Martine Carol

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Martine Carol (born May 16, 1920 in Saint-Mandé , Val-de-Marne , † February 6, 1967 in Monte Carlo ; actually Marie-Louise "Maryse" Jeanne Nicolle Mourer ) was a French actress . In addition to a few stage appearances in Paris , she appeared in over 40 film roles from the early 1940s. She gained fame primarily through her appearances in the French costume film of the 1950s, which earned her the reputation of a sex symbol .

Life

Training and first film roles

Martine Carol was born as Marie-Louise Mourer in 1920 in the Île-de-France region near Paris (according to other sources, in Biarritz in 1922 ). The daughter of the freight forwarder Marcel Mourer and his wife (maiden name: Arley ) attended the Dominican School of Neuilly and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and then earned a living as a model. When she became acquainted with the French actor André Luguet (1892–1979), she decided to pursue a career as an actress and came to the theater. Carol joined the theater group around Gaston Baty (1885–1955), where she received acting lessons from Robert Manuel (1916–1995) and later from René Clair and Jean Wall (1900–1959). During this time she took on the stage name Maryse Arley and was from the beginning of the 1940s at the Parisian Théâtre de la Renaissance and Théâtre Montparnasse in pieces such as La Route du tabac after Erskine Caldwell alongside Marcel Mouloudji (1922-1994), Phaidra , Alfred de Mussets See Les Caprices de Marianne or William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew . She also attended René Simon's acting course (1898–1995).

She made her film debut in 1941 with small roles in the anti-Semitic propaganda film Les corrupteurs and Georges Lacombe's thriller Le Dernier des six , in which Pierre Fresnay can be seen as the investigative detective, which was made under the Vichy government . Other film roles followed, including Henri Decoins crime film The Unheimliche Haus (1942), Richard Pottier's La Ferme aux loups (1943), in which she first used the stage name Martine Carol, or Marcel Carné's unfinished drama La Fleur de l'âge , in which she was mostly subscribed to insignificant supporting roles. In 1947, Carol suffered from depression from an unhappily ending love affair with married actor Georges Marchal and attempted suicide. She threw herself under the influence of alcohol and drugs at the Paris Pont de l'Alma in the Seine , but was saved. This incident took up the tabloid press and suddenly made the previously unsuccessful actress known to a broad French audience. A short time later, Carol met the American actor and director Stephen Crane, the ex-husband of the successful Hollywood actress Lana Turner, and underwent plastic surgery in which her nose was straightened.

Rise to sex symbol and high point of her career

Her breakthrough as an actress came in 1951 when she was awarded the lead in Richard Pottier's period film In the Beginning Was Only Love . In the film adaptation of a novel by Jacques Laurent (better known under the pseudonym Cécil Saint-Laurent ), Martine Carol can be seen as the young Caroline de Bièvre, who had to cope with a series of amorous mishaps during the French Revolution before she met her great love , the nobleman Gaston de Sallanches (played by Jacques Dacqmine ), meets . The film was a huge success at the French box office, it made Carol a star in her home country. In the beginning there was only love , in which she acted quite freely at the time, she decided to play the part of the beautiful blonde seductress. In 1953 she played Caroline again in the sequel My Life for Love by Jean Devaivre , which was followed by other lavish and successful costume dramas such as Lucrezia Borgia , Madame Dubarry or Nana . All of these films were directed by director Christian-Jaque , with whom she was also briefly involved, and served as a vehicle to underpin her reputation as a sex symbol of the 1950s.

The high point of her career marked the year 1955, when she interpreted the title role of Lola Montez in the film of the same name by Max Ophüls , the most expensive cinema production in post-war Germany at seven million marks. Ophüls presents the famous courtesan and lover of Franz Liszt and Ludwig I of Bavaria in his last directorial work as a worn out dancer in front of an American circus audience. There she is driven by the cynical and mocking ringmaster (played by Peter Ustinov ) to depict scenes from her eventful life, while at the same time she remembers her past love affairs. Lola Montez was considered a great artistic success at the time of its publication, but could not bring in the horrendous production costs. Likewise, leading actress Martine Carol was unable to achieve box-office success in the years to come, despite working with directors such as Abel Gance (as Empress Joséphine in Austerlitz - shine of an imperial crown , 1960) or Georges Lautner ( Inspector Kent pounding the drum , 1962). Roles in English-language films ( Around the World in 80 Days , 1956; Operation Tiger , 1957; Hell Before Us , 1959) or Italian cinema ( Your Bad Reputation , 1957; The First Night , 1959; The Fearless Rebel , 1961) did not yield the hoped-for success and she began to suffer from severe depression. The end of Carol's career coincided with the rise of the Parisian mannequin Brigitte Bardot in the late 1950s to become the actress of the emerging Nouvelle Vague and the new sex symbol of French cinema.

Private life and death

Martine Carol's burial place on the Cimetière du Grand Jas in Cannes

Martine Carol, who was also received and honored by French President René Coty because of her fame , was married four times. From 1948 to 1953 first marriage to Stephen Crane, from 1954 to 1959 with Christian-Jaque and from 1959 to 1962 with the young French doctor André Rouveix, whom she married in Haiti , where she also became an honorary citizen of the capital Port-au-Prince was appointed. All of these marriages were childless and divorced. In her free time, Carole devoted herself to painting, swimming and equestrian sports.

In 1966, Carol married the English billionaire Mike Eland , who found her dead in her hotel room in Monaco on February 6, 1967, where she had wanted to take part in the Monte Carlo television festival at the invitation of the publisher Cino del Duca . The actress had died of a heart attack at the age of 46 and found her final resting place at the Cimetière du Grand Jas in Cannes . Carol's last film was the 1965/66 British crime drama Hell Is Empty .

Filmography (selection)

  • 1947: Drive into the blue ( Voyage surprise )
  • 1949: Millionaires for a Day ( Millionnaires d'un jour )
  • 1950: The gallant adventurer ( Méfiez-vous des blondes )
  • 1951: In the beginning there was only love ( Caroline chérie )
  • 1952: We need a man ( Le Désir et l'amour )
  • 1952: lovable women? ( Adorables créatures )
  • 1952: The beauties of the night ( Les Belles de nuit )
  • 1953: My life for love ( Un caprice de Caroline chérie )
  • 1953: Lucrezia Borgia ( Lucrèce Borgia )
  • 1954: love, women and soldiers (Destinées)
  • 1954: The Scandal ( La spiaggia )
  • 1954: Can women be like that? ( Secrets d'alcove )
  • 1954: Madame Dubarry ( Madame du Barry )
  • 1955: Nana
  • 1955: Lola Montez ( Lola Montès )
  • 1955: Mister Thompson's diary ( Les carnets du major Thompson )
  • 1956: In 80 days around the world ( Around the World in Eighty Days )
  • 1957: Your bad reputation ( Difendo il mio amore )
  • 1957: Operation Tiger ( Action of the Tiger )
  • 1957: Natali ( Nathalie )
  • 1958: Nights in Tahiti ( The Stowaway )
  • 1958: The first night ( La prima notte )
  • 1958: Hell Before Us (Ten Seconds to Hell)
  • 1959: Nathalie plays secret agent ( Nathalie, agent secret )
  • 1960: Austerlitz - splendor of an imperial crown (Austerlitz)
  • 1960: French women and love ( La Française et l'amour )
  • 1961: One evening on the beach ( Un soir sur la plage )
  • 1961: The Lord with the Millions ( Le cave se rebiffe )
  • 1961: The Fearless Rebel (Vanina Vanini)
  • 1962: Inspector Kent hits the drum ( En plein cirage )
  • 1967: Hell Is Empty

literature

  • Chapuy, Arnaud: Martine Carol filmée par Christian-Jaque: un phénomène du cinéma populaire . Paris: Harmattan, 2001. - ISBN 2747501671
  • Cohen, André-Charles; Sabria, JC: Martine chérie . [Paris]: Ramsay, 1986. - ISBN 2859565205
  • Debot, Georges: Martine Carol: ou, la Vie de Martine chérie . Paris: Éditions France-Empire, 1979
  • Mazeau, Jacques: Les destins tragiques du cinéma . Paris: Hors Collection, 1995. - ISBN 2258040620

Web links

Commons : Martine Carol  - Collection of Images

Footnotes

  1. ↑ cf. Dureau, Christian: Dictionnaire mondial des comédiens . [Paris]: Ed. Distar, 1984. - ISBN 2-905069-00-7 .
  2. ↑ cf. Katz, Ephraim: The Macmillan international film encyclopedia . New York, NY: Macmillan, 1994.- ISBN 0-333-61601-4 .
  3. ↑ a b cf. Carole, Martine . In: Who's who in France 1959–1960: Dictionnaire biographique paraissant tous les deux ans . Paris: J. Lafitte, 1959 (accessed via WBIS Online ).
  4. ↑ a b c d cf. International Biographical Archive 20/1967 of May 8, 1967.
  5. ↑ cf. Carol, Martine . In: Dictionnaire biographique français contemporain: 1954–1955 . Paris: Pharos, [1954–1955] (accessed via WBIS Online ).
  6. ↑ See Passek, Jean Loup (Ed.): Dictionnaire du cinéma . Paris: Larousse, 1987.
  7. ↑ cf. Farocki, Harun: Beauty before the cut . In: the daily newspaper , January 16, 2003, Culture, p. 15.
personal data
SURNAME Carol, Martine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carole, Martine; Arley, Maryse; Mourer, Marie-Louise Jeanne Nicolle (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION french actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Mandé , Val-de-Marne department , France
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1967
Place of death Monte Carlo , Monaco