Colette Marchand

Colette Marchand (born April 29, 1925 in Paris , † June 5, 2015 in Bois-le-Roi , Seine-et-Marne ) was a French dancer and actress . She became famous in the late 1940s as the prima ballerina of Roland Petits Les Ballets de Paris . She received a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination for her feature film debut in John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) . Critics ranked her among the ten greatest contemporary dancers in Western Europe, along with Margot Fonteyn , Yvette Chauviré and Violetta Elvin, among others .

Life

Training and collaboration with Roland Petit

Colette Marchand was born in Paris in 1925. She enjoyed classical dance training at the school of the Opéra de Paris and also received violin lessons . Her teachers were the Russian-French dancer and choreographer Victor Gsovsky (1902–1974) and Albert Aveline (1883–1968). After a brief stint at the Paris Opera, Marchand went to England , where she briefly joined the Metropolitan Ballet in 1947 under the direction of Letty Littlewood and Gsovsky. She appeared as Queen in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake , danced the Galatea in Pygmalion and took on the title role of Juliet in Sergei Lifar's Romeo and Juliet . She celebrated her breakthrough from 1948 with Roland Petits Les Ballets de Paris at the Théâtre Marigny. With the newly founded ballet company Marchand appeared in London in the spring of 1949 in Les Demoiselles de la Nuit . For Jean Françaix 's ballet, a variant of the fairy tale The Little Mermaid , she received praise from the critics, who attested her a beautiful and distinctive dance style.

In October 1949 Marchand went on tour with Petit's company in the United States . On New York's Broadway , the prima ballerina danced successfully in L'œuf à la coque and Le combat at the Winter Garden Theater, and the production had 116 performances by January 1950. As a result, the American media became aware of the charismatic French woman. Known for his photographs about magazine Life devoted her four sides and Marchand was because of her dancing skills soon the simple nickname The Legs ( English for the legs ). In the same year she was seen from October to December as Carmen and again in the title role as L'œuf à la coque at the National Theater and Broadhurst Theater. Marchand was also successful with the production of Two on the Aisle , which appeared on Broadway from July 1951 to March 1952. In the musical revue she appeared in provocative black silk stockings together with Dolores Gray and Bert Lahr, among others .

Feature film debut and Oscar nomination

1952 also marked Colette Marchand's debut as an actress, having voiced Isidore Isou's experimental film Traité de bave et d'éternité (1951). John Huston , who had directed films such as The Trail of the Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and African Queen (1951), used it in his film Moulin Rouge , in which the American tried to work consciously with color dramaturgy. In the film adaptation of Pierre La Mure 's Toulouse Lautrec biography of the same name , Marchand plays the role of a street whore alongside Zsa Zsa Gabor and Suzanne Flon , who feigns love for the artist (played by José Ferrer ) in order to satisfy her desire for money . The New York Times rated Marchand's part as "a short but painful task of portraying the sharp, metallic temperament and helpless weakness of character of a street girl", while Die Zeit praised her Marie Charlet as "a cabinet piece of acting." At the Golden Globe Awards in 1953, Marchand came out on top as the best young actress against Katy Jurado ( twelve noon ) and Rita Gam (I'm a nuclear spy) . Three weeks later, at the Academy Awards in 1953 , Moulin Rouge was nominated for an Academy Award in seven categories , but could only prevail with two victories in the technical categories. Among the nominees was Colette Marchand, who eighteen years after the victorious French Claudette Colbert ( It Happened in One Night ) in the category of best supporting actress was behind the American Gloria Grahame ( City of Illusions ) .

After Moulin Rouge Colette Marchand was seen in Roland Petit's Parisian ballet Ciné-Bijou in 1953 , a parody of gangster films in which she played the role of femme fatale and Petit that of gangster. A year later she received the leading female role in Peter Berneis ' and André Haguet's German-French feature film production Hungarian Rhapsody (1954) alongside Paul Hubschmid . The love story between the composer Franz Liszt and the noble Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein , staged free of historical facts, was rated as a "soulful romance with musical glances of light" and praised for its vivid color photography, but also for its depiction of the premarital get-together and some extravagant scenes from film-dienst only recommended with reservation. In the same year under film director André Haguet, Marchand slipped into the role of the unhappily in love princess again in Par ordre du tsar and danced and choreographed in Haguet's short film Romantic Youth alongside Milorad Miskovitch. However, the dancer , who was known for her elegance and was revered by the French decades later as "étoile de l'Empire" ( French for "star of the empire"), was unable to build on the success of her acting debut and she turned her back on the screen.

In 1953 Marchand danced the flirtatious wife alongside Petit in the ballet Deuil en 24 heures in Paris and London. In the same year she took on the title role in The Lady in the Ice in London and New York , for which the famous film director Orson Welles was responsible, as well as Carmen . Marchand remained active as a dancer until the 1960s. The well-known ballet critic Olivier Merlin, along with Margot Fonteyn , Yvette Chauviré and Violetta Elvin , counted her among the ten greatest contemporary dancers in the West .

In 1953 Marchand married her compatriot Jacques Bazire, who was three years his junior and who was the musical director of Roland Petit's ballet company, who also contributed the score for Hungarian Rhapsody .

Colette Marchand died on June 5, 2015, at the age of 90, in her home in Bois-le-Roi in the Seine-et-Marne department .

Ballets (selection)

• 1949: Les Demoiselle de la Nuit
• 1949: L'œuf à la coque
• 1953: Ciné-Bijou
• 1953: Deuil en 24 heures
• 1953: The Lady in the Ice
• 1959: Cyrano de Bergerac
• 1967: The Miraculous Mandarin

Filmography

• 1951: Traité de bave et d'éternité (voice only)
• 1952: Moulin Rouge
• 1954: Hungarian Rhapsody (Les cloches n'ont pas sonné)
• 1954: Par ordre du tsar
• 1954: Romantic Youth

Awards

• Golden Globe Award 1953: Best Young Actress for Moulin Rouge
• Academy Awards 1953 : Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Moulin Rouge
• British Film Academy Award 1954: Nominated for Best Newcomer for Moulin Rouge

Web links

• Colette Marchand in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Colette Marchand in the Internet Broadway Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Marchand, Colette . In: Paul S. Ulrich: Biographical directory for theater, dance and music . Berlin-Verlag Spitz, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-87061-673-3 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} cf. Colette Marchand . In: Jacques Baril: Dictionnaire de danse . Ed. du Seuil, Paris 1964 (Collections microcosme) (accessed via WBIS ).
3. ↑ cf. Marchand, Colette . In: Barbara Naomi Cohen-Stratyner: Biographical Dictionary of dance . Schirmer et al. a., New York et al. a. 1982, ISBN 0-02-870260-3, pp. 579-580.
4. ↑ cf. Marchand, Colette . In: Horst Koegler: The concise Oxford dictionary of Ballet . Oxford Univ. Press, London [u. a.] 1982, ISBN 0-19-311325-2 , p. 272.
5. ↑ cf. Colette Marchand . In: Peter Noble (Ed.): British Ballet . Robinson, London 1949 (accessed via WBIS).
6. ↑ cf. Princes Theater Les Ballets De Paris . In: The Times , February 17, 1949, ed. 51308, p. 7.
7. ↑ ^{a b} cf. Christine de Rivoyre: Colette Marchand, étoile de l'Empire . In: Le Monde , April 18, 2002, Dernière Page.
8. ↑ cf. $ 6.60 comedian . In: Time , October 1, 1951.
9. ↑ cf. Film review by F. in film-dienst 30/1953.
10. ↑ cf. Bosley Crowther : 'Moulin Rouge' ... In: New York Times , February 11, 1953.
11. ↑ Erika Müller: The painter of the Moulin Rouge . In: Die Zeit , No. 10/1953.
12. ↑ cf. New Ballets In Paris: Lifar And Petit . In: The Times , March 31, 1953, ed. 52584, p. 9.
13. ↑ ^{a b} cf. Film review by MWT in the film service 20/1954.
14. ↑ cf. Ballet In London: A "Parable" By Mr. Orson Welles . In: The Times , August 17, 1953, ed. 52702, p. 2.
15. ↑ cf. Sadler's Return . In: Time , September 21, 1953.
16. ↑ cf. Ballets Petit “Carmen” . In: The Times , September 1, 1953, ed. 52715, p. 9.
17. ↑ cf. Choreographer's Individuality . In: The Times , March 22, 1967, ed. 56896, p. 10.
18. ↑ quoted in Ach, the Papili . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1955, pp. 36 ( online ).
19. ↑ cf. Milestones . In: Time , September 28, 1953.
20. ^ Anna Kisselgoff: Colette Marchand, Glamorous International Ballet Star, Dies at 90. In: The New York Times . June 21, 2015, accessed June 22, 2015 .