Lili Damita
Lili Damita | |
---|---|
Stars of the Photoplay, 1930
|
|
Born | Liliane Marie-Madeleine Carré 10 July 1904 Blaye, France |
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. |
Resting place | Oakland Cemetery, Fort Dodge, Iowa |
Other names | Lily Damita Lily Deslys |
Years active | 1922–1937 |
Spouse(s) | Errol Flynn (m. 1935; div. 1942) Allen Loomis (m. 1962; div. 1983) |
Children | Sean Flynn |
Lili Damita (born Liliane Marie-Madeleine Carré;[1] 10 July 1904 – 21 March 1994) was a French-American actress and singer who appeared in 33 films between 1922 and 1937.
Contents
Early life and education
Lili Damita was born Liliane Marie-Madeleine Carré in Blaye, France on 10 July 1904. Her father was an officer.[2] She was educated in convents and ballet schools in several countries, including her native France, as well as Spain and Portugal. At 14, she was enrolled as a dancer at the Opéra de Paris.[3]
Early career in revue, modeling and German film
As a teenager, she was performing in popular music halls, eventually appearing in the Revue at the Casino de Paris.[4] She worked as a photographic model. Offered a role in film as a prize for winning a magazine beauty competition in 1921, she appeared in several silent films before being offered her first leading role in Das Spielzeug von Paris (1925) by Hungarian-born director Michael Curtiz.[5] She was an instant success, and Curtiz directed her in two more films: Fiaker Nr. 13 (1926) and Der goldene Schmetterling (1926).[6] Damita continued appearing next in German productions directed by Robert Wiene (Die große Abenteuerin; 1928),[7] G.W. Pabst (Man spielt nicht mit der Liebe; 1926) and British director Graham Cutts (The Queen Was in the Parlour; 1927).[citation needed]
Hollywood career
In 1928, Damita was invited to Hollywood by Samuel Goldwyn and made her American film debut in The Rescue. She was leased out to various studios, appearing with stars and leading men such as Maurice Chevalier, Laurence Olivier, James Cagney, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant. Her films included box office successes The Cock-Eyed World (1929),[8] the semi-silent The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929) and This Is the Night (1932).[9]
Personal life
Following a lengthy affair with Curtiz,[10] she married unknown actor Errol Flynn in 1935 and retired from the screen. Flynn soon became one of Hollywood's biggest box office attractions, and in 1941 they had a son, Sean Flynn. The couple had an acrimonious divorce in 1942. She is portrayed by Barbara Hershey in the TV film My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1985) based on Flynn's autobiography. While living in Palm Beach, Florida, Damita married Allen Loomis in 1962, a retired Fort Dodge, Iowa, dairy products manufacter, and spent part of each year living there.[11] They divorced in the mid-80s.[12]
During the Cambodian Civil War (Khmer Rouge reign), her son Sean Flynn was working as a freelance photo journalist under contract to Time magazine when he and fellow journalist Dana Stone went missing on the road south of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on 6 April 1970.[13] Although Damita spent an enormous amount of money searching for her son, he was never found, and in 1984 he was declared legally dead.
Death
Damita died of Alzheimer's disease on 21 March 1994, in Palm Beach, Florida, aged 89.[14] She was interred in the Oakland Cemetery in Fort Dodge, Iowa, her last husband's hometown.[15]
Selected filmography
Year | Film | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1922 | Maman Pierre | ||
1922 | La belle au bois dormant | ||
1922 | L'Empereur des pauvres | Riquette | |
1922 | La fille sauvage | Henriette Villedieu | |
1923 | Corsica | ||
1924 | Une femme dans la nuit | ||
1924 | The Clairvoyant | Suzanne | |
1925 | Prince Charming | ||
1925 | Das Spielzeug von Paris | Célimène aka Susana Armard | |
1926 | Fiaker Nr. 13 (Cab No. 13) |
Lilian | |
1926 | Geheimnisse einer Seele (Secrets of a Soul) |
Uncredited | |
1926 | Der goldene Schmetterling (The Golden Butterfly) |
Lilian | |
1926 | Man spielt nicht mit der Liebe (One Does Not Play with Love) |
Calixta | Lost film |
1927 | The Queen Was in the Parlour | Prinzessin Nadya von Kraya | |
1927 | Die berühmte Frau (The Famous Woman) |
Sonja Litowskaja | |
1928 | Die große Abenteuerin (The Great Adventuress) |
||
1928 | Scandal in Paris | ||
1929 | The Rescue | Lady Edith Travers | Incomplete film |
1929 | The Bridge of San Luis Rey | Camila (La Perichole) | Filmed as both silent and part-talkie, only the silent version of this film survives |
1929 | The Cock-Eyed World | Mariana Elenita | |
1930 | Let Us Be Gay (Soyons gais) |
Kitty | |
1931 | The Bachelor Father (Le père célibataire) |
alternate language version | |
1931 | Fighting Caravans | Felice | |
1931 | The Woman Between | Julie Whitcomb | |
1931 | Friends and Lovers | Mrs. Alva Sangrito | |
1932 | This Is the Night | Germaine | |
1932 | One Hour with You (Une heure près de toi) |
Mitzi Olivier | alternate language version |
1932 | The Match King | Marta Molnar | |
1933 | Goldie Gets Along | Goldie LaFarge | |
1934 | A Man Has Been Stolen | Annette | |
1935 | Brewster's Millions | Rosalie La Rue | |
1935 | Frisco Kid | Belle Morra | |
1936 | The Devil on Horseback | Diane Corday | |
1937 | Escadrille of Chance | Edwige |
Selected stage musicals
- On Dit Ça, Paris (1923)
- Sons o'Guns, New York (1929/30)
- Here's How, London (1934)
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lil Damita, allmovie.com. Retrieved on 22 October 2016.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Bibliography
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lili Damita. |
- Lili Damita at the Internet Movie Database
- Lili Damita at the Internet Broadway DatabaseLua error in Module:EditAtWikidata at line 29: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Photographs of Lili Damita dead link
- Photographs and literature
- Grave of Lili Damita
- Articles with short description
- Use dmy dates from October 2020
- Articles with invalid date parameter in template
- Articles with hCards
- Articles with unsourced statements from September 2016
- Pages with broken file links
- Interlanguage link template link number
- Commons category link is defined as the pagename
- IBDB name template using Wikidata
- 1904 births
- 1994 deaths
- 20th-century American actresses
- 20th-century French actresses
- 20th-century French women singers
- American film actresses
- Burials in Iowa
- Deaths from Alzheimer's disease
- Deaths from dementia in Florida
- French emigrants to the United States
- French film actresses
- French silent film actresses
- People from Gironde