Grand Dame of French cinema who was involved in Nazi controversy

Born: May 1, 1917;

Died: October 17, 2017

DANIELLE Darrieux, who has died aged 100, was the Grand Dame of French cinema, having made well over 100 films in France, Hollywood and elsewhere. But she was not always so fondly regarded. She appeared in Nazi-approved films, attended a premiere in Berlin, sang for German troops and was on a French Resistance hit list.

By the time of the Second World War she was already a major international star. Her appearance in the historical romantic drama Mayerling (1936) set a fashion for women piling their hair on top of their heads and she co-starred with Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the Hollywood screwball comedy The Rage of Paris (1938).

She made a film called Her First Affair (1941) for Continental Films, a company set up by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. She claimed she did not realise the significance of the film company.

But her participation in the film and attendance at the Berlin premiere seemingly led to the release from internment of her lover, a Dominican diplomat.

France forgave her and she was soon back in starring roles after the war and she starred with Charles Boyer in the classic romantic drama Madame De… (1953). She was known as “DD” long before Brigitte Bardot became known as “BB”.

She also made several more big international films and played Richard Burton’s mother in the historical epic Alexander the Great (1956), though she was only eight years older than him.

The daughter of a doctor and a singing teacher, Danielle Yvonne Marie Antoinette Darrieux was born in 1917 in Bordeaux, but grew up mainly in Paris, where she studied cello and piano at the Conservatoire de Musique.

Her father died when she was young. Her mother pushed her forward for a supporting role in a comedy film called Le Bal (1931) when she was 13 and her film career quickly took off from there.

In 1935 she married the French film director Henri Decoin, who was 27 years older, and they made several films together, including Her First Affair.

She began her own complicated real-life affair with the Dominican diplomat, playboy and racing car driver Porfirio Rubirosa, who was interned after the Dominican Republic entered the war on the Allied side in 1941.

She divorced Decoin and in 1942 married Rubirosa and they moved to Switzerland for a while. That marriage too was short-lived – Rubirosa was a notorious womaniser and all-round rogue and Darrieux was one of five wives, including Barbara Hutton. In 1948 Darrieux married the writer, Georges Mitsinkidès. They remained together until his death in 1991.

Darrieux repeatedly worked with Catherine Deneuve, playing the mother of Deneuve and Deneuve’s real-life sister Francoise Dorleac in the charming musical The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). Darrieux was the only actress to sing her own part.

She also sang in concert and in 1970 succeeded Katharine Hepburn in the Broadway musical Coco, about Coco Chanel.

She went on making films until very recently. In 8 Women (2002) she was part of a star-studded Gallic cast that again included Deneuve as her daughter. And she voiced Grandma in the highly-acclaimed adult animated film Persepolis (2007), about a girl growing up at the time of the Iranian Revolution, with Deneuve voicing the mother.

Spanning 85 years – during which she played everything from ingénues to grandes dames – Darrieux’s film career is one of the longest ever in any country.

BRIAN PENDREIGH