland until the end of the war, and divorced in 1947. She married scriptwriter Georges Mitsikidès in 1948, and they lived together until his death in 1991.
In Jacques Demy's film musical The Young Girls of Rochefort (1966) her role was the only one in which a principal actor in any of Demy's film-musicals sang his or her own musical parts. (All other actors had a separate person dub their singing parts.) During the 1960s, she also was a concert singer.
In 1970, Darrieux replaced Katharine Hepburn in the Broadway musical Coco, based on the life of Coco Chanel,[8] but the play, essentially a showcase for Hepburn, soon folded without her. In 1971 and 1972 she also appeared in the short-lived productions of Ambassador. She worked again with Demy for his film Une chambre en ville (1982), an opera-like musical melodrama reminiscent of the director's earlier work The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, 1964). Once again, Darrieux provided her own vocals for her songs.
Honors
For her long service to the motion picture industry, in 1985 she was given an Honorary César Award. She continued to work, her career spanning eight decades, most recently providing the voice of the protagonist's grandmother in the animated feature Persepolis (2007), which deals with the impact of the Islamic revolution on a girl's life as she grows to adulthood in Iran.
Death
Danielle Darrieux died on 17 October 2017, due to complications from a fall, five months after turning 100 that May.[9][10]
^"Danielle Darrieux". The St. Louis Star and Times. Missouri, St. Louis. 16 November 1937. p. 8. Retrieved 19 October 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
^Mataix, David (2006). L'Europe des révolutions nationales, 1940-1942 (in French). L'Harmattan. p. 363. ISBN9782296019881. All the testimonies show the boredom that affected all the characters in the capital. Journalists, foreigners, certain politicians often met in the evening in the salon of the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, but it must be clear that nothing was happening there. Austerity in Vichy was in order, out of solidarity with the prisoners and those who suffered throughout the country, but also as a consequence of the restrictions and supplies that appeared in the winter of 1941, an exceptionally cold winter. From 1941, Pétain even had to organize two ceremonies to present his vows. In addition, the clergy had regained power in this capital and participated in the control of good morals. Christmas 1940, which the journalists celebrated loudly and with a lot of alcohol, caused a scandal. All the people occupied themselves as they could by participating in charities, galas, the funeral of the Japanese ambassador, the Orthodox mass on February 6, 1942 in honor of the seventeenth birthday of King Peter II of Yugoslavia or at the wedding of Danièle Darrieux with an attaché at the Embassy of the Dominican Republic.
^Lebrun, Dominique (11 September 1987). Paris-Hollywood: Les français dans le cinéma américain. Hazan. ISBN2-85025-136-4.
