40s Movie Actress Simone Simon

She may be a bit obscure, but I thought i would post this anyhow. Someone might know.

This was sent to me and thought you might find it interesting

(remember oscar night is sunday though she never won one...but she did change her perfume twice a day (so that's the fashion angle

Chris

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Enigmatic French Movie Actress Simone Simon Dies

By Adam Bernstein

Simone Simon, who died Feb. 22 in Paris of undisclosed causes, was a
petite French actress described as having the sexiest pout in
Hollywood.

She pouted through her share of mediocre fare, with some notable
exceptions: "All That Money Can Buy" (1941) as a temptress literally from
hell; and "Cat People" (1942) as a young European bride who fears that
her sexual power and jealousy will unleash a horrible curse.

The second was probably her best-known film, a low-budget Jacques
Tourneur picture whose shadowy cinematography and power of suggestion
brought it classic status in later decades.

Like her character in "Cat People," she seemed to thrive on mystery
concerning the details of her life, particularly her age. She was in her
late eighties or early nineties. Some sources say she was born in
Bethune, France, and raised in Marseille, Madagascar, Vienna, Budapest,
Berlin or Brussels.

The years given for her birth range from 1910 to 1917. In the latter
claim, it was said her delivery coincided with nearby battle cries on
the Western Front during World War I -- thereby explaining her fiery
temperament on sets.

After a modeling and minor acting career in Paris guided by director
Marc Allegret, Ms. Simon was brought to Hollywood by a Twentieth Century
Fox producer who hoped her kittenish allure would appeal to American
audiences. She was heavily promoted in her first American film, "Girls'
Dormitory" (1936), in which she played a student involved in a romantic
triangle with adults Herbert Marshall and Ruth Chatterton.

She was unhappy with the roles that followed: She played "Diane the
Hooker," who is given shelter by Parisian sewer worker James Stewart in
"Seventh Heaven." The musical "Love and Hisses" generously overlooked
her inability to sing.

In Hollywood, she was painted as a lusty and demanding woman, who
danced with George Raft and dated George Gershwin, the British double agent
Dusan "Dusko" Popov, heirs to financial fortunes and her tennis
instructor. During a nasty trial in the late 1930s involving a secretary who
allegedly stole funds from her, the secretary said Ms. Simon ordered
gold-plated keys to allow a close friend access to her boudoir. This
stirred among those who could afford them a brief rage for such sexy keys.

There were reports she kept a pet black panther around her home. And
she said she changed her perfume twice daily, describing her scent by
day ("smells like leather") and by night ("smells like flowers").

Despite such attempts to exoticize her, she never became a star like
Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich or the other actresses imported to fulfill
American fantasies during the Depression.

Stories brewed about her brusqueness with directors, and in interviews
she professed a dislike for "gay, frivolous things" in which American
producers hoped to cast her.

She was pleased when Jean Renoir summoned her back to France in 1938
to film "La Bete Humaine," based on a fatalistic novel by Emile Zola. In
a notorious role that was heavily censored in its American release, she
played the sexually charged wife of a train engineer who entangles
herself in a murderous plot.

Returning to the United States after the start of World War II, she
was cast as the Devil's minion in "All That Money Can Buy," based on a
fable by Stephen Vincent Benet. The surreal film, whose acting and score
by Bernard Herrmann was widely praised, did not appeal to Ms. Simon.

"It wasn't very good, really," she told an interviewer in 2001. "Too
heavy-handed. The ending was too long and didn't work, and the actor
playing the farmer, the one I seduce . . . he had never acted before. He
was a football player."

She appeared in a cheapie musical called "Tahiti Honey" (1943) and
"Mademoiselle Fifi" (1944), a patriotic film about a French laundress.
Back in Europe, she made the last of her notable performances, as the
chambermaid in Max Ophuls's turn-of-the-century sex drama "La Ronde" (1950)
and as a model tragically involved with an artist in Ophuls's "Le
Plaisir" (1952).

She continued with stage and film work but turned more reclusive after
an accident with eyedrops nearly blinded her in the early 1970s.

There are no immediate survivors.

 

"Cat People" fan here...

As is often the case, I had no idea she was still alive, shamefully enough.

Well, RIP in earnest... I hope she had a pleasant last 20 years or so, the close of that obit doesn't sound too positive.

 

Maybe very Garbo-like nobody knew of the last 20 years. She went into reclusiveness.