Ewa Aulin – sex and education
Ewa Aulin’s eyebrow-raising career took her from sex star to school teacher. She’s known first and foremost as the eponymous heroine of Candy – a film so excruciatingly bad that it has acquired cult status with a small band of fans.
Britt Ekland
Around 1966. Like her compatriot Ewa Aulin, Britt Ekland is known as a sex symbol and for her roles in horror movies, of which the most celebrated is The Wicker Man (1973). Her profile is further boosted during the sixties by her marriage to Peter Sellers. According to the handwritten annotation on the back of this photo, it is taken in the garden of Britt's home in Rome. There is also a Team Press Services stamp. Photo by Glauco Cortini.
Around 1965. Ingrid Thulin is of an earlier generation than Ewa Aulin and is also an altogether more serious actress, with 68 credits on IMDb. She is one of Ingmar Bergman's favourite actresses as well as appearing in films by Alain Resnais and Luchino Visconti – The Damned (1969). There is an International Magazine Service stamp on the back of the photo. Photo by Franco Pinna.
1969. Outside her native Sweden, Pia Degermark is known primarily for her role in Elvira Madigan (1967), for which she wins the Award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. A caption on the back of the photo reads:
Pia Degermark, a 19 year old Swedish beauty, is currently starring with Chris Jones in the tender, romantic drama “Brief Season” directed by Renato Castellani and produced by Dino De Laurentiis for Columbia Pictures. Pia reached stardom following her success in the Swedish film “Elvira Madigan” directed by Bo Widerberg.
The back of the photo has a Pierluigi agency stamp. Photo by Emilio Lari.
Ewa was one of a number of actresses to emerge from Sweden to become stars on the 1960s European-movie scene. Her compatriots included Anita Ekberg, Anna Karina, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann and Pia Degermark.
Ewa herself appeared in 17 films between 1965 and 1973. But Candy, her fifth, was the one.
1968. Ewa Aulin as Candy. Read more.
Ewa Aulin is Candy
The first we hear of Candy and Ewa in the UK press is in the 27 November 1967 edition of the Daily Mirror:
THE girl who will have a film love affair with Beatle Ringo Starr was named last night. She is Ewa Aulin, an 18-year old Swedish blonde. Ewa, who was voted “Miss Teenager” in Hollywood last year, is to have the title part in “Candy” – Ringo’s first film without the other Beatles.
The movie is released in December 1968 in the US, and in the UK early the following year. The plot is neatly summarized in the 14 February 1969 edition of the Kensington Post:
“Candy” is the story of a beautiful young girl who can’t say no. She has a variety of sexual encounters with a number of bizarre characters including Marlon Brando as a guru, Richard Burton as a boozy Welsh poet, James Coburn as a surgeon, Walter Matthau as a super patriotic American Air Force general, Ringo Starr as a Mexican gardener, boxer Sugar Ray Robinson as a chauffeur and French singer Charles Aznavour as a burglar.
Forget the plot, that’s quite some cast!
Ewa Aulin in London
1969. The 14 February 1969 edition of the Kensington Post announces that:
“Candy” – the controversial film of the best-selling satire on the art of pornography by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg is to have its European premiere at the Odeon, Kensington, on Thursday, February 20. Guest of honour at the premiere will be Candy herself – 18-year-old Swedish actress Ewa Aulin who will arrive in a pink Rolls Royce.
There's an Araldo Di Crollalanza stamp on the back of the photo.
1969. It looks like Ewa Aulin goes on a photo shoot to promote the UK release of Candy. The London taxi in the background is unmistakable and her fur coat is pretty distinctive too. There are Araldo Di Crollalanza and PIP Photo stamps on the back of the photo.
1969. Ewa Aulin may end up throwing food to the ducks, but she'll definitely have her audience eating out of her hand. The venue could be Kensington Palace Gardens. She's in London for the premiere of Candy at the Kensington Odeon. There are Araldo Di Crollalanza and PIP Photo stamps on the back of the photo.
The 19 February 1969 edition of the Daily Mirror has a lengthy review, the trajectory of which you can glean from this paragraph:
By the time 1969 staggers from the scene, the British Film Censor will have had to hack his way through a staggering assortment of movies from the downright illicit to the pantingly explicit. This may well be the year the screen caught fire.
Around 1970. Ewa Aulin. Photo by Emilio Lari.
Stylistically, Candy is a pure late-sixties spoof with its demented plotline, frenetic pace and caricature characters. It’s utterly absurd and designed to shock – though 50 years on it comes across as just coy and silly. It’s a sex comedy with pretensions that looks backwards and forwards – 1969 is a pivotal year in terms of censorship.
Looking backwards, there’s more than one thread that connects Candy to Barbarella (1968), Roger Vadim’s outrageous sci-fi fantasy starring Jane Fonda. Terry Southern, co-author of the 1958 novel on which Candy is based, is also responsible for the screenplay for Barbarella (though it must said that Candy lacks Barbarella’s chic fantasy).What’s more, Christian Marquand, Candy’s director, starred in Vadim’s Et Dieu… créa la femme (1956), Brigitte Bardot’s breakthrough movie. Both Candy and Et Dieu… are preoccupied with sex, but it’s all very frothy and light-hearted.
Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie (1969), by contrast, is both experimental and transgressive. It’s the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to go on wide theatrical release in the US. And it ushers in the Golden Age of Porn – the era in which films such as Deep Throat (1972), The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976) will gain a good deal of publicity, attract big audiences and even garner some critical approval. (The advent of the videocassette player, with its potential for private viewing, will spell the end of this particular era.)
More generally, Candy and Blue Movie are manifestations of the sexual revolution of the sixties in the US and western Europe. With “the pill” giving women a way to avoid pregnancy, sex has become more socially acceptable outside the strict boundaries of marriage (homosexuality is also coming out from the shadows, but that’s another story). And that in its turn is part of the counter culture – the social and political backlash against “the establishment”. But while Blue Movie has bona fide counter-culture credentials, it’s debatable whether the same is true of Candy, in spite of the pseudo-intellectual discussion in an article in the 3 October 1969 edition of the Marylebone Mercury:
Around 1969. Ewa Aulin at an event.
We spoke mainly of revolution, other films and the cultural scene in our McLuhanist age, but we did agree that Candy had been mistreated.
I asked Marquand if he would rather have stuck closer to the original ultra-erotic book.
“The formula of the book wasn’t so important to me because personally I’ve progressed beyond the erotic phase,” he said. “I don’t feel any repression about sex – just that it’s natural. …
“Of course. If sex were recognized as a means of free expression then I don’t see how on earth you could have eroticism. For me, eroticism is more of a game of mind than a game of body.
“So in Candy there isn’t such a thing as a game of mind. It’s very stylised. It’s there and she takes it for granted. The types she meets, remember, are schizophrenics and suffer from hang-ups.” …
The satire on American society is fairly pointed, but incidentally the sexual mores of civilisation generally are shown to be somewhat shaky. Candy acts as a catalyst-cum-confessor, a touchstone who reveals quite poignantly the ills of man.
It’s Marquand’s message, something he’s imposed on the Terry Southern-Mason Hoffenberg original sex-classic: erotic urges need to be liberated, repression causes capitalism – repression – perversions, America – perversion – schizophrenia.
This theme is, of course, in the mainstream of revolutionary doctrine, from Reich to Marcuse, that freedom of expression can only come about when we get rid of all sorts of repression, especially sexual repression. “I fight repression,” Marquand told me earnestly, “but I march with my movies.”
1. She’s So Lovely – Ewa Aulin
A musical tribute to Candy released by Blackpool Records. If you want to watch Ewa in a plethora of predicaments, this is for you.
2. Ewa Aulin meets Marlon Brando
This ten-minute clip from toward the end of Candy captures its mayhem and madness, starting with a magic show and ending with a guru.
3. The making of Candy
Worth a watch in spite of the annoying Bobbie Wygant Archive credit plastered across the screen. Her male co-stars are clearly besotted with Ewa Aulin.
Ewa Aulin, movie star and teacher
Eva Aulin’s take on the movie is more straightforward:
Candy is a moral lesson about a pure, childlike girl who is taken advantage of by selfish, amoral people. She just wants to make people happy. If everyone were like Candy, the world would be a better place.
For her performance in the film, Ewa is nominated for a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. In the event, the winner is Olivia Hussey for her performance in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet.
Ewa Aulin having fun
Around 1970. Ewa Aulin looks like she's letting her hair down, while her elderly companion is wrapped up in the dream world she's induced for him. There is a PIP Photos stamp on the back of the photo.
Ewa Aulin pulling her hair
Around 1970. What has caught Ewa's attention? She definitely seems to be distracted by something as she pulls at her hair. There is a PIP Photos stamp on the back of the photo.
Ewa Aulin with a cute puppy
Around 1970. Ewa blows kisses at an adorable puppy, who looks all set to reciprocate. And who can blame him? There is a Globe Photos stamp on the back of the photo. Photo by Joel Elkins.
Ewa is, of course, a delight to behold – the phrase eye-candy inevitably springs to mind. Certainly no ice maiden, rather every inch a kooky baby doll. She’s ever so fetching with her short, slinky dresses and her long, blonde tresses. And, above all, her wide-eyed innocence.
It’s no surprise that her path to stardom has been via winning a couple of beauty pageants: Miss Teen Sweden in 1965 and Miss Teen International in Hollywood the following year. Immediately prior to Candy, Ewa starred alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant in two giallos: the pop art-style Col cuore in gola (With Heart in Mouth, 1967) and the avant-garde La morte ha fatto l’uovo (Death Laid an Egg, 1968).
While filming Candy, Ewa Aulin secretly marries British musician-turned-filmmaker John Shadow, who casts her in his one and only movie, Microscopic Liquid Subway to Oblivion (1970), which seems to have taken its cue from its title and pretty much disappeared without trace immediately after it’s made.
Ewa Aulin relaxes
Around 1970. It looks like Ewa's been caught relaxing on a building site, but perhaps it's just the set of her latest movie. There is an Interfoto Features stamp on the back of the photo.
Ewa Aulin shows off her coat
Around 1970. Ewa Aulin does a twirl to show off her long, flared coat. It looks like she's in Italy, where most of the films in which she stars in the early-1970s are produced. There are Araldo di Crollalanza and Globe Photos stamps on the back of the photo.
Ewa Aulin in France
Around 1970. Ewa must be something of a linguist – she makes films in English and Italian as well as her native Swedish. And in this photo she appears to be reading a French journal. It looks like this is part of a publicity shoot rather than a paparazzi shot. There is a Globe Photos stamp on the back of the photo. Photo by Joel Elkins.
After Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), an unmemorable period comedy, and a handful of Italian giallos and sex comedies, Ewa Aulin has had enough of the movie business and, apparently her husband. The couple divorce in 1972, and soon after she embarks on a new life. In 1974 she marries Cesare Paladino, a builder, enrols at university and settles down to become a teacher and mother (she already has a son, Shawn, by John Shadow). One of her two daughters, Olivia Paladino, will become the partner of Giuseppe Conte, 58th prime minister of Italy.
On her Facebook page, Eva now describes herself as an artist.
Want to know more about Ewa Aulin?
Head for the usual suspects: Wikipedia and IMDb. If it’s pictures rather than information you’re after, take a look at Ewa Aulin’s Facebook page. There’s a full-length copy of Candy on YouTube but unfortunately the aspect ratio is wrong.
Other topics you may be interested in…
Sex and power – Nazism in 1970s cinema
The sixties – sex, drugs, rock and roll and a whole lot more
Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma
Filed Under: Films, Stars Tagged With: Britt Ekland, Candy, Ewa Aulin, Ingrid Thulin, John Shadow, Pia Degermark
Claudine Auger – young, beautiful, trapped, could be dangerous
Around 1965. Claudine Auger makes an entrance.
“Young, beautiful, trapped, could be dangerous” is how the trailer of Thunderball introduced Claudine Auger to mainstream movie audiences.
A classically trained actress fluent in several languages like Yvonne Furneaux, but also a Miss World runner-up, she’s instantly recognisable for the mole she sports below her right lip. As Sophie Schulte-Hillen points out in The 9 Greatest Beauty Marks of All Time, From Cindy Crawford to Madonna, “The inexplicable magnetism of a well-placed beauty mark, of course, has been a phenomenon throughout history.”
Claudine Auger was the first French actress to be cast as a Bond girl, years ahead of Corinne Cléry (Moonraker, 1979), Carole Bouquet (For Your Eyes Only, 1981), Sophie Marceau (The World Is Not Enough, 1999), Eva Green (Casino Royale, 2006) and Léa Seydoux (Spectre, 2015).
Claudine’s career spanned almost four decades and, according to IMDb, encompassed 80 film and TV appearances. But Thunderball is what she’s remembered for.
Thunderball is based on a novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. We’ll let him introduce Domino, the character played by Claudine Auger in the movie version:
She had a gay, to-hell-with-you face that, Bond thought, would become animal in passion. In bed she would fight and bite and then suddenly melt into hot surrender. He could almost see the proud, sensual mouth bear away from the even white teeth in a snarl of desire and then, afterward, soften into a half pout of loving slavery. In profile, the eyes were charcoal slits … fierce and direct with a golden flicker in the dark brown hair that held much the same message as the mouth … a soft, muddled Brigitte Bardot haircut … the sunburn was not overdone … her breasts, high and riding and deeply V-ed.… The general impression, Bond decided, was of a willful, high-tempered, sensual girl…
So, gorgeous, wild and waiting to be tamed by the (implicitly) superior Bond. Pure, deranged sixties male fantasy. In your (wet) dreams, Mr Fleming.
1968. Faye Dunaway is the first actress to be offered the role of Domino. Instead she opts to star in Elliot Silverstein’s crime comedy The Happening (1967). Success for her...
1967. Raquel Welch is also a front runner for the role of Domino but she’s lured away to star in Twentieth Century Fox’s sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage (1966). Twentieth Century...
1965. Julie Christie has previously been in the running for the role of Honey Rider in Dr No but lost out to Ursula Andress. Her success in Billy Liar apparently...
Luciana Paluzzi
Around 1965. Luciana Paluzzi is one of the bevy of fetching actresses who audition for the part of Domino in Thunderball. Although the role goes to Claudine Auger, Luciana is...
Martine Beswick
Around 1966. Former Miss Jamaica, Martine Beswick is one of Raquel Welch’s co-stars in One Million Years B.C., for which this is probably a publicity shot. In Thunderball, she plays...
Suzy Kendall
1967. Though uncredited, Suzy Kendall plays the role of Prue, one of the casino patrons in Thunderball. She trained as a fashion designer and worked as a model to help...
Domino is the most complex and demanding female role to date in a Bond movie. Needless to say, the part, which is central to the plot, requires an exceptionally beautiful and talented actress, and no doubt the production team has the time of their life initiating a worldwide talent search and auditioning candidates. They show admirable devotion to the job by considering 100, perhaps as many as 150 candidates according to Luciana Paluzzi.
Around 1965. Claudine Auger. Photo by Peter Basch.
First to be offered the role is Faye Dunaway, but on the advice of her agent she decides instead to accept the role of Sandy in Elliot Silverstein’s crime comedy The Happening (1967).
Next up is Raquel Welch. Not surprisingly, Harry Saltzman, founder of EON Productions, who own the film rights, can’t forget a photo of the bikini-clad actress that featured in the October 2, 1964 issue of LIFE magazine. She’s the first to be offered the role of Domino but there’s a problem. Richard Zanuck, one of Darryl Zanuck’s sons and studio head at Twentieth Century Fox, wants her for their upcoming sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage (1966). He knows Salzman’s partner, Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, and persuades him to release Raquel from her contract as a favour to him.
On paper, Julie Christie seems like a promising candidate but apparently she flunks her interview, turning up dishevelled and nervous; plus Albert Broccoli is disappointed that she doesn’t have bigger tits. Other shortlisted lovelies include Luciana Paluzzi, Yvonne Monlaur, Marisa Menzies, Gloria Paul and Maria Buccella.
So how does the relatively unknown Claudine Auger get involved? Putting together different versions of the story from different sources, this seems to be how things worked out…
She’s on holiday in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, at the same time as the crew who are preparing to film Thunderball. She enjoys swimming underwater and one day, by happy coincidence, she surfaces at the same time as and near to the film’s producer, Kevin McClory. He appreciates her potential and makes sure he has her contact details.
Claudine returns to Paris where she’s a member of the Théâtre National Populaire. As she explains to Photoplay magazine in 1965, she gets a call from London asking if she would like to audition for a role in Thunderball. The theatre director refuses to give her time off so she arranges a day-trip to London, enabling her to be back in Paris the same night. Result! Movie director Terence Young calls her a few days later to offer her the role. She has the blend of innocence and sex appeal he is looking for. Once again the theatre director proves intransigent. So Claudine ups sticks and heads off to join Thunderball’s cast and crew.
The 15 March 1965 edition of the Herald Express reports that:
Filming of 007’s latest tussle with the international crime syndicate Spectre began this month and after four weeks of interior work at Pinewood the 82-strong production unit will fly to Nassau by chartered aircraft. I gather that Nassau luxury hotels and beach clubs will figure prominently in the plot. So will 22-year-old auburn-haired Claudine Auger, Miss France of 1952–59, who is said to have learned excellent English when she was a teenage au pair girl in London.
Claudine Auger goes swimming
1965. Claudine poses on a diving board at a swimming bath. A man in the background admires the view. The back of the photo is annotated in pencil “CLAUDINE AUGER / FOR LIFE COVER FEATURE / STAR of BOND FILM.” Photo by Peter Basch.
Claudine looks winsome
Claudine Auger gazes at the camera, hair tumbling fetchingly around her face. Note the cropping marks on this working print. Photo by Peter Basch.
Claudine Auger wrapped in fur
1965. Perching on a sofa, Claudine is very much the seductress. Later in life, she will have her distinctive beauty mark removed. A typed paper label on the back of the photo reads:
BOND-STUNNER…CLAUDINE AUGER
James Bond holds no terrors for this girl.
Please acknowledge: photograph by LOOMIS DEAN
CAMERA PRESS LONDON. 10155-9
Photo by Loomis Dean.
Originally, the idea has been for Domino to be Italian. Now the screenplay is modified to make her French and Claudine is given a series of English lessons to prepare her for her part. Well, that’s a waste of time. Although her English proves to be more than satisfactory, it’s subsequently decided that her voice is too low. So in the end her voice is dubbed by Nikki van der Zyl, who dubbed Ursula Andress’s character, Honey Rider, in Dr No.
1. Thunderball official trailer
A nice compilation of sixties graphics, action sequences and Bond girls shot through with Sean Connery’s 007 and John Barry’s soundtrack, this is impossible to resist.
2. Sean Connery and Claudine Auger underwater and on the beach
Quintessential Thunderball – romance underwater, drama on the beach and a cool one-liner to cap things off.
Behind-the-scenes footage of Thunderball’s casino scene
Beautiful people, high stakes and smoochy music make this sequence ever so sexy – just like Richard Avedon’s shoot at the Casino at Le Touquet.
In an interview in a December 1965 issue of the New York Daily News, Claudine talks about the extensive underwater shooting for the film:
…I was never frightened of it. I took to it like a fish. It’s beautiful down there and peaceful and I get a sense of freedom I don’t get on land or in the air. One has to be more careful skin diving in the Caribbean than in the Mediterranean because of sharks … close to shore there are lazy sharks and we were assured they wouldn’t attack us if we remained calm. Fortunately, I didn’t meet one to test my nerve.
Filming, especially around Nassau, is a joy, as Martine Beswick recalls:
The best of the best was at our disposal. I remember our dressing rooms when we were working on the streets for the carnival scenes –they rented a yacht on which we would go between takes. When we had to work on a beach, they would have tents, champagne would be there and the best of wine. That was Terence [Young], that was his style, that was the way things were done.
The rest is history. Claudine displays her charms in a succession of fetching bikinis, which she apparently helps to design. And Thunderball goes on to be the box office hit of 1965 as well as winning an Academy Award for its special effects.
Around 1958. Claudine Auger models an evening dress.
Claudine Auger pre-Thunderball
Claudine Auger is born in 1942 in German-occupied Paris. As she grows up, she experiences, first-hand, life in Paris after World War II, first at school, then at the Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique, France’s national drama academy. There she learns to act, playing a variety of roles, her repertoire including classical plays by the likes of Racine and Molière.
Looking back in 1965 to those days, she remembers in an interview in the New York Journal-American that “When I was 13 I wasn’t very pretty. I was slim, how you say, like a matchstick…”
Claudine turns out to be a quick developer. In no time she becomes a model and in 1957 she’s named Miss Cinémonde by the movie magazine. In 1958, still just 16 years old, as Miss France she represents her country at the Miss World pageant and is voted runner up. It proves to be a turning point in her personal and professional lives, as she explains in an interview with an Associated Press journalist in 1966:
I had just won the ‘Miss France’ contest with all its publicity and one of the prizes was a role in one of Pierre’s pictures, it was love at first sight.
The movie in question is Christine, which stars Romy Schneider and Alain Delon. Claudine’s small part is uncredited. But it’s a start, and the following year she marries the film’s director, Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 25 years her senior. Apparently Claudine, like Domino, is partial to older men! He will go on to give her roles in several of his films, including a costume drama, Le Masque de fer (The Iron Mask, 1962), and an epic adventure, Kali Yug, La Dea Della Vendetta (The Vengeance of Kali, 1963).
But before then, her arthouse career begins and ends when she catches the eye of avant-garde film director Jean Cocteau, who casts her in the illustrious company of Yul Brynner, Charles Aznavour, Brigitte Bardot and Pablo Picasso in Le Testament D’Orphée (1960).
In all, she makes 15 film and TV appearances before Thunderball.
Claudine Auger post-Thunderball
Claudine hopes that Thunderball will enable her to break through into US movies. With that in mind she poses for a shoot in Playboy magazine and makes a guest appearance on US TV in a Bob Hope special. But it’s not to be. She fails to make an impact on Hollywood in spite of being in demand in Europe and the UK.
Building on her success in Thunderball, she appears in a number of adventure films. The plot of L’homme de Marrakech (1966) revolves around a heist. Triple Cross (1966) is a Word War II spy saga starring Christopher Plummer and Yul Brynner.
Claudine Auger inspired by Paco Rabanne
1966. Claudine’s earrings and dress look like they’re either Paco Rabanne originals or inspired by them. A caption on the back of the photo reads:
VITTORIO GASSMAN, MICKEY ROONEY...
Claudine Auger in a floral dress
Around 1967. Claudine poses for the camera, raising her left arm above her head as instructed by the photographer. She’s doing her best to look at ease on what must...
Claudine Auger perched on a stone seat
1967. Wrapped in a shawl, the French movie star favours the unknown photographer with an enigmatic smile. On the back of the photo is a Pierluigi agency copyright stamp together...
Claudine Auger by candlelight
1967. Another publicity photo for Italian comedy Anyone Can Play (Le dolci signnore), one of three movies released this year in which Claudine stars. On the back of the photo...
Hands up, Claudine!
1967. Claudine Auger wears a somewhat revealing dress for this publicity shot, her silky curves contrasting with the jagged wall decoration. On the back of the photo is a Pierluigi...
Claudine Auger perched on a windowsill
1967. Clad head-to-toe in a cat suit (echoes of Emma Peel’s costumes in The Avengers), Claudine wraps her fingers around the sill on which she’s sitting. She doesn’t look totally...
Among her many subsequent credits are two movies featuring other Bond girls: Ursula Andress in Le dolci signore (Anyone Can Play, 1967), and Barbara Bach and Barbara Bouchet in La tarantola dal ventre nero (Black Belly of the Tarantula, 1971), one of a number of giallos in which she appears.
It’s testament to Claudine Auger’s acting abilities that, with the passing of her youth, she continues to play mature character roles right up to the mid-1990s.
She divorces Pierre Gaspard-Huit in 1969 and remarries in 1984. She gives birth to her first and only child in 1991 at age 49, and she remains with her second husband, businessman Peter Brent, until his death in 2008. Claudine Auger passes away in 2019.
Around 1965. Claudine Auger. Photo by Giancarlo Botti.
Want to know more about Claudine Auger?
There are short pieces about Claudine in Wikipedia and IMDb. A slightly longer one is at MI6 The Home of James Bond 007.
Fuller accounts are available in online extracts from two books: Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 1962-1973 by Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul; and Deadlier Than the Male: Femme Fatales in 1960s and 1970s Cinema by Douglas Brode.
Most of Claudine’s obituaries are cursory affairs. The most ambitious was published by The James Bond Fan Club, A Woman of the Nuclear Age: Claudine Auger (1941-2019).
I was hoping to find a few interviews with Claudine Auger in The British Newspaper Archive and The Times Archive but the pickings were disappointingly thin. If you’re just looking for pictures, you could head for Claudine Auger’s Facebook page.
On the other hand, there’s lots of information out there about Thunderball. IMDb has quantities of Trivia and on YouTube there’s a fascinating 35-minute documentary narrated by Patrick Macnee (Steed in sixties cult classic TV series, The Avengers), Behind the scenes with THUNDERBALL part 1. The title is misleading. This is actually two documentaries run together. The second, which starts at 28:10, covers Bond’s life up to the point where he becomes 007, some observations by Ian Fleming and a brief profile of director Terence Young and his contribution to James Bond’s onscreen persona.
Monica Vitti – a sad childhood, a glittering career and a bitter old age
Yvonne Furneaux – glamorous English export
Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Films, Stars Tagged With: Claudine Auger, Faye Dunaway, Ian Fleming, Julie Christie, Luciana Paluzzi, Martine Beswick, Pierre Gaspard-Huit, Raquel Welch, Suzy Kendall, Thunderball
Veronica Lake – the power of Hollywood
1941. Veronica Lake, femme fatale. Read more.
Veronica Lake is a cult figure. Just take a look on eBay: vintage photos of her are scarce, sought after and fetch a premium over those of most of her contemporaries.
In the early 1940s she was a superstar, adored by audiences and advertisers. She was one of four forties divas on whom the persona of Jessica Rabbit in the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit was based (the others were Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall and Gene Tierney; Jayne Mansfield, who lent her cleavage, was a product of the fifties). Veronica also inspired Kim Basinger’s character, call-girl Lynn Bracken, in the 1997 noir, L.A. Confidential.
So, what’s all the fuss about?
Well, Veronica Lake was one of the most distinctive and alluring seductresses of 1940s Hollywood with her peekaboo tresses, curvaceous figure and smoky delivery. She had that elusive and undefinable onscreen charisma that distinguishes a star from the supporting cast. And she was a versatile actress, equally compelling in thrillers and comedies.
Incredible as it seems knowing Veronica Lake only through her movies, according to director Preston Sturges, interviewed by gossip columnist Sheilah Graham:
She’s one of the little people. Like Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Freddie Bartholomew when he started, who take hold of an audience immediately. She’s nothing much in real life, a quiet, rather timid little thing. But the screen transforms her and brings her to life.
Her rags-to-riches-to-rags story casts a revealing light on the movie studios of the era. The eye for the main chance, the creativity and the marketing savvy on which Hollywood was built. And the negligence, the exploitation and the immorality that ran alongside them. What became of Veronica Lake was and remains a cautionary tale for aspiring starlets.
Veronica Lake – Hollywood giveth
In her own words:
Veronica Lake is a Hollywood creation. Hollywood is good at doing that sort of thing. Its proficiency at transforming little Connie Ockleman of Brooklyn into sultry, sensuous Veronica Lake was proved by the success of the venture. And the subject, me, was willing and in some small ways able.
The transformation (these days we’d call it rebranding) happens after a screen test at Paramount. Take a bow, Oscar-nominated producer, Arthur Hornblow, Jr:
Connie, here’s how I came to choose your new name. I believe that when people look into those navy blue eyes of yours, they’ll see a calm coolness – the calm coolness of a lake. And your features, Connie, are classic features. And when I think of classic features, I think of Veronica.
This after Mr Hornblow has identified her trademark feature. During her screen test, one of Veronica’s elbows slips off the table on which it’s resting. Her long, blonde hair falls over her right eye and she spends the next few minutes tossing her head to get it out of the way. It’s not the first time her hair has given her this problem. It behaved in the same way in Busby Berkeley’s 1940 movie, Forty Little Mothers (fast forward to 27:50). But Hornblow is the first to recognize its potential as a marketing device. The peekaboo is born.
Veronica Lake, the peekaboo girl
1941. Veronica Lake wears her honey-blonde hair with a deep side parting and swept over to the opposite side. Soft waves drape her cheek and an S-curl falls seductively over...
1943. Veronica Lake goes to a good deal of trouble to maintain her signature hairstyle. According to LIFE magazine:
It takes a lot of time,...
1944. The peekaboo isn’t the world’s most practical style – it tends to get caught in car doors, lifts and electric fans. But LIFE magazine reports...
It debuts in I Wanted Wings (1940), Veronica Lake’s breakthrough movie, in which she plays the part of a sultry nightclub singer. It quickly becomes all the rage and across the nation women flock to beauty salons to get “The Lake Look.” Groucho Marx quips, “I opened up my mop closet the other day and I thought Veronica Lake fell out.” And the November 24, 1941 issue of LIFE magazine contains a three-page article that describes Veronica Lake’s hair as “a cinema property of world influence.”
Unfortunately, its ongoing popularity soon becomes a problem in wartime America because a number of women in munitions factories are injured when their long hair gets caught in assembly-line machinery. At the behest of the War Womanpower Commission, Veronica Lake changes her hairstyle and makes a newsreel to promote her new look.
But back to I Wanted Wings and its 18-year-old wannabee… The peekaboo would not have caught on had the movie not pulled in the punters. That it succeeds in doing so is to a large extent down to the marketing. This in turn involves a publicity shoot that creates quite a stir. As with the peekaboo, the defining image is the result of a lucky accident. Here’s how Veronica Lake remembers it:
One day, I was standing close to a B-17 as the photographer was doing coy set-ups with me. The pilot of the plane either didn’t see us or held all motion-picture people in scorn. He started engines just as I was leaning over in one of those ridiculous poses that were such favorites with publicity photographers those days. My rear end was towards the plane, and I was peeking around to my right at the camera when the prop wash hit. It caught my dress and blew it up around my thighs. The photographer captured the moment, chuckled at what would probably be a funny but unusable photo, and went on to take others. It ended up as the photograph the studio used in their advance mailing for I Wanted Wings. It was released to newspapers and magazines all over the nation. And it hit big.
Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire
1942. In This Gun for Hire Veronica Lake’s love interest is Robert Preston, but she actually shares more scenes with Alan Ladd. The pairing turns out to be a masterstroke...
1942. The Ladd/Lake pairing works at a personal level – the two actors hit it off with each other. In her autobiography, Veronica recalls:
Both of us were very...
1942. Having earned her stripes in I Wanted Wings and Sullivan’s Travels, Veronica is on a roll and has top billing as Ellen Graham in This Gun for Hire. Ellen...
1942. This Gun for Hire is loosely based on Graham Greene’s 1936 novel, A Gun for Sale. The plot deals with international intrigue and treason revolving around the sale of...
1942. This Gun for Hire is popular with audiences and critics alike. Norbert Lusk, writing in the May 25, 1942 edition of The Los Angeles Times is a fan: “To...
1942. This shot is circulated by the studio for reproduction in the fan magazines read by all the girls eager to emulate Veronica Lake's peekaboo hairstyle. A caption on the...
The fact is, Veronica is a real looker. By age 16 she’s already bosomy – by no means the norm in post-Depression America – and not averse to flaunting her charms. This is not lost on the guys at Paramount, who gleefully take full advantage. As critic Cecelia Ager observes in PM, a New York daily tabloid:
1941. Quintessential Veronica Lake. Read more.
Miss Lake is supposed to be a femme fatale and to that end it was arranged her truly splendid bosom be unconfined and draped ever so slightly in a manner to make the current crop of sweater girls prigs by comparison. Such to do has been made over doing justice to those attributes of Miss Lake that everything else about her has been thrown out of focus. The effect is too uncanny.
Veronica may be perfectly formed, but she’s also small – 4 foot 11 inches (just under 1.5 metres) tall to be precise – one inch shorter and she’d be classified as a dwarf. With a star on their hands, Paramount aren’t going to let that get in the way and their solution is inspired.
They pair her with one of their leading men, Alan Ladd, whose nickname at school was “Tiny.” With him being just over 5 foot 6 inches (a little under 1.7 metres) tall, it’s a match made in heaven. They co-star in seven movies including three classics: This Gun for Hire (1942), The Glass Key (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946). It’s like Bogey and Bacall but without the offscreen romance.
Looks to die for, luck and studio opportunism aside, Veronica Lake has two other ingredients vital to her transformation into a star. The first is star quality. It’s impossible to define but either you have it or you don’t. Hollywood is overflowing with gorgeous dames but most of them fail to register onscreen. Veronica is different. Onscreen she’s simply mesmerizing. No two ways about it.
Then there’s her flair for acting.
In addition to the films already mentioned, three others showcase her talent. In Mark Sandrich’s So Proudly We Hail (1943), starring alongside Claudette Colbert and Paulette Goddard, Veronica has the movie’s most dramatic scene, in which she breaks down and voices hysterical hatred for the Japanese. Paulette is Oscar-nominated but it’s Veronica who delivers the emotional core of the film, and that scene of hers really underscores the brutal struggle of the war in the Pacific.
In the two others, she’s an accomplished comédienne. In Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels (1941), Veronica dresses as a hobo and takes to the road in the company of Joel McCrea. To the suggestion of which the studio’s incredulous response is: “She’s not an actress, she’s a great-looking dame with a great chest and nutty hair. But she’s no actress.” For most of the film, neither her peekaboo nor her curves are on display – in the case of the latter, just as well because she’s six months pregnant when filming begins!
1941. Veronica Lake being made up. Photo by Talmage Morrison. Read more.
In I Married a Witch (1942), she is Jennifer, a witch whose plan for revenge doesn’t go quite as she intended. Her victim and protagonist is played by Frederic March. Pre-production, he describes Veronica as “a brainless little blonde sexpot, void of any acting ability.” She retaliates by calling him a “pompous poseur.” And they keep on winding each other up on set to the point where March nicknames the movie I Married a Bitch. Nevertheless, the result is charming, witty and an inspiration for 1960s TV series Bewitched.
By 1943, age 21 Veronica Lake is at the peak of her career and earning $4,500 a week.
Veronica Lake – Hollywood taketh away
And then she falls off a cliff. In 1944, the powers-that-be at Paramount, to whom she’s contracted, make a fatal mistake. They cast her as Dora Bruckmann, a Nazi spy, in The Hour Before Dawn. It’s a lousy role and pretty much guaranteed to alienate her from her audience. What’s more she struggles with the Austrian accent she has to adopt. Her acting becomes stilted as a result. The film is a box-office flop and she takes a lot of the flack.
Suddenly Veronica Lake’s career is on the skids and Paramount fail to come up with any kind of strategy to deal with the situation. They cannot see beyond her sex appeal and they undermine all the good work of Hornblow and Sturges with a series of second-rate roles in second-rate movies such as Hold That Blonde! and Out of This World. As Veronica herself observes in her autobiography, “the formula dictated that I was to be cast in roles where low-cut gowns and loose hair would be featured.”
And that brings us to the whole thorny subject of Hollywood and the issues raised over half a century later by the #metoo movement. Veronica Lake is withering on the topic:
Hollywood gives a young girl the aura of one giant, self-contained orgy farm, its inhabitants dedicated to crawling into every pair of pants they can find.
She goes on to highlight the starlet’s dilemma:
Many producers know the girls who come through their office doors desperately want a part. In many cases, it’s a matter of pride; what to write their parents or boy friends back in Waterloo or Louisville or Amarillo about Hollywood and how it’s being so good to them. They have to succeed because they were told they wouldn’t when they pulled up their roots and headed west. The town was crawling with out-of-town girls who were there trying to prove something to someone back home. And the longer they went without even a crowd scene in a Grade B thriller, the more desperate they became. And producers sense this.
Veronica Lake, publicity shot for Ramrod
1947. Ramrod is the first film Veronica Lake makes outside Paramount since becoming a star. It’s directed by her husband, André De Toth and reunites her with Joel McCrea, her...
1947. A contemporary review in the June 30 edition of The New York Times is complimentary about Veronica Lake’s performance in Ramrod:
"Ramrod" … is...
1947. Ramrod has been described as one of the earliest examples of an adult western – grim and violent but fascinating. In his film review for...
Let’s backtrack for a moment… Age 10, Constance Ockelman as she then was, lost her father. She was brought to Beverley Hills by her ambitious and domineering mother (Jean Harlow and Judy Garland say Hi.) She’s 16 years old when MGM award her her first contract, 17 when she appears in her first movies (walk-on parts for RKO) and 18 when she joins Paramount. She’s immature, out of her depth and vulnerable. Surely the studios, who are planning on cashing in on her potential, owe her some kind of duty of care? Do they hell. They leave her to fend for herself:
My age worked against me in those early days of my career. I was so in-between, so not this or not that – seventeen. I was too old to receive the understanding accorded the child stars when they fouled up or threw tantrums. And I was too young to function smoothly in the adult world of Hollywood. I couldn’t accept so many eventualities and simple facts of movie-making life. Or life itself, for that matter. I was trying to act thirty and usually ended up acting fifteen.
According to René Clair, director of I Married a Witch, “She was a very gifted girl, but she didn’t believe she was gifted.” The studio does little to build her self-confidence. And you can bet she also has to find a way of dealing with plenty of bitching too from actresses jealous of her overnight success. Little surprise, then, that she develops a hard carapace to fend off unwanted advances and cover her insecurities.
Little surprise, too, if she’s uptight on set and difficult to work with. Frederic March is not the only star with whom she falls out. Joel McCrea declines the role of male lead in I Married a Witch, because he doesn’t want to work with her again after his experience as her co-star in Sullivan’s Travels. Eddie Bracken, her co-star in Star-Spangled Rhythm, quips “She was known as ‘The Bitch’ and she deserved the title.” Raymond Chandler, who writes the screenplay for The Blue Dahlia, scathingly dubs her “Moronica Lake.”
So Veronica Lake’s career goes into terminal decline. To all intents and purposes, she’s finished at Hollywood before the forties are out.
Veronica Lake has her hair styled by Victor Honig
1946. Veronica Lake prepares for her role as Joyce Harwood in The Blue Dahlia. A caption on the back of the photo reads:
HARVEST TIME.
Two V's get...
Veronica Lake tucks in
1947. The sub and the gusto with which Veronica is devouring it are strikingly at odds with the gown she’s wearing. Still, this is a hectic time for her and...
Veronica Lake on the set of Saigon
1947. Veronica Lake poses alongside a studio light on the set of Saigon. Assisted by the retoucher’s art – absolutely standard practice – her figure is to die for.
Saigon...
What becomes of Veronica Lake
And what about Veronica Lake’s personal life? The story is depressingly familiar: a series of failed marriages, financial problems and alcoholism. It’s all very reminiscent of Hedy Lamarr.
She has three husbands. She marries John Detlie, a movie art director and 14 years her senior, in 1940 when she’s 18 years old.
John never really expressed displeasure at my stardom. But it was there, deeply embedded in him and growing deeper as each day passed. … Men wrote me letters, most simple puff but some lewd and shocking. And my earning power, although not realized as yet, was now far greater than John’s. … [It] chipped away at John’s ego as husband and provider. There he was, college educated with honors and immensely talented, married to a runny-nosed tom-boy from Brooklyn who just barely finished high school and was a screen favorite just because Freddie Wilcox liked her chest or the way she walked or something called “having it.”
1942. Veronica Lake, blonde fisherwoman. Read more.
The marriage lasts just three years – time enough for her to have two children in the midst of a hectic filming schedule. Their daughter, Elaine, is born in 1941. Their son, Anthony, is born prematurely in 1943 after Veronica trips over a lighting cable on the set of The Hour Before Dawn – such a cursed film. He dies a week later. It’s around this time that Veronica Lake’s alcohol problem really takes off.
Husband number 2 is André De Toth – in his own words a “Hungarian-born, one-eyed American cowboy from Texas.” He lost the sight of one eye during his youth but that won’t get in the way of him marrying seven times. He’s making a career for himself as a film director and will be known for his gritty, psychologically acute and unflinchingly violent B-movies. Rumour has it that he’s a proud and violent man himself. Early signs are not promising:
It started at the earliest possible moment – our wedding night. We went for a wedding dinner at a favorite restaurant of André’s in Hollywood. We entered and were greeted by his favorite waitress. She obviously became flustered at seeing us. “Oh, good evening, Miss Lake … and Mr. Lake … I mean …” … He got mad, mad enough to walk out of the restaurant and leave me on our wedding night.
The couple have two children but André’s financial fecklessness puts Veronica under huge pressure:
Maybe if the money wasn’t such a necessity I could have held out, made demands, threatened to stop working unless they came up with better parts for me. But again in my life, money was getting tight despite our combined incomes.
Studios without strategies for their stars, stars who accept crummy roles because they need the money, and husbands who can’t cope with wives who are more famous and higher earners than themselves. These are three recurring themes in forties Hollywood.
To compound the situation, in 1948 Veronica’s mother sues her for lack of filial love and responsibility – she wants more money. The marriage ends in tears. In 1951 the couple file for bankruptcy, the IRS seize their home for unpaid taxes and Veronica seeks refuge in New York. The divorce comes through the following year.
To support herself, she makes some TV appearances and does some work in the theatre, including in England.
In September 1955, Veronica marries songwriter Joseph McCarthy: “Joe and I lived the madcap, Manhattan pub-crawling life in the early months of our marriage.” In October that year, she collapses in Detroit, where she’s appearing on stage in The Little Hut (the movie stars Ava Gardner). The couple are divorced before the decade is out.
So Veronica Lake hits rock bottom, moving from one cheap hotel to another and being arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. In 1962, a New York Post reporter discovers her working as “Connie de Toth” in a cocktail lounge. The story leads to some TV and stage appearances, she moves to the Bahamas for a few years, she publishes her ghost-written autobiography and co-produces a horror flick. She dies in 1973 of acute hepatitis and acute kidney injury, estranged from her children.
And so the story goes… Hollywood transforms the actress into a silver-screen goddess, and abandons the individual to their own personal hell.
1. Veronica Lake’s breakthrough movie
In I Wanted Wings (1940), a military drama, Veronica plays the part of nightclub singer Sally Vaughn. She's onscreen for just 20 minutes and steals the show.
2. Veronica Lake’s comedy turn
Sullivan’s Travels (1941) is straight comedy and Veronica takes to it as if to the manner born as a struggling actress who accompanies Joel McCrea on his cross-country trip. You’d never guess that she’s six months pregnant when filming begins.
3. Veronica Lake’s new hairstyle
In this 1943 Paramount newsreel, Veronica Lake adopts an upswept hairdo at the behest of War Womanpower Commission. The peekaboo is regarded as too much of a liability in factories.
Want to know more about Veronica Lake?
There’s a well researched biography of Veronica Lake at Wikipedia. Others are at TCM, IMDb and Lisa’s History Room. If you’d like to get to know her better, there’s Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake.
Jane Greer – the queen of film noir
Movie stars of the 1940s – talent, savvy, looks and luck
Filed Under: Films, Stars Tagged With: Alan Ladd, André De Toth, Arthur Hornblow Jr, Constance Ockelman, Eddie Bracken, I Married a Witch, I Wanted Wings, Joel McCrea, John Detlie, Joseph McCarthy, Preston Sturges, Raymond Chandler, René Clair, The Blue Dahlia, The Glass Key, The Hour Before Dawn, This Gun for Hire, Veronica Lake
No doubt thanks in part to her voluptuous figure, actress Yvonne Furneaux tended to be cast as “the other woman” – the femme fatale, the glamorous temptress, the woman of easy virtue…
Most men must have found her irresistible. Even legendary theatre critic Kenneth Tynan who didn’t, couldn’t resist fixating on Yvonne’s physique. Reviewing her performance in the Bristol Old Vic’s 1955–56 production of Ondine, he witheringly dismissed her as “A buxom temptress … more impressive in silhouette than in action.” But there was more to her than that. Others rated her as an actress:
Yvonne Furneaux has a striking presence which manages to transcend the meagre material on hand. The film’s best moment occurs when Furneaux as Helen reflects on the terrible consequences precipitated by her beauty.
Gary Allen Smith, Epic Films: Casts, Credits and Commentary
What’s more, Yvonne had serious academic credentials. She worked with some of the great directors of her era. She starred in Italian, French, German and Spanish as well as English films across a bewildering array of genres. And, unlike many movie stars, she married just the once and remained married until her husband’s death.
Yvonne Furneaux applies make-up
Around 1960. Yvonne Furneaux touches up her lips while attendants make sure she's just as gorgeous as can be in preparation for filming her next scene. Photo by Pierluigi Photo Agency.
Yvonne Furneaux checks her make-up
Around 1960. Yvonne Furneaux uses an ornate hand mirror to make sure she's happy with her appearance.
Yvonne Furneaux seated by a table
Around 1960. Yvonne Furneaux looks like she's watching something pretty intently. Is she on set during the filming of a scene? Photo by Pierluigi Photo Agency.
From France to England
Despite her name and being born in Northern France, Yvonne Furneaux is an English actress. She’s born in 1926 and christened Yvonne Elisabeth Scatcherd. Her father, Joseph, is of Yorkshire stock and works as a director at Lloyds Bank, the only London bank based in Roubaix, a city close to the Belgian border. Her mother Amy’s family, the Furneaux, come from Devon. Yvonne has an older sister called Jeanne.
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the family returns to England, where Yvonne completes her education. She must have brains as well as beauty because she wins a place at St Hilda’s College, Oxford to read modern languages. She self-deprecatingly refers to her results as “not very good.” But the key thing is she leaves university fluent in English, French and Italian. This will stand her in good stead as it will open up opportunities for her to become a star of European rather than just British cinema.
1953. The Young Look in the Theatre. Yvonne Furneaux, standing, is fourth from the left. Photo by Norman Parkinson. Read more.
From stage to screen
Perhaps she gets hooked on the theatre at university, perhaps she walks the planks for the first time in Oxford… However it comes about, by the time she graduates, Yvonne has decided that she wants to be an actress, and she enrols at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where her contemporaries include Joan Collins and Diane Cilento.
She graduates in 1951 and makes her professional stage debut age 24. Hitherto, her family and friends have called her Beth or Tessa. Now she adopts her mother’s maiden name and becomes Yvonne Furneaux, emphasizing her glamour and allure. Her early roles include a part in Macbeth and the title role in The Taming of the Shrew. Within a year, she has made a name for herself to the point that she features as one of ten actresses in Norman Parkinson’s photo, The Young Look in the Theatre, in the January 1953 issue of Vogue magazine.
Meanwhile, she embarks on her cinema career with a small role in Affair in Monte Carlo, a 1952 British romantic drama film starring Merle Oberon. The following year, she’s cast as Jenny, a low-life girl of dubious virtue in The Beggar’s Opera, one of the most expensive British films of its period and a huge box-office flop. Still, she’s in the exalted company of celebrated English thespians Laurence Olivier, Dorothy Tutin and Stanley Holloway. The same year she appears as Errol Flynn’s slighted and vengeful mistress in The Master of Ballantrae, a romantic adventure based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson.
1960. Yvonne Furneaux in dire straits as Emma in La Dolce Vita. Photo by Pierluigi Photo Agency.
From the sublime to the ridiculous
Yvonne Furneaux’s feature-film career, interspersed with appearances on television, spans just over 20 years apart, from her last movie, Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie (1982). In the course of it, she turns her hand to almost every genre: adventure (her favourite), comedy, romance, crime, thriller, horror, sci-fi, musical and the sword-and-sandal dramas that Cinecittà is churning out in the late-1950s and early-1960s. She’s equally at home in films in English, French, Italian and, apparently, Spanish (Carta al Cielo) and German (Die Todesstrahlen des Dr Mabuse). Quite some linguist!
Many of her movies appear to be pretty trashy potboilers but her filmography does include at least three arthouse classics:
Le Amiche (1955) – She owes her role in Michelangelo Antonioni’s breakthrough movie, adapted from a novel by Cesare Pavese, to a producer at ABC Films in London, who makes the introduction. She plays the part of spiteful socialite Momina, one of the girlfriends of the title.
La Dolce Vita (1961) – Yvonne is Emma, Marcello’s fiancée, driven to despair and attempted suicide by his infidelity in Federico Fellini’s most celebrated masterpiece.
Repulsion (1964) – in Roman Polanski’s psychological horror film, Catherine Deneuve has the lead role as deranged Carol Ledoux. Yvonne gets to be her sister, Helen, who doesn’t have Carol’s hang-ups about sex.
Interviewed about her career, Yvonne Furneaux says her most memorable encounter was with Federico Fellini. Any regrets? “Only that I didn’t continue with the stage. I really admired Vivien Leigh’s career, she was a superb actress.”
Yvonne Furneaux out and about
1962. Yvonne Furneaux visits a village. This is one of three photos, apparently from a single shoot, taken the year of her marriage to Jacques Natteau. It’s probably commissioned to illustrate a magazine article.
Yvone Furneaux takes a break
1962. Yvonne Furneaux relaxes with a bottle of Chianti before a spectacular panorama. Could this be the view from the castle she and her husband buy at Poggio Catino?
Yvonne Furneaux relaxes
1962. Yvonne Furneaux relaxes on a divan. Given the rough walls, swords and heraldic hanging, this is presumably a room at the castle.
Yvonne Furneaux meets her husband-to-be while filming Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1961). Jacques Natteau served as an RAF fighter pilot during World War II, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross as well as a Légion d’honneur for his bravery. Before the War, he had worked in the movie business as a camera operator and he subsequently returned to it. By the time he encounters Yvonne, he is a seasoned cinematographer.
1960. Yvonne Furneaux with Federico Fellini and paparazzi at Cannes. Read more.
In January 1962 the couple get hitched and buy a castle in Poggio Catino, about 45 kilometres northeast of Rome. They spend the next five years restoring it and living between London, Paris, and Rome as they continue to pursue their respective careers.
In 1969 their son, Nicholas, is born. Unlike many of the women she plays, Yvonne proves to be a faithful wife, remaining at her husband’s side until his death in 2007.
Want to know more about Yvonne Furneaux?
The primary source for this piece is by Yvan Foucart at Encinémathèque (apparently no longer available). Yvan appears to have interviewed both Yvonne and her son as well as having access to various personal documents. Yvonne Furneaux’s filmography is available at IMDb, and you can trace her family tree at Geni.
Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard – fiction and friction
Jean Simmons and Claire Bloom – adventures of two north London girls
The paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster
Filed Under: Stars Tagged With: Federico Fellini, Jacques Natteau, Michelangelo Antonioni, Yvonne Furneaux
Andrea Johnson – forgotten supermodel of the 1940s
In June 1950, four of the US’s top models flew to Australia to showcase American fashions in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. They included Carmen Dell’Orefice, just 18 years old but already something of a veteran, and Andrea Johnson, ten years her senior, for whom this would be a kind of swan song.
Carmen has become a fashion legend, Andrea has sunk without trace. Other than a few photos, there’s almost nothing about her on the Internet. So, this is my best effort to provide a back story for the clutch of photos of Andrea I have in my collection and ensure that she isn’t forgotten just yet. They come, via two different sources, direct from Andrea’s estate.
Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model. Read more.
Andrea Johnson, supermodel
Back in the 1940s when Andrea Johnson does most of her modelling (she was born in 1922), the business is in its infancy and dominated by a handful of agencies. Andrea works for two of them. She is represented by John Robert Powers before moving to Ford Models, set up by Eileen and future-US president Gerald Ford in 1946. At some point in the 1940s she leaves to set up her own agency, Figure Heads, with offices in NYC at 141 East 40th Street. Her husband, Claude Travers, five years her senior, is a partner and director of the firm.
During the forties, Andrea is one of the 12 most photographed models in the US immortalized by Irving Penn in his famous 1947 group portrait. The following year she’s part of another famous group portrait, this time modelling an extravagant ballgown by Charles James for Cecil Beaton. Beaton also photographs her for the covers of two issues of Vogue magazine – January 1, 1945 and May 15, 1946 (you can find both at Getty Images). It goes almost without saying that, like Lisa Fonssagrives and unlike Jinx Falkenburg, Andrea is a high-fashion rather than a sports model.
Her modelling date books reveal that she works with pretty much all the leading fashion photographers of the era: Richard Avedon, Erwin Blumenfeld, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Fernand Fonssagrives, Paul Hesse, Horst P Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, Constantin Joffé, Karen Radkai, John Rawlings and, intriguingly, Salvador Dali. Magazines commissioning the shoots include Harper’s Bazaar, House & Garden, LIFE, Town & Country and Vogue.
The Australian fashion tour
In the mid-20th century, models aren’t celebrities like they are now. But there is still interest in them, as this article in LIFE magazine, in which Andrea Johnson gets a mention, demonstrates. While Andrea goes pretty much under the radar in the US, she and her companions get plenty of coverage in the Australian press when they visit the country in July 1950.
Andrea Johnson and friends contemplate a map
Mid-1940s. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is annotated on the back "Photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe."
Andrea Johnson at the Hotel Nacional, Cuba
1945. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is annotated on the back "Photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe." I believe it may have been published in one of the 1945 issues of Harper's Bazaar.
Andrea Johnson in Paris
Late-1940s. The setting is probably Le Jardin des Tuileries. During the 1940s, Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, used to send Dahl-Wolfe and, latterly, Richard Avedon to Paris to shoot the collections. It's likely that this photo was taken during one of those visits. The print is stamped on the back "LOUISE DAHL-WOLFE 58 WEST 57th ST." and comes from Andrea's estate.
Andrea Johnson models a hat
Andrea Johnson in profile
Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson certainly has a striking profile, which photographers are happy to take advantage of. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is annotated on the back "LDW", the initials of Louise Dahl-Wolfe."
The American Fashion Parades, as they are dubbed, are organized by Nieman-Marcus in collaboration with the Myer Emporium and David Jones (two Australian upmarket department stores). The rationale is to promote US fashion in the light of moves afoot to reduce the trade barriers that have inhibited commerce between the countries since before World War II. It calls to mind The Fashion Flight of 1947. Vice-president Stanley Marcus regards the American Fashion Parades as one of the most important his corporation has staged and points out that:
We’ve had two fashion shows in Mexico, but I can tell you this – we attach more importance to this show than any we have ever held. … French fashions still may be the world’s most chic, but American fashions generally are better suited to Australia.
The American Fashion Parades showcase the latest American creations in cocktail dresses, evening gowns, suits, sportswear and beachwear. Also on display are a range of accessories: hats, shoes, gloves, handbags and costume jewellery for evening, daytime, and sportswear. Brands include Elizabeth Arden, Hattie Carnegie, Adrian, Tina Leser, Irene, John Frederics and Delman.
1951. Carmen Dell’Orefice, who goes on the Australian tour with Andrea Johnson, modelling a barnyard-inspired hat. Read more.
This is how the models are introduced to the Australian public in the June 3, 1950 edition of The Daily Telegraph:
They are known as the “most-photographed girls in the world.” …
… Blonde, svelte Carmen [Dell’Orefice] is the favorite model of British photographer Cecil Beaton, who has described her as “the most beautiful woman in the world.” She holds several New York swimming and diving championships.
Pert brunette Margo [Price], besides being one of the highest-paid models in New York, is a skilled movie photographer. She plans to make a film “documentary” of her Australian tour for television showing on her return to the United States.
Striking, shapely Andrea Johnson disproves the saying that blondes are beautiful but dumb. She’s one of the most sought-after mannequins in America and in her spare time she runs her own model agency with 30 girls on her staff.
Glamor girl and fashion expert Ruth Hancock, of Texas, will be in charge of the American beauty contingent.
The Australian press report that they are taking a cut in their earnings during the trip. Back home they command fees of US $25 dollars an hour and average US $100 dollars a day.
The models are in Australia for a bit more than a month. During that time, they work alongside eight Australian mannequins, who have competed for the honour. Their schedule looks like this:
Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson. Photo attributed to John Rawlings.
Monday, 17 July – Leave New York.
Wednesday, 19 July – Full-dress preview in Dallas, then on to San Francisco to catch a PanAm flight to Australia.
Saturday, 22 July – Arrive Sydney and travel on to Melbourne.
Saturday 29 July – Fashion Parades begin in Melbourne.
Saturday 12 August – Fashion Parades begin in Adelaide.
Monday 21 August – Fashion Parades begin in Sydney.
Saturday 26 August – Fashion Parades finish.
When the models depart, Margo and Ruth head back to the US, while Andrea and Carmen go to France for sittings for Vogue Paris before returning home.
Andrea Johnson, artist and entrepreneur
On the way to Australia, the models have a brief stopover in Honolulu, and perhaps that’s when Andrea falls in love with the city. At any rate, that’s where she goes to live when she retires from modelling in the early 1950s. And there she embarks on a new career, working closely with another artist to design fabric prints on which to base a line of island casuals, and funding it with a bit of modelling.
It seems that Andrea is quite an entrepreneur. Having set up a modelling agency and a fashion business, she goes on holiday to Big Island and ends up buying an old coffee farm in the area of Honaunau. She turns the ground floor of the house into a ceramics studio, which she christens Holualoa Coffee Mill Art Center. The remaining space she uses as storage for her extensive collection of antiques and collectibles. She also opens a retail studio in Captain Cook, selling plaster castings for walls and gardens.
She dies in her late 70s after a battle with cancer.
1946. This print comes from the collection of post-World War II supermodel, Andrea Johnson. The reverse is inscribed in pen "other shot Larry Avedon S449-2 Saks" and in pencil "AVEDON for Town & Country / #1 / 73/16x73/14", hence the attribution to Avedon. If the attribution is correct, and the boldness of the image and the perfection of the profile would tend to support that, this is a rare and possibly unique early example of his work.
Andrea Johnson models an evening gown
Around 1950. A romantic image that seems to hark back to the mid-19th century in terms of the chaise longue and soft border as well as the dress. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is stamped on the back "LOUISE DAHL-WOLFE 58 WEST 57th ST.".
Late-1940s. A moody and dramatic image by German emigré photographer Peter Basch. Apparently, his wife, Jacqueline Bertrand, was once one of Andrea's Figure Heads girls. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is stamped on the back "Please credit photograph to Peter Basch."
Andrea Johnson models a basque
Late-1940s. With its hints of striptease, it's no surprise that this shot is by German emigré photographer Peter Basch, perhaps best remembered for his glamour shots. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is stamped on the back "Please credit photograph to Peter Basch."
Want to know more about Andrea Johnson?
I’m indebted to John-Michael O’Sullivan (who is working on a biography of Barbara Mullen) and Cynthia Nespor (who helped to dispose of Andrea’s estate) for their help in researching this piece. The best source online is the National Library of Australia’s Trove, where you will find multiple reports of the American Fashion Parades.
Richard Avedon – art and commerce
The Fashion Flight – California comes to Paris
Wilhelmina – glamour and tragedy
Filed Under: Events, Fashion, Photographers, Stars Tagged With: Andrea Johnson, Claude Travers, Figure Heads, Ford Models, John Robert Powers, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Margo Price, Peter Basch, Ruth Hancock