Leslie Caron the Frenchiest American girl

The Artist is the first French film to win an Academy award. Jean Dujardin is now world-famous thanks to this film.  But he is not the first French star to cross the Atlantic.

A good deal of names represent the epitome of French chic throughout the world and especially in Hollywood : Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, Capucine, David Charvet, Claudette Colbert, Jean Renoir, Marion Cotillard, Maurice Tourneur, Annabella...

Did you know, though, that most of these people have one thing in common ? They are virtually unknown to today's French audiences. Their popularity never reached France in quite the same way it hit Hollywood. Their busy schedule in the USA did not even allow them to dub their own films in France and the French moviegoers do not even know the sound of their actual voices.

Dancer Leslie Caron is a perfect example: she recently published her autobiography "Thank Heaven", in which her impressive career (during which she crossed the paths of some of the above-mentioned people, but also other great stars) is effectively told.

Her early life is that of a wealthy young girl in a wealthy family. Yet she also is a hard-working girl and owes her career mostly to herself. When Robert Osborne asked her to describe her life in Hollywood in one word, she replied : "work". Even before she moved to the United States, she met Roland Petit, and a young Brigitte Bardot.

The interesting part to most will come with An American in Paris and her film career with Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire (Daddy Long Legs), and others she worked, had affairs with, or just met (Warren Beatty, Ingrid Bergman, Henry Fonda, Edith Piaf, )...

Her other big hit, Gigi, is definitely another film I would recommend on Blu-ray.  As often with an American production of a French novel, every contemporary French star in Hollywood is there. Incidentally, in keeping with the topic of my blog, there is a major lost element to that film : Leslie Caron discusses in her autobiography how André Prévin warned her that her singing voice had been dubbed by singer Betty Wand (the voice of Esther Williams in Easy To Love and Rita Moreno in West Side Story) although she had filmed the sequences to her own playback. These recording are now available on the awesome Rhino soundtrack.

Ms. Caron's personality shines through her writing and she reveals her true feelings about people she thought were bad actors (George Peppard), or vain (gay actor Dirk Bogarde), or arrogant (Esther Williams)...

But she recalls those she appreciated and loved like Judy Garland (whom she reveals committed suicide when she filmed Annie Get Your Gun which I already covered here), Gene Kelly (did you know that the cap he wore on most behind the scene photos hid a bold scalp ?),...

A curious event following James Dean's death happened to her too...

Read this and more in "Thank Heaven".

That's all for today folks!