Thierry Lhermitte

Tall and handsome Thierry Lhermitte (1952) is one of France's most popular actors, writers, and producers, best known for his roles in comedies. In the 1970s, he was one of the founders of the comedy troupe Le Splendid. The group scored major successes with films such as Les Bronzés (1978). Later L’Hermitte had a phenomenal success in France with his comedies Les Ripoux (1984) and Le Dîner de Cons (1998).


French autograph card.

Splendid

Thierry Michel Lhermitte was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, in 1952. He was a founder of the comedy troupe Le Splendid in the 1970s, along with Christian Clavier, Gérard Jugnot, Michel Blanc, Josiane Balasko and others.

In 1973, he made his film debut in the cult comedy L'An 01/The Year 01 (Jacques Doillon, Alain Resnais, Jean Rouch, 1973), based on the eponymous comic strip by Gébé. He had a small part as a doorman in the hit Les Valseuses/Going Places (Bertrand Blier, 1974), starring Miou-Miou, Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere. Another small part followed in the historical drama Que la fête commence.../Let Joy Reign Supreme (Bertrand Tavernier, 1975) starring Philippe Noiret.

While he had major successes with Le Splendid in their café-théâtre, he continued to play small parts in interesting films like the dramas F comme Fairbanks (Maurice Dugowson, 1976|) starring Patrick Dewaere, and Des enfants gates/Spoiled Children (Bertrand Tavernier, 1977) with Michel Piccoli.

L’Hermitte had his breakthrough in the cinema with the comedy Les Bronzés/French Fried Vacation (Patrice Leconte, 1978). The film satirises life at holiday resorts such as Club Med. The troupe of Le Splendid, Josiane Balasko, Michel Blanc, Marie-Anne Chazel, Gérard Jugnot, Christian Clavier and L’Hermitte had written and created together the play 'Amours, Coquillages et Crustacés' on which the scenario for Les Bronzés was based,

Les Bronzés proved to be phenomenally popular in France, where it sold 2.2 million tickets during its initial theatrical release. It inspired a dedicated cult following and two sequels, also directed by Patrice Leconte: Les Bronzés font du ski/French Fried Vacation 2 (1979) and Les Bronzés 3: Amis pour la vie/Friends Forever (2006).


French postcard by Editions Marion Valentine, Paris, no. 232. Photo: Gilles Larrain. Publicity still for Until September (Richard Marquand, 1984) with Karen Allen.

New partner

In the early 1980s, Thierry L’Hermitte started to play bigger parts in other film genres. He appeared in the drama La Banquière/The Lady Banker (Francis Girod,1980), starring Romy Schneider, and in the comedy-drama Clara et les Chics Types (Jacques Monnet 1981) featuring Isabelle Adjani.

He starred in another filmed Splendid success, Le Père Noël est une ordure/Santa Claus Is a Stinker (Jean-Marie Poiré, 1982). He played Pierre, a stuffy, self-righteous volunteer at a telephone helpline for depressed people. He is stuck with his well-meaning but naive co-worker Thérèse (Anémone), with the Christmas Eve shift in the Paris office, much to their displeasure.

He also starred with Isabelle Huppert and Coluche in the comedy La Femme de mon pote/My Best Friend's Girl (Bertrand Blier, 1983).

L’Hermitte scored a big hit in France with the comedy Les Ripoux/My New Partner (Claude Zidi, 1984), as the new, idealistic partner of a streetwise Paris policeman (Philippe Noiret). Noiret sets out to corrupt his new partner and, after a slow start, succeeds spectacularly. Les Ripoux won the César Award for Best Film in 1985. Two sequels were later made: Ripoux contre Ripoux/My New Partner II (Claude Zidi, 1990) and Ripoux 3/Part-Time Cops (Claude Zidi, 2003).

L’Hermitte also appeared in the American romantic drama Until September (Richard Marquand, 1984), in which he played a French banker who falls in love with an American tourist (Karen Allen) in Paris. In Les Rois du gag (Claude Zidi, 1985), he and Gérard Jugnot played two gagmen without fame who were hired by a famous television comic (Michel Serrault). In Les 1001 Nuits/One Thousand and One Nights (Philippe de Broca, 1990) he co-starred as the evil king opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones as Sheherazade.


French postcard by Editions Photomania, Paris, no. G. 84. Photo: Jacques Prayer / Gamma. Publicity still for Les Rois du gag/The Gag Kings (Claude Zidi, 1985).


French promotion card. Photo: publicity still for Le Roman de Lulu (Pierre-Olivier Scotto, 2001) with Claire Keim.

Dinner of idiots

Thierry L’Hermitte followed in the footsteps of Terence Hill as the partner of Bud Spencer in Un piede in paradise/Speaking of the Devil (Enzo Barboni, 1991). That year, he also starred in the French comedy La Totale! (Claude Zidi, 1991), which would be the basis for the action comedy True Lies (James Cameron, 1994) with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Other successful comedies were Grosse Fatigue/Dead Tired (Michel Blanc, 1994) and Un indien dans la ville/Little Indian, Big City (Hervé Palud, 1994), which was remade in Hollywood as Jungle 2 Jungle (John Pasquin, 1997) with Tim Allen. He appeared as King Louis XIV in Marquise (Véra Belmont, 1997) with Sophie Marceau, and as a doctor in the poorly received An American Werewolf in Paris (Anthony Waller, 1997) starring Tom Everett Scott and Julie Delpy.

A bigger success was Le Dîner de Cons/The Dinner Game (Francis Veber, 1998). This witty comedy of manners featured L’Hermitte as an arrogant publisher who is put in his place by the seemingly moronic man (Jacques Villeret) which he has invited to his weekly dinner of idiots. The film was honoured at the 1999 César Awards with six nominations of which it won three and was a phenomenal hit with audiences.

In the new century, he steadily appeared in films and continued to work as a screenwriter and producer. His later films include Le Divorce (James Ivory, 2003), L'Ex-femme de ma vie/The Ex-Wife of My Life (Josiane Balasko, 2005) and Quai d'Orsay/The French Minister (Bertrand Tavernier, 2013). Recently, he also starred in the popular TV series Les Témoins/Witnesses (2014) by Marc Herpoux and Hervé Hadmar.

Thierry Lhermitte received several honours and awards, including the Prix Jean Gabin (1981), Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur (2001) and Officier of the Ordre national du Mérite (2005). He and his wife Hélène Lhermitte have three children, Victor Lhermitte, Louise Lhermitte and Astree Lhermitte-Soka. His more recent films include the Frenc-Canadian drama La Nouvelle Vie de Paul Sneijder / The New Life of Paul Sneijder (Thomas Vincent, 2016) and the comedy All Inclusive (Fabien Onteniente, 1919) starring Frank Dubosc.


Trailer Les Ripoux/My New Partner (Claude Zidi, 1984). Source: Video Detective (YouTube).


Trailer Les Bronzés 3: Amis pour la vie/Friends Forever (2006). Source: Yohann Comte (YouTube).


Trailer Quai d'Orsay/The French Minister (Bertrand Tavernier, 2013). Source: Movieclips Film Festivals & Indie Film (YouTube).

Sources: Rebecca Flint Marx (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 20 March 2025.

Imported from the USA: Marlon Brando

American film star Marlon Brando (1924-2004) was one of the greatest and most influential actors of all time. A cultural icon, Brando is most famous for his Oscar-winning performances as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954) and Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972). During the 1960s and 1970, he starred in several European films, including Bernardo Bertolucci's Ultimo tango a Parigi/Last Tango in Paris (1972).


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 565.


Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2980. Photo: Columbia / C.E.I.A.D.


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano.


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4992. Photo: Paramount Film / Ufa.


French postcard by Editions du Globe, no. 535. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Guys and Dolls (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1955).

Stella! Stella!

Marlon Brando was born in 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr., a pesticide and chemical feed manufacturer, and his artistically inclined wife, the former Dorothy Julia Pennebaker. Brando had two older sisters, Jocelyn Brando (1919–2005) and Frances (1922–1994). Jocelyn was the first to pursue an acting career, going to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York City. She appeared on Broadway, then in films and television. Marlon had been held back a year in school and was later expelled from Libertyville High School for riding his motorcycle through the corridors.

In 1943, he decided to follow his sister to New York. Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the 'emotional memory' technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and impresario Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." This technique encouraged the actor to explore his own feelings and past experiences to fully realise the character being portrayed. Brando's remarkable insight and sense of realism were evident early on. In 1944, he made it to Broadway in the bittersweet drama I Remember Mama, playing the son of Mady Christians. New York Drama Critics voted him 'Most Promising Young Actor' for his role as an anguished veteran in Truckline Café, although the play was a commercial failure. His breakthrough was the role of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Elia Kazan. Brando based his portrayal of Kowalski on the boxer Rocky Graziano, whom he had studied at a local gymnasium.

Brando's first screen role was the bitter paraplegic war veteran in The Men (Fred Zinnemann, 1950). In typical Method fashion, he spent a month in an actual veteran's hospital in preparation for the role. Brando rose to fame when he repeated the role of Stanley Kowalski in the film A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951). The role is regarded as one of Brando's greatest. The reception of Brando's performance was so positive that Brando quickly became a male sex symbol in Hollywood. The role earned him his first Academy Award nomination but lost despite Oscars for his co-stars, Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter.

Brando was also Oscar-nominated the next year for Viva Zapata! (Elia Kazan, 1952), a fictionalised account of the life of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. His next film, Julius Caesar (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953), received highly favourable reviews. Brando portrayed Mark Antony opposite John Gielgud. Another iconic portrayal is the rebel motorcycle gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (Laslo Benedek, 1953), riding his own Triumph Thunderbird 6T motorcycle. His rowdy portrayal is considered to be one of the most famous images in pop culture. After the movie's release, the sales of leather jackets and blue jeans skyrocketed.

Then followed his Academy Award-winning performance as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954), a crime drama about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. As the decade continued, Brando remained a top box office draw but critics felt his performances were half-hearted, lacking the intensity and commitment found in his earlier work. He co-starred with Jean Simmons in Désirée (Henry Koster, 1954) and the musical Guys and Dolls (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1955). In Sayonara (Joshua Logan, 1957) he appeared as a United States Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver. The film was controversial due to openly discussing interracial marriage but proved a great success, earning 10 Academy Award nominations, with Brando being nominated for Best Actor. The following year, Brando appeared opposite Montgomery Clift as the sympathetic Nazi officer Christian Diestl in The Young Lions (Edward Dmytryk, 1958), dyeing his hair blonde and assuming a German accent for the role, which he later admitted was not convincing. The film was the last hit Brando would have for more than a decade.


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, no. L 969. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Julius Caesar (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953).


Spanish postcard, no. 2656. Marlon Brando as Napoleon Bonaparte in Désirée (Henry Koster, 1954).


Belgian postcard, no. 348. Photo: Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons in Désirée (Henry Koster, 1954).


Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij Takken, Utrecht, no. 3730. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for Sayonara (Joshua Logan, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij Takken, Utrecht, no. 3734. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for Sayonara (Joshua Logan, 1957) with Miiko Taka.

The horror! The horror!

Marlo Brando directed and starred in the cult Western One-Eyed Jacks (1961), a critical and commercial flop. After both Stanley Kubrick and Sam Peckinpah had walked off the project, Brando grabbed the directorial reins. He never again directed another film. During the 1960s, he delivered a series of box-office failures, beginning with the film adaptation of the novel Mutiny on the Bounty (Lewis Milestone, 1962). Brando's revulsion with the film industry reportedly boiled over on the set of this film. His diminishing box-office stature, combined with his increasingly temperamental behaviour, made him a target of scorn for the first time in his career. The downward spiral continued for some years. Interesting was Reflections in a Golden Eye (John Huston, 1967), an adaptation of a Carson McCullers novel in which he portrayed a closeted and repressed gay army officer. He also did influential performances in The Chase (Arthur Penn, 1966), the Italian-French anti-colonialist drama Queimada/Burn! (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1970) and the British horror film The Nightcomers (Michael Winner, 1971). However, the films were financial flops and Hollywood began to perceive him as a bad and unnecessary risk.

By the dawn of the 1970s, Brando was considered 'unbankable' and critics were becoming increasingly dismissive of his work. Brando's performance as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's 1969 bestseller, was a career turning point. The Godfather was then one of the most commercially successful films of all time. The film put him back in the Top Ten and won him his second Best Actor Oscar. He followed The Godfather with Ultimo Tango a Parigi/Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972) opposite Maria Schneider. The film features several intense, graphic scenes involving Brando, and the controversial film was another hit.

Brando took a four-year hiatus before appearing in the Western The Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn, 1976) with Jack Nicholson. Then he made a rare appearance on television in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), for which he won an Emmy award. In this period, he was content with being a highly paid character actor in glorified cameo roles, such as in Superman (Richard Donner, 1978) and The Formula (John G. Avildsen, 1980), before taking a nine-year break from motion pictures. However, he also did his controversial performance as Colonel Kurtz in the Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now (Francis Coppola, 1979). The film earned critical acclaim, as did Brando's performance. Marlon's whispering of Kurtz's final words "The horror! The horror!", has become particularly famous. It was his last great performance.

Years later though, he did receive an eighth and final Oscar nomination for his supporting role as an attorney in the anti-Apartheid drama A Dry White Season (Euzhan Palcy, 1989) after coming out of a near-decade-long retirement. Brando was an activist with deep political convictions, supporting many causes, notably the African-American Civil Rights Movement and various American Indian Movements. He made another comeback in the Johnny Depp romantic drama Don Juan DeMarco (Jeremy Leven, 1994), which co-starred Faye Dunaway as his wife.

Brando owned a private island off the Pacific coast, the Polynesian atoll known as Tetiaroa, from 1966 until his death in 2004. He was married three times. First to actress Anna Kashfi in 1957. They divorced in 1959. In 1960, Brando married Movita Castaneda, a Mexican-American actress seven years his senior; the marriage was annulled in 1968. Tahitian actress Tarita Teriipaia, who played Brando's love interest in Mutiny on the Bounty, became his third wife. She was 18 years younger than Brando. They divorced in 1972. Brando had a long-term relationship with his housekeeper Maria Christina Ruiz, by whom he had three children. In 2004, Marlon Brando died of respiratory failure in Westwood, California, at age 80. He left behind 14 children (two of his children, Cheyenne and Dylan Brando, had predeceased him), as well as over 30 grandchildren. The last words are for Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Marlon Brando was quite simply one of the most celebrated and influential screen and stage actors of the postwar era; he rewrote the rules of performing, and nothing was ever the same again. Brooding, lusty, and intense, his greatest contribution was popularizing Method acting, a highly interpretive performance style which brought unforeseen dimensions of power and depth to the craft. (...) He is one of the screen's greatest enigmas, and there will never be another quite like him."


Italian postcard by Rotalcolor / Rotalfoto.


German postcard by Ufa. Photo: Dieter E. Schmidt. An incredibly coloured and polished version of the American star. The chromatic blond seems to be from the time Brando played a Nazi officer in The Young Lions (Edward Dmytryk, 1958).


Italian postcard by CVB Publishers, no. 56772. Photo: Sam Shaw. Caption: Marlon Brando, New York City, 1960.


French postcard by EDUG, no. 133. Sent by mail in 1961. Photo: Bud Fraker. Publicity still for One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando, 1961).


British postcard by Star-Graphics, no. S 91. Photo: Al Pacino and Marlon Brando in The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972).


American postcard by Classico San Francisco, no. 136-183. Photo: The Ludlow Collection. Publicity still for The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972).

Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 30 July 2023.

Adrienne Corri (1931-2016)

Last Saturday, The Times announced that British actress Adrienne Corri passed away on 13 March 2016. Corri is best known as Lara's mother in David Lean's Dr. Zhivago (1965) and as the rape victim Mrs. Alexander in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971). The strikingly attractive, red-headed actress also starred in several Horror and Science-Fiction films.


Yugoslavian postcard by IOM, Beograd. Photo: Sedmo Silo.


German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1333. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation. Publicity still for The Kidnappers (Philip Leacock, 1953).

Beautiful flaming red hair

Adrienne Corri was born as Adrienne Riccoboni in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1931 (according to Wikipedia; IMDb gives 1930). Her parents were Italian. She attended the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London and then appeared on both the English and American stage. While still a teenager, she made her film debut in the comedy The Romantic Age (Edmond T. Gréville, 1949) starring a young Mai Zetterling.

Next, she played Valerie, one of the three adolescent girls living in Bengal near the Ganges in The River (Jean Renoir, 1950), filmed on location in India. It was Renoir's first colour film and showed off Corri’s beautiful flaming red hair which would become her trademark. Martin Scorsese later called The River "one of the two most beautiful colour films ever made".

For Corri, it was the start of a successful film career. She appeared in many horror and suspense films, including The Kidnappers (Philip Leacock, 1953), Devil Girl from Mars (David McDonald, 1954) and Corridors of Blood (Robert Day, 1958) starring Boris Karloff.

During the 1950s she also often appeared on television, in such family series as The Three Musketeers (1954) as Milady de Winter, The Count of Monte Cristo (1956) and Sword of Freedom (1957) starring Edmund Purdom. In the early 1960s, Corri was featured in several horror and action films, including The Hellfire Club (Robert S. Baker, Monty Berman, 1961) with Keith Michell and Peter Cushing, and A Study in Terror (James Hill, 1965).

In 1965 she also played supporting parts in the interesting thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1965) with Carol Lynley and Laurence Olivier, and in the classic blockbuster Dr. Zhivago (1965, David Lean) as the mother of Lara (Julie Christie). It led to more film roles, such as in the science fiction film Moon Zero Two (Roy Ward Baker, 1969), but she was mainly seen in numerous TV series. On stage and TV, she appeared in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (John Sichel, 1969), as the Countess Olivia opposite Alec Guinness as Malvolio.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 584. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.

'Go, f**k yourselves'

One of Adrienne Corri’s most spectacular film performances was in A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971). She played Mrs. Alexander, the victim of the bizarre gang rape by ultraviolent punk Alex DeLarge and his three droogs. Alex (Malcolm McDowell) ritually rapes her while dancing to the tune of Singing in the Rain. The scene required her to be completely nude, and Kubrick’s continuous calls for more takes reportedly made her rage at the director.

She seemed better at ease in the stylish Hammer horror film Vampire Circus (Robert Young, 1972) in which she starred as the Gypsy Queen opposite John Moulder-Brown. During the 1970s Corri also appeared in the cinema in the thriller Rosebud (Otto Preminger, 1975) with Peter O’Toole, and as Therese Douvier in Revenge of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1978) starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.

Corri continued to mix film and TV. Her final film appearance was in the Graham Greene adaptation The Human Factor (Otto Preminger, 1979) starring Richard Attenborough and Joop Doderer. Her later television credits include Mena in the Doctor Who story The Leisure Hive (1980) and Lady Rebecca in Lovejoy (1992).

Meanwhile, she had a major stage career. In the theatre, she specialised in fiery, flamboyant characters. The Guardian critic Michael Billington recalled on his blog a famous incident: “Adrienne Corri, on the disastrous first night of John Osborne's The World of Paul Slickey, responding to the avalanche of curtain-call booing by raising two fingers to the audience and shouting ‘Go, f**k yourselves’.”

She became a well-known expert on eighteenth-century portrait painting and published in 1985 a book about the painter Thomas Gainsborough. Adrienne Corri married and divorced the actor Daniel Massey (1961–1967). Before her marriage to Massey, she had two illegitimate children. Adrienne Corri was 84.


Trailer The River (1951). Source: Plamen Plamenov (YouTube).


Trailer Devil Girl from Mars (1954). Source: John Hilarious (YouTube).


Trailer A Clockwork Orange (1971). Source: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (YouTube).


Trailer Vampire Circus (1972). Source: Synapse Films (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Lyn Hammond (IMDb), Michael Billington (Guardian Unlimited), The Times (subscription required), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 25 October 2023.

Izolda Izvitskaya

Russian actress Izolda Izvitskaya (1932-1971) was a shining star of the Soviet cinema in the late 1950s. In 1971 she died tragically of cold and starvation, a forgotten alcoholic.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 519, 1957. Photo: Sovexportfilm.


Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 3279. Photo: Ter-Ovanesova. The retail price was 75 kop.


Russian postcard, no. 15, 1959.

Young enthusiasts

Izolda Vasilyevna Izvitskaya (Russian: Изольда Васильевна Извицкая) was born in the small town of Dzerzhinsk, Soviet Union (now Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia) in 1932. Her father was a chemist, and her mother was a teacher. In the summer of 1950 - right after high school, she was accepted to the VGIK (All-Union State Institute of Cinematography). She was given parts in several films while still a student.

After graduating from the VGIK in 1955, the graceful Izvitskaya was chosen by director Grigori Chukhray to play a wild and violent Red Army sharpshooter in Sorok Pervyy/The Forty-First (Grigori Chukhray, 1956) opposite popular actor Oleg Strizhenov.

At AllMovie, Hal Erickson writes: "Sorok Pervy was a typically patriotic Soviet entry in the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. The story focuses on Isolda Izvitskaya, cast as a courageous Revolution-era female sharpshooter. While escorting a male White Russian prisoner back to her own lines, Isolda and her captive are marooned on a desert island. Predictably, a romance blossoms between the two former enemies. Unpredictably, Isolda is forced to make a daunting sacrifice to rescue her lover from punishment at the hands of the Czarists."

The film was based on Boris Lavrenyev's novel, previously filmed in 1928 by Yakov Protazanov. The patriotic epic was very successful all over Russia. In Cannes, it got the Prix spécial du jury à Cannes (the Special Jury Prize). Izolda Izvitskaya herself also got a very good reception in France. In Paris, a new cafe was even named after her, Isolde.

In her next film, Pervyy Echelon/The First Echelon (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957), she was one of a group of young enthusiasts who arrived in a steppe district of Kazakhstan to develop the virgin land. They had to survive severe frosts, overcome spring mudflows, and live in uncomfortable conditions. But finally, they formed an advanced collective farm and settled their private lives. In this film, she worked with her future husband, Eduard Bredun.


Russian postcard, no. 54, 1960.


Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 55454, 1963. This postcard was printed in an edition of 150.000 cards. The retail price was 8 kop.


Russian postcard, no. 109, 1959. This postcard was printed in an edition of 75.000 cards.

Alcohol problems

Izolda Izvitskaya was made a member of the Association for Cultural Relations with Latin American countries which allowed her to travel outside of the USSR. In a short time she visited Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw, Buenos Aires and other cities.

She still had enough time to star in several more films, including Nepovtorimaya vesna/A Unique Spring (Aleksandr Stolper, 1957), Mir vkhodyashchemu/Peace to Him Who Enters (Aleksandr Alov, Vladimir Naumov, 1961) which won the Special Jury prize at the Venice Film Festival, and Po tonkomu ldu/On Thin Ice (Damir Vyatich-Berezhnykh, 1966).

However, none of them was on the level of Sorok Pervy. Izvitskaya was getting depressed. Her husband, actor Eduard Bredun, started ‘helping’ her to solve her problems with alcohol. She made several more attempts to work in films but parts were getting smaller and more scarce.

Her last film was the romance Kazhdyy vecher v odinnadtsat/Every Evening after Eleven (Samson Samsonov, 1969) starring Margarita Volodina and Mikhail Nozhkin. In 1971 her husband left her. She had a nervous breakdown and locked herself up in her apartment in Moscow.

On 1 March 1971, Izvitskaya was found dead at her home in Moscow which was empty of any food. Her husband insisted that the obituary stated ‘poisoning with an unknown substance’ as the cause of death but according to the BBC Russian service she died of cold and starvation. Izolda Izvitskaya was only 38 when she passed away.


Russian postcard, no. 58817, 1958.


Russian postcard, no. A09767.


Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. A 09465, 1965. Photo: Ter-Ovanesova. This postcard was printed in an edition of 200.000 cards. The price was 8 kop.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Peoples.ru (Russian), Kinoglaz.fr, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 8 November 2024.

Jean-Marc Barr

Attractive French-American actor Jean-Marc Barr (1960) had his breakthrough with the French film Le Grand Bleu/The Big Blue (Luc Besson, 1988). He is best known for his roles for Lars von Trier in Europa/Zentropa (1991), Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dogville (2003).


French postcard by Editions Champs Libres, no. ST 116, 1989.

The Big Blue

Jean-Marc Barr was born in Bitburg, Germany, in 1960. His father was American and his mother was French and he is fluent in both French and English. His father, working in the US Armed Forces, was stationed in West Germany. The family moved to California in 1974.

In 1978, Barr graduated from Mission Bay High School in San Diego, California. Barr's parents wished him to join the armed forces but he was unwilling to follow in his father's footsteps. He studied philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Paris Conservatoire and the Sorbonne. He moved to London to pursue an education in drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Barr made his film debut as Absalom in King David (Bruce Beresford, 1985) with Richard Gere. He began working in theatre in France in 1986. He soon found work in television including a small role in Hotel du Lac (1986), the BBC's version of the Booker prize-winning novel by Anita Brookner. He also appeared in the films Hope and Glory (John Boorman, 1987) and Maurice (James Ivory, 1987).

He had his breakthrough when he was cast in the tremendously successful French film Le Grand Bleu/The Big Blue (Luc Besson, 1988). He played French diver Jacques Mayol, alongside Rosanna Arquette and Jean Reno. Le Grand Bleu became the most financially successful film in France in the 1980s.

At IMDb, Luis Filipe dos Reis Peres tries to describe the special effect the film has on its viewers: “I never before saw a film that I could identify myself so much with. I´m lucky enough to live in a place near the sea very similar and as beautiful as those in the movie and the opening scenes always remind me of my teenage years and the waters I explored like young Jacques Mayol does in the beginning of the movie. (...) I guess that´s the beauty of this movie. It makes us feel that we could be any of its characters because they´re so real. We almost can´t believe that they don´t exist outside of the movie. This is an amazing, beautifully well-written, acted, photographed and directed movie! It carries us into an extraordinary world.”


French postcard by Ciné Passion, no. GB 7. Photo: publicity still for Le Grand Bleu (Luc Besson, 1988).


French postcard by Especially for you, Ref. 30. Photo: publicity still for Le Grand Bleu (Luc Besson, 1988). Jean-Marc Barr, Rosanna Arquette and Luc Besson on the set.


French postcard by News Productions, Beaulmes, no 56063. Photo: Eric Coiffier. Director and cast of Le Grand Bleu (Luc Besson, 1988) at the Festival de Cannes, 1988. In the front row from left to right: Marc Duret, Jean-Marc Barr, Rosanna Arquette, Luc Besson, Sergio Castellitto and Andréas Voutsinas. Behind them: Jean Reno.

Zentropa

In 1991, Jean-Marc Barr starred opposite Barbara Sukowa and Udo Kier in Danish director Lars von Trier's Europa/Zentropa. It marked the beginning of a long friendship as well as a significant professional relationship. He went on to appear in Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996) with Emily Watson, Dancer in the Dark (2000) with Björk and Catherine Deneuve, Dogville (2004), Manderlay (2005), Direktøren for det hele/The Boss of It All (2006) and both parts of Nymph()maniac (2013) with Charlotte Gainsbourg. He appeared as the main character in the video for Blur's single, Charmless Man (1995). Films in which he starred were The Scarlet Tunic (Stuart St. Paul, 1997) and J'aimerais pas crever un dimanche/Don't Let Me Die on a Sunday (Didier Le Pêcheur, 1999) with Élodie Bouchez.

Barr’s collaboration with Lars von Trier put him on track to start directing his own work in the Dogme95 style. He debuted as a director, screenwriter and producer with the intimate love story Lovers (1999). The film became the first part of a trilogy, together with the drama Too Much Flesh (2000) and the comedy Being Light (2001), which he both co-directed with Pascal Arnold. Barr and Arnold also directed Chacun sa nuit/One to Another (2006), American Translation (2011) and Sexual Chronicles of a French Family (2012).

As an actor, he appeared as Hugo in La sirène rouge/The Red Siren (Olivier Megaton, 2002) opposite Asia Argento, as divorce lawyer Maitre Bertram in the Merchant Ivory film Le Divorce (James Ivory, 2003) and as the studly, horny 'island plumber' Didier in the witty comedy Crustacés et Coquillages/Cockles & Muscles (Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau, 2005).

Barr played Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac in the film adaptation of Kerouac’s autobiographical novel Big Sur (Michael Polish, 2013). Nathan Southern at AllMovie: “The Polish movie nails Kerouac's paradigm in its many different guises, including the exhilaration of his road cruises with his buddies, the zen of his naturalism, and his creative impotence and inner sexual death. Those assets shouldn't be underestimated, particularly in light of the many individuals over the years who have branded Kerouac's work ‘unfilmable’; Polish proves them wrong. And the lead performances are outstanding across the board. Jean-Marc Barr evokes the real Kerouac (visually and emotionally) with such approximation that we may feel we're watching a documentary.”

Jean-Marc Barr's latest films are the Science-Fiction romantic comedy The Pod Generation (Sophie Barthes, 2023), the drama This Is the End (Vincent Dieutre, 2023) and the historical drama White Friar (Ivan Murphy, 2023). Upcoming is the horror film Hexameron (Wiktor Grodecki, 2024) situated in Europe after the outbreak of the Black Death. Ken Duken plays an ascetic Monk who falls in love with the Devil. Jean-Marc Barr was married to Irina Decermic. He is the godfather of the children of Lars von Trier.


British postcard by ABC, London. Photo: publicity still for The Scarlet Tunic (Stuart St. Paul, 1998).

Sources: Nathan Southern (AllMovie), Luis Filipe dos Reis Peres (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 4 May 2023.

Yul Brynner

Yul Brynner (1920-1985), famous for his completely bald head, was a Russian-born United States-based film and stage actor. He was best known for his portrayal of King Mongkut of Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I. He played the role 4,625 times on stage and won two Tony Awards. For the film version, The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956), he also won the Academy Award. In the following decades, he starred in a wide range of roles from Egyptian pharaohs to Western gunfighters, both in Hollywood and European films.


German postcard by ISV, no. A 50. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Yul Brynner in The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956).


French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 45. Photo: Sam Levin.


German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-61. Photo: Herbert Fried / Ufa.


German postcard by ISV, no. A 54. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Publicity still for Anastasia (Anatole Litvak, 1956).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Publicity still for Kings of the Sun (J. Lee Thompson, 1963).

King Mongkut

Yul Brynner was born Yuly Borisovich Briner (Russian: Юлий Борисович Бринер) in Vladivostok, Far Eastern Republic (present-day Vladivostok, Russia) in 1920. His father, Boris Yuliyevich Briner, was a mining engineer and inventor. Brynner's mother, Marousia Dimitrievna (née Blagovidova), came from the Russian intelligentsia and studied to be an actress and singer. In 1923 his father fell in love with an actress, Katya Kornukova, at the Moscow Art Theatre, and soon after abandoned his family.

Yul's mother took him and his sister, Vera, to Harbin, China, where they attended a school run by the YMCA. In 1932, fearing a war between China and Japan, she took them to Paris. Brynner played his guitar in Russian nightclubs in Paris, sometimes accompanying his sister, playing Russian and Roma songs. He trained as a trapeze acrobat and worked in a French circus troupe for five years, but after sustaining a back injury, he turned to acting. In 1940, speaking little English, he and his mother emigrated to the United States, where his sister already lived.

During World War II, Brynner worked as a French-speaking radio announcer and commentator for the US Office of War Information, broadcasting propaganda to occupied France. At the same time, he studied acting in Connecticut with the Russian teacher Michael Chekhov. He toured the country with Chekhov's theatrical troupe. Brynner’s first Broadway performance was a small part in William Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' (1941). Brynner found little acting work during the next few years. He did some modelling work and was photographed nude by George Platt Lynes.

Brynner's first marriage was to actress Virginia Gilmore in 1944, and soon after he began working as a director at the new CBS television studios, directing Studio One, among other shows. In 1946, he co-starred in a production of 'Lute Song' with Mary Martin. He made his film debut in the Film Noir Port of New York (László Benedek, 1949) with Scott Brady.

The next year, at the urging of Mary Martin, he auditioned for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's new musical, 'The King and I' (1951). King As King Mongkut, Brynner became an immediate sensation. The part would become his most famous role which he played 4625 times on stage. Brynner shaved his head for his role and continued to shave his head for the rest of his life. Brynner's shaven head was unusual at the time, and his striking appearance helped to give him an exotic appeal. He won Tony Awards for both the first production in 1951 and for the Broadway revival in 1985.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden-Westf., no. 2392. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Publicity still for The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956).


Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. 239/5920, 1959. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Yul Brynner in The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956).


German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 177. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Publicity still for Anastasia (Anatole Litvak, 1956).


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 831. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956). For his pursuit of the Israelites, Brynner in his role as Rameses II wears the blue Khepresh helmet crown, which the pharaohs wore for battle.


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, no. AX 3871. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956).

Gunslinger robot

In 1956, Yul Brynner also appeared in the film version, The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956), opposite Deborah Kerr. For his role, he won an Academy Award as Best Actor. Brynner is one of only nine people who have won both a Tony Award and an Academy Award for the same role. He quickly gained superstar status with his roles as Pharaoh Rameses II opposite Charlton Heston's Moses in the blockbuster The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956) and as General Bounine in the historical drama Anastasia (Anatole Litvak, 1956) opposite Ingrid Bergman.

He made the 'Top 10 Stars of the Year' list in both 1957 and 1958. He co-starred with Lee J. Cobb in The Brothers Karamazov (Richard Brooks, 1958), based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel. Brynner starred as Solomon opposite Gina Lollobrigida in the epic Solomon and Sheba (King Vidor, 1959), and as Chris Adams in the Western The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960) with Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, and Horst Buchholz. The film was a box office disappointment in the United States but proved to be such a smash hit in Europe that it ultimately made a profit.

Over the next two decades, Brynner appeared in more than 40 other films. In the early 1960s, he starred in Taras Bulba (J. Lee Thompson, 1962) and Kings of the Sun (J. Lee Thompson, 1963). He co-starred with Marlon Brando in Morituri (Bernhard Wicki, 1965), and with Katharine Hepburn in The Madwoman of Chaillot (Bryan Forbes, 1969). In Europe, Brynner appeared in the Anglo-French war film Triple Cross (Terence Young, 1966) with Christopher Plummer and Romy Schneider, in the Yugoslavian partisan film Bitka na Neretvi/Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969) and in the British thriller The File of the Golden Goose (Sam Wanamaker, 1969). He also appeared in drag as a torch singer in an unbilled role in the Peter Sellers comedy The Magic Christian (Joseph McGrath, 1969).

In the following decade, he played a gunslinger robot in the Science fiction Western thriller Westworld (Michael Crichton, 1973) and returned in its sequel Futureworld (Richard T. Heffron, 1976). Among his final feature film appearances were the titular role in The Ultimate Warrior (Robert Clouse, 1975) and his role opposite Barbara Bouchet in the Italian film Con la rabbia agli occhi/Death Rage (Antonio Margheriti, 1976). Later in life, Brynner was an active photographer and wrote two books. His daughter Victoria put together Yul Brynner: Photographer a collection of his photographs of family, friends, and fellow actors, as well as those he took while serving as a UN special consultant on refugees. Brynner wrote 'Bring Forth the Children: A Journey to the Forgotten People of Europe and the Middle East' (1960), with photographs by himself and Magnum photographer Inge Morath, and 'The Yul Brynner Cookbook: Food Fit for the King and You' (1983).

Yul Brynner died of lung cancer in 1985, in New York City. He married four times. His first three marriages ended in a divorce. Brynner had a long affair with Marlene Dietrich, who was 19 years his senior, beginning during the first production of 'The King and I' in 1951. He fathered three children and adopted two. His oldest son Rock wrote a book about his father and his family history titled 'Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond' (2006).


French postcard in the Entr'acte series by Éditions Asphodèle. Mâcon, no. 004/2. Photo: Collection B. Courtel / D.R. Cecil B. DeMille and Yul Brynner on the set of The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1955). Caption: Yul Brynner, film actor and photo enthusiast, takes a break to photograph director Cecil B. DeMille.


French postcard in the Entr'acte series by Éditions Asphodèle, Mâcon, no. 006/10. Photo: Collection B. Courtel / D.R. Yul Brynner and Harold Hecht on the set of Taras Bulba (J. Lee Thompson, 1962). Caption: Harold Hecht, the film's producer, and Yul Brynner, the film's lead actor, observe from a distance a scene filmed by the second crew.


West-German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2261. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Maria Schell and Yul Brynner in The Brothers Karamazov (Richard Brooks, 1958).


German postcard by ISV, no. B 20. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for The Brothers Karamazov (Richard Brooks, 1958).


Spanish postcard by Sobernanas / Damm, no. 12.007. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Publicity still for The Sound and the Fury (Martin Ritt, 1959).


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 1274. Photo: Terb Agency / Ufa.


Trailer Westworld (1973). Source: Ron Flaviano (YouTube).

Source: Jim Beaver (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 20 August 2023.