Louis Jourdan

Biography: life and films

Louis Jourdan, whose real name is Louis Robert Gendre, was born in Marseille, France, on 19th June 1921. He was one of three sons of Henry Gendre and Yvonne Jourdan, who owned a hotel on the French Riviera. The 16 year old Louis was bitten by the acting bug when he was allowed to watch filming on Marcel Pagnol's La Femme du boulanger (1938), as some members of the cast were staying at his father's hotel at the time. He immediately enrolled on a drama course at the École Dramatique and was soon appearing on stage. Impressed by his enthusiasm and good looks, director Marc Allégret offered the budding actor his first role in a film titled Le Corsaire, but this was abandoned following the outbreak of WWII. It was Marcel L'Herbier who allowed Louis Jourdan to make his screen debut, in La Comédie du bonheur (1940).

With France under Nazi occupation, Jourdan refused to have anything to do with the big companies - notably the German run Continental Films - that were sympathetic to the Vichy régime. After his father was arrested by the Gestapo, he became involved in the French Resistance, whilst pursuing a fairly low-key acting career. Marc Allégret made use of his talents in five of his films of this period, and in doing so made a new matinée idol out of him. After appearing with Micheline Presle in one of the segments of the anthology film Parade en 7 nuits (1941), Jourdan played alongside the actress once more in one of Allégret's best-known films, Félicie Nanteuil (1945). In 1946, the actor married Berthe Frédérique, who bore him his only child, Louis Henry Jourdan, five years later.

Not long after completing work on Marcel L'Herbier's La Vie de bohème (1945), Jourdan was invited by American producer David O. Selznick to appear in The Paradine Case (1947), under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock. Whilst the film was not a great success, it provided the 26-year old actor with a spring-board for his new career in Hollywood. After starring in Max Ophüls's Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) and Vincente Minnelli's Madame Bovary (1949) Jourdan acquired his reputation as the archetypal Latin lover of the silver screen. Then came more flamboyant lead roles in Jacques Tourneur's Anne of the Indies (1951) and Delmer Davies's Bird of Paradise (1952), and an exuberant comedy outing with Charles Boyer in Richard Fleischer's The Happy Time (1952).

By the mid-1950s, tastes were changing and Jourdan's style of old school seductive charm was fast going out of fashion. Although his home was now in the United States, the actor would make frequent return trips to France to appear in French films, including Jacques Becker's romantic comedy Rue de l'Estrapade (1953) and Claude Autant-Lara's lavish colour production of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1961), in which he made an admirable Edmond Dantès. He made his Broadway debut in 1954, taking the lead in a stage version of André Gide's The Immoralist. He then made the transition to musical with considerable aplomb in Vincente Minnelli's lavish multi-Oscar winning Gigi (1958), in which he proved he could sing as well as act. This is the film for which he received his one and only Golden Globe nomination - for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical (incredibly, he lost out to Danny Kaye in Me and the Colonel.)

In the 1960s, Louis Jourdan's career continued on a downwards slide as his popularity waned. Édouard Molinaro's thriller Peau d'espion (1967) and Jacques Charon's farce A Flea in Her Ear (1968) exemplify the lowbrow fare the fading matinée idol was now gravitating towards, although it would be another decade before he reached his career low-point with Michel Vianey's totally inept comedy Plus ça va, moins ça va (1977). Jourdan's professional woes were compounded by the personal tragedy of his son dying from a drugs overdose in May 1981. It was in these fallow years, that the actor narrated some Babar the Elephant stories (in English) for a series of long-playing records. Around this time, television came to Jourdan's rescue and brought a sudden new lease of life to his flagging career.

The role of Bram Stoker's famous vampire in a prestigious BBC production Count Dracula (1977) gave Louis Jourdan the chance to mould a new screen persona, the old charmer now refashioned as a seductive but deadly villain. This was followed by a guest appearance as a gastronomic killer in Columbo in 1978 and then the opportunity to play opposite Roger Moore's 007 in Octopussy (1983), in which he emerged as one of the better Bond villains (certainly the most stylish). By now, television was where Jourdan was most in demand, and he made many memorable appearances, in serials such as The French Atlantic Affair (1979) and The First Olympics: Athens 1896 (1984), and one-off appearances in popular shows such as Charlie's Angels (1980). He took the starring role in Jim Wynorski's reviled horror spoof The Return of Swamp Thing (1989), before bowing out in style in Peter Yates's Year of the Comet (1992). In total, the actor had around 85 film and television credits to his name.

Louis Jourdan spent the rest of his life enjoying a long and peaceful retirement in his adopted home country of America. He was awarded the Légion d'honneur in July 2010 and is one of the few actors to have two stars bearing his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (one for music, the other for television). He passed away on 14th February 2015 at his home in Beverly Hills, California, aged 93.

Filmography

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