Corinne Luchaire

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Corinne Luchaire with Camillo Pilotto in Abbandono, 1940

Corinne Luchaire (born February 11, 1921 in Paris , † January 22, 1950 ibid) was a French actress who got involved in the collaboration during the German occupation . Corinne Luchaire, who was deprived of French civil rights for ten years after the war, died of tuberculosis at the age of 28 .

Life

Corinne Luchaire, baptized Rosita Christiane Yvette Luchaire, was born in 1921 as the daughter of the journalist, later press magnate and Vichy politician Jean Luchaire, and the painter Françoise Germaine Besnard, a daughter of Albert Besnard . After taking acting lessons with Raymond Rouleau, she appeared for the first time in 1937 in the play Altitude 3200 written for her by her grandfather Julien Luchaire. The success gave her the first leading role in the film Prison sans Barreaux (Eng .: prison without bars), which was filmed in the same year with her in the leading role in the English language version Prison Without Bars in London . After recognition by Mary Pickford, initially celebrated as a French Garbo , she had to end her acting career in 1940 due to an illness of tuberculosis.

Her parents' connections with Germany became problematic for her. The father, a successful journalist, publisher and politician, supported the Vichy regime . His office was considered an important point of contact for the collaboration. He had a personal friendship with the German ambassador Otto Abetz . The mother had an affair with Gustav Stresemann and was friends with Kurt Freiherr von Schröder .

Despite her illness, Corinne Luchaire entered into a brief, month-long marriage with the obscure aristocrat Guy de Voisins-Lavernière and several short relationships. After breaking up with Émile Allais , she made a first suicide attempt . A brief relationship with Charles Trenet followed. The daughter Brigitte came from a liaison with a German Air Force officer . Despite her ties to Nazi giants, Luchaire supported Jewish friends and acquaintances, including Simone Signoret , who, through her agency, found a place to work as a secretary for her father's magazine Nouveaux Temps . Simone Signoret met Luchaire, who was in the south because of an abdominal recurrence of her tuberculosis, again a few weeks before her death in Nice . Signoret later avoided talking about her acquaintance and former supporter.

After the Allies landed and France threatened to be retaken, the Vichy government was evacuated to Sigmaringen in 1944 . Corinne Luchaire, who had a lung disease, was housed in Sigmaringen Castle with her father, who had taken on a ministerial post in the Vichy government . The French doctor Destouches alias Cèline helped her to take a cure from Adolf Bacmeister in the SS Sanatorium St. Blasien in December 1944 . The escape from the Allies from Sigmaringen ended after another suicide attempt in April 1945 in Merano . Luchaire's father was shot dead on February 22, 1946 after a trial; the trial of Corinne, who had previously been imprisoned in Nice, opened in Paris on June 4, 1946. She herself stated in her defense that she was young and ignorant (French: “jeune et ignorant”). Her civil rights were stripped of her for ten years, which was shortened to five years in the revision process.

From then on, Luchaire lived in seclusion for the rest of her life in Paris, where she published her autobiography “Madole de vie”, which critics accused of superficial preoccupation with the political situation. Her name was removed from the film titles and role credentials . Still ostracized , hoping for a new role, Corinne Luchaire died on January 22, 1950 after a hemorrhage in a Paris taxi. She was buried in the Bagneux cemetery.

Filmography

Fonts

  • Corinne Luchaire: Ma drôle de vie , Sun, Paris, 1949. New edition: Dualpha, Paris, 2003, ISBN 2912476593 .

literature

  • Martine Guyot-Bender: Seducing Corinne: The Official Popular Press during the Occupation , in: Gender and Fascism in Modern France, UPNE, 1997, pp. 69-82.
  • Carole Wrona: Corinne Luchaire un colibri dans la tempête , La tour verte, collection La muse Celluloïd, 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Susan Hayward: Simone Signoret: The Star as Cultural Sign, A&C Black, 2004, p. 3.
  2. ↑ See Jean-François Josselin: Simone Signoret, Grasset, 1995
  3. ↑ See Louis-Ferdinand Céline: From one castle to the other , Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1994
  4. ^ The Nazi's Courtesan, French actress-collaborationist, once the toast of occupied Paris, loses her beauty and citizenship, Life, June 24, 1946, p. 38 [1]
personal data
SURNAME Luchaire, Corinne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Luchaire, Rosita Christiane Yvette (baptismal name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French film actress
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1950
Place of death Paris