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1-50 of 76
- With classic patrician features and an independent, non-conformist personality, Capucine began her film debut in 1949 at the age of 21 with an appearance in the film Rendezvous in July (1949). She attended school in France and received a BA degree in foreign languages. Married for six months in her early twenties, she never remarried. In 1957, she was discovered by director Charles K. Feldman while working as a high-fashion model for Givenchy in Paris and was brought to Hollywood to study acting under Gregory Ratoff. She was put under contract by Columbia studios in 1958 and had her first leading part in the movie Song Without End (1960). She made six more major movies in the early to mid 1960s, two of which (The Lion (1962) and The 7th Dawn (1964)) starred William Holden, with whom she had a two-year affair. Moving from Hollywood to a penthouse apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1962, she continued making movies, mostly in Europe, until her suicide in 1990.
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
James Mason was born in Huddersfield and had a film career spanning over 50 years during which he appeared in over 100 films in England and America but never won an Oscar. Whatever role he played, from the wounded Belfast gunman in Odd Man Out to Rommel in The Desert Fox, his creamy velvet voice gave him away. Like Charlie Chaplin James left the screen to spend his later life living in Switzerland. His first marriage had been to Pamela Kellino, a Yorkshire mill owner's daughter and his second to Australian actress Clarissa Kaye.- Heinz Bennent was born on 18 July 1921 in Stolberg, Germany. He was an actor, known for Possession (1981), The Last Metro (1980) and Im Jahr der Schildkröte (1988). He was married to Paulette Renou. He died on 12 October 2011 in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland.
- Writer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899, the eldest of five children in a wealthy aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia. His grandfather was a Justice Minister to the Czar Alexander II. His father, named Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was a liberal political leader, the editor of a liberal newspaper, and was a friend of Sergei Diaghilev. His mother, named Elena Ivanovna (née Rukavishnikov), was the daughter of the wealthiest Russian goldmine owner.
Nabokov's family was trilingual. As a child he was already reading foreign writers Edgar Allan Poe, Gustave Flaubert, and the Russians Lev Tolstoy, Nikolay Gogol, and Anton Chekhov. He excelled in languages and literature, as well, as in soccer, tennis and chess. He was inspired by his father's studies in lepidoptery from the age of 7, and spent summers collecting butterflies in the family estate of Vyra, near St. Petersburg. He graduated from the most advanced and prestigious Tenishev School in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Nabokov's father was the Secretary of the Russian Provisional Government, when he was arrested during the Russian revolution of October, 1917, and the family estate was confiscated by the communists. The Nabokov family emigrated to London and then to Berlin. There Nabokov's father was murdered at a political meeting while shielding his opponent from assassins. The painful memory of his father's violent death would echo in many of Nabokov's writings. In 1923 Nabokov graduated with honors from Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied zoology and literature. He worked as a translator and tutor in Europe for 18 years. In 1925 he married Vera Evseevna Slonim, from a Russian-Jewish family, and their son Dimitri was born in 1934.
Traumatized by the death of his father and the loss of his home country, Nabokov expressed himself in writing. His novel 'The Luzhin Defence' (1930) is alluding to his own story of emigration and the sense of loss. In 1937 his father's killer was released by Adolf Hitler, and Nabokov had to move to Paris. Three years later he fled from the advancing German Armies to the United States, with his wife and son. In 1940 he crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the Champlain, where he had a first class cabin, paid with the money from the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. In 1945 Nabokov became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He taught literature at Cornell University and worked as entomologist at Harvard University, becoming a distinguished lepidopterist.
He published short stories in the Atlantic and the New Yorker magazines in English, while still writing his memoirs in Russian, and agonizing to switch from Russian to English. It took him 6 years to complete "Lolita" (1955), a controversial story of a pedophile's desire for a 12-year-old girl, who reminds him of the little girl he loved as a boy. The novel was banned in America and the UK until 1958. He later wrote a screenplay for the film Lolita (1962), directed by Stanley Kubrick. Lolita and "Pale Fire" (1962) are his best known novels. In 1964 Nabokov published his four-volume translation of 'Eugene Onegin' by Alexander Pushkin, on which he worked for 10 years. He later made English translations of poems by Mikhail Lermontov and Fyodor Tyutchev. His own later works: the artfully constructed 'Ada' (1969), 'Transparent Things' (1972), and the autobiographic 'Look at the Harlequins' (1975), were translated into Russian by his son Dimitri. Nabokov also published scholarly works on Nikolay Gogol, James Joyce and Franz Kafka.
In 1960 Nabokov moved to Switzerland and made his home at the Montreux Palace Hotel. From there he frequently traveled to Milan, Italy, where his son Dimitri Nabokov was an opera singer at the La Scala. Nabokov's main hobby was his immense collection of rare butterflies which grew to a museum-quality with his many entomological expeditions. He never learned to drive a car, and he depended on his wife Vera to drive him around. Nabokov's individualism manifested in his ironic rejection of any mass-psychology, especially Marxism, Freudism, etc. He never used telephones, thus preventing any outside influence over his way of life. He had a rare gift of synaesthesia, cognate with that of composer Alexander Scriabin and artist Wassily Kandinsky. Nabokov also made his name in chess by composing chess problems.
Vladimir Nabokov died on July 2, 1977, in Montreux Palace Hotel, and was laid to rest in the Clarens Cemetery, Montreux, Switzerland. His wife and muse, Vera Slonim, died in 1993, and was laid to rest with Nabokov. The family mansion of Nabokov's in St. Petersburg, Russia is now a Nabokov's Museum. His first collection of butterflies is now part of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. His last and most valuable butterfly collection was bequeathed to the Zoology Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Joseph Damiani, a.k.a José Giovanni, was born on June 22th, 1923, to a Corsican family. He did many little jobs when he was a teenager. Washing dishes in a train-restaurant, lumberjack, coal miner, waiter in a hotel restaurant of Chamonix. He was arrested for fraud and condemned to one year in jail in 1932. During WWII, in 1943, he was a high mountain junior guide but contrary to the official version he was never in the Resistance (Joseph Damiani a.k.a José Giovanni lied all this life about this). In 1944 he came to Paris and got closer to his uncles Ange Santolini, a gangster and Paul Damiani, a Militiaman. He joined himself the Parti Populaire Français (PPF), a fascist party. Joseph Damiani was a collaborationist and a Militiaman and participate to the arrestation of many people who refuse the STO (forced work for the nazi in Occupied France). In August 1944, he pretended he was a german police officer with an accomplice and stole two jewish merchants in Lyon, France. He will later be charged during his trial with facts of kidnapping, torture, robbering and assassination (Roger and Jules Peugeot, May 1945).
He and his accomplice Georges Accad were arrested in June 1945. An other accomplice, Jacques Ménassole, commited suicide to avoid arrest. Paul Damiani was arrested too but escaped during a reconstruction of the Peugeot case. He will be fatally shot in Nice by mobsters in 1946. Joseph Damiani was judged a first time in Marseille in July 1946 for treason and sentenced to 20 years of prison. He tried to escape in 1947 but failed. He was judged a second time in July 1948 for the murder of the Peugeot brothers and was sentenced to death with Georges Accad. After months spent in the death row, they were pardoned by french president Vincent Auriol in 1949 and the death sentence was commuted to life sentence.
In 1956, Joseph was freed. He spend a long time in jail writing, and one of the first things he did after being back to free life was to send his book to editors. They were immediately impressed by "Le trou" ("The hole", slang for prison) and under his "nom de plume", the talented "José Giovanni" was soon published and appreciated. Director Jacques Becker bought the rights of the book and directed it in 1959.
That's how José Giovanni entered the cinema world. He became a well-known dialogue writer, scenarist too, working many times with Jacques Becker. Then he directed his first movie in 1966, "La loi des survivants", while he was still writing novels about gangsters, cops, prison and manly friendship... Some of his films (many are based from his own novels) include Le Rapace (1968), La Scoumoune (1972), Le Gitan (1975) and Le Ruffian (1983). One of his favourite actors was Alain Delon, whom he directed many times. He directed some great French actors as Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura or Jean-Paul Belmondo.
His death row experiment marked him very much. He was, of course, for the abolition of the death penalty and he showed it in many movies. "Deux hommes dans la ville" (1973) ends with an execution, Claude Brasseur's character in "Une robe noire pour un tueur" is supposed to be guillotined at the beginning of the movie... In 1995, he wrote "Il avait dans le coeur des jardins introuvables" (He had in his heart gardens which no one could find), which is the story of his life as a death condemned, and the struggle of his father against the son's doom. Later, in 2001, he directed Bruno Cremer in "Mon père", his own adaptation of his own novel. That was his last movie.
Living in Switzerland with his wife and children since 1969, Giovanni wrote 20 novels, 2 memories' books, 33 scripts, and directed 15 movies and 5 TV movies. After four days spent in the hospital of Lausanne, José Giovanni died at 2 p.m, on April 24th, 2004 from a brain hemorrhage.- Writer
- Additional Crew
Georges Simenon was a Belgian novelist, writing in the French language. He published nearly 500 different novels, and a large number of short stories. He became internationally famous for creating the French police detective Jules Maigret, as the protagonist in a celebrated series of mystery novels. Between 1931 and 1972, Simenon published 75 novels and 28 short stories about Maigret and his supporting cast. The Maigret stories have often been adapted into films, television series, and radio shows.
In 1903, Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium. His parents were the accountant Désiré Simenon and his wife Henriette Brüll. His father worked as an accountant for an insurance company. They were members of the wider Simenon family, a line of peasants from Limburg whose history had been recorded since the 1580s. Simenon's maternal ancestry was primarily German and Dutch. His mother was reputedly a distant descendant of the famed robber Gabriel Brühl (died in 1743). Simenon would later use the family name "Brühl" as one of his pen names.
In 1905, the Simenon family moved to the Outremeuse neighborhood of Liège, where Simenon would spend most of his childhood. In 1911, they moved to a larger house in the same neighborhood. The family started taking in lodgers to supplement their income. The young Simenon regularly interacted with these lodgers, who were apprentices and students of various nationalities. These interactions gave him his first taste of cosmopolitanism.
In September 1914, Simenon started attending the Collège Saint-Louis, a Jesuit high school. He dropped out of high school in June 1918, deciding against taking his year-end exams. He supported himself through a series of odd-jobs. In January 1919, the adolescent Simenon was hired as a journalist by the newspaper "Gazette de Liège". His assignments consistent of "human interest" stories, which were thought to be of trivial importance. Simenon grew interested in the seamier side of life in Liège, and started to frequent bars and cheap hotels in search of information. He also grew interested in police investigations, and attended lectures on police technique by the famed criminologist Edmond Locard (1877-1966).
Simenon wrote his first novel in June 1919, but it was not published in book form until 1921. During the early 1920s, Simenon started hanging out with members of "La Caque", a group of Bohemian artists. He was introduced by them to Régine "Tigy" Renchon, who became his girlfriend. In 1922, Simenon's father died. Simenon took the decision to move with Tigy to Paris, where he got acquainted with ordinary working-class Parisians. The city's bistros, cheap hotels, bars and restaurants would later become settings for his novels.
In 1928, Simenon took an extended sea voyage for a journalistic assignment. He discovered that he liked water travel. In 1929, he had a boat house constructed for himself and his wife, called the "Ostrogoth". They used it to travel through the French canal system. Joining them in their travels was their housekeeper Henriette "Boule" Liberge, who became Simenon's mistress. Their romantic relationship lasted for decades, unlike Simenon's previous short-lived affairs.
In 1930, Simenon wrote the first Maigret story during a boat trip in the Netherlands. It was published the following year. In 1932, Simenon's journalistic assignments caused him to travel across Africa, eastern Europe, Turkey, and the Soviet Union. In 1933, Simenon interviewed the exiled politician Leon Trotsky in Istanbul. Simenon took a trip around the world from 1934 to 1935. For much of the 1930s, Simenon was a permanent foreign resident in France.
During World War II, Simenon lived in Vendée, France. He maintained decent relationships with the German occupation authorities, and negotiated film rights of his books with German studios. Following the end of the war, Simenon was accused of being a German collaborator, but with little apparent evidence. In 1950, the French authorities temporarily forbid him to publish new works as punishment for his supposed collaboration, but the sentence was not enforced.
In 1945, Simenon left France with his wife for an extended stay in Quebec, Canada. He wrote three novels in the local city of Sainte-Marguerite-du-Lac-Masson. For the following decade, Simenon and his family moved constantly across Canada and the United States. He learned to speak English with relative ease, and so did his mistress Boule. In 1949, Simenon divorced Tigy, but continued living in close proximity with her, in accordance with the divorce agreement. In 1950, Simenon married his second wife Denyse Ouimet (a French-Canadian) in Reno, Nevada. She was 17 years younger than Simenon himself. Denyse was his former secretary, and they had been romantically involved since 1945.
In 1952, Simenon briefly returned to Belgium, as he was made a member of the "Académie Royale de Belgique" (Royal Academy of Belgium). He had not actually lived in Belgium since 1922, but he remained a Belgian citizen and had become the country's most famous writer. Simenon permanently left the United States in 1955. He initially settled back in France, but then decided to move to Switzerland. In 1963, he had a new house constructed for himself in Épalinges, Vaud.
In 1964, Simenon and his wife Denyse separated permanently. His housekeeper Teresa had become his new long-term mistress. In 1978, Simenon was shocked when his daughter Marie-Jo committed suicide at the age of 25. In 1984, Simenon underwent surgery for a brain tumor. He recovered well, but his health further deteriorated during the last years of his life. In September 1989, he died in his sleep while staying in Lausanne,. He was 86-years-old at the time of his death, and had not published any major work for several years.
Simenon's works have remained popular into the 21st century. According to the 2019 version of the Index Translationum by UNESCO, Simenon was the 17th most translated writer on a global scale. In the Index, Simenon outranked the likes of of Astrid Lindgren (18th) and Pope John Paul II (19th). He ranked just below Fyodor Dostoevsky (16th) and Mark Twain (15th).- Actress
- Additional Crew
Madeleine Robinson grew up in a struggling working class background but found her métier as an actress after attending the theater school run by Charles Dullin, six years that she considered the happiest of her life. The stage would stay her main love even though she would lend her striking presence to over 100 roles in film and on Tv over six decades.She was particularly acclaimed in the theater for her Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire (a role Arletty also played) and her ferocious Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Sensitive to what she saw as unfair treatment by the French press and media she left her native country after 50 years and retired to Switzerland. She was still able to catch touring productions of plays there, but this way, she said in an interview, she was able to see only the worthwhile ones and not the mediocre ones she might have gone to were she still in Paris. She wrote a memoir on her career, Belle Et Rebelle. She regretted never having become a "star" in the sense that she was the woman the main male character would embrace in the fadeout, but she was grateful for the fellow actors she got to know and for getting to work with major directors like Jean Gremillon.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Italo Alfaro was born in 1928 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Canterbury proibito (1972), Guardami nuda (1972) and Decameron n° 3 - Le più belle donne del Boccaccio (1972). He died in 1979 in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland.- Writer
- Director
- Additional Crew
Jean Anouilh was born on 23 June 1910 in Bordeaux, Gironde, France. He was a writer and director, known for Deux sous de violettes (1951), Le Voyageur sans bagage (1944) and Monsoon (1952). He was married to Nicole Lançon and Monelle Valentin. He died on 3 October 1987 in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jorge Donn was born on 28 February 1947 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was an actor, known for Bhakti (1970), Couleur chair (1978) and Romeo e Giulietta (1972). He died on 30 November 1992 in Lausanne, Switzerland.- Frederick Treves was a famous pioneer in abdominal surgery. Today he is mostly remembered as the physician to the Elephant Man. On May 4, 1901, Treves was knighted by King Edward VII on whom he had performed an appendicectomy.
- Writer
- Actor
Hugo Pratt was born on 15 June 1927 in Rimini, Italy. He was a writer and actor, known for Corto Maltese, Corto Maltese (2003) and Jesuit Joe (1991). He was married to Anne Frognier and Gucky Wogerer. He died on 20 August 1995 in Lausanne, Switzerland.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Jean-Jacques Perrey was born on 20 January 1929 in Amiens, France. He was a composer and actor, known for Savages (2012), Ocean's Eight (2018) and The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971). He died on 4 November 2016 in Lausanne, Switzerland.- Edna May was born on 2 September 1878 in Syracuse, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Salvation Joan (1916) and Hearst-Selig News Pictorial, No. 8 (1915). She was married to Oscar Lewisohn and Frederick Titus. She died on 2 January 1948 in Lausanne, Switzerland.
- Victoria Eugenia von Battenberg, always called "Ena", was born in Scotland on October 24, 1887, the only daughter of Prince Henry von Battenberg and Princess Beatrice, herself one of Queen Victoria's daughters. 1887 was also Queen Victoria's Jubilee Year, and in her honor her little granddaughter Ena was called the "Jubilee Princess". Her father had been obliged to live with his mother-in-law in order to marry the princess, but in 1896 he set off on the Ashanti expedition to West Africa, where he died of malaria. After turning down a marriage proposal from a Russian Grand Duke, Ena caught the eye of King Alfonso XIII, and her uncle King Edward VII gave her the title of Royal Highness in order to compensate for her morganatic status. After the wedding in 1906, Ena and Alfonso were returning to the Palace when a bomb was thrown at their carriage. It exploded and killed 24 people and wounded more than a 100. Though not injured, Ena was covered with the blood of a nearby decapitated guard. The royal couple had their first child, son and heir Prince Alfonso, in 1907, but much to their dismay he was a hemophiliac. Like so many of the female members of her family, Ena was a carrier of hemophilia (one of her brothers also suffered from hemophilia which killed him in 1922). The second son, Jaime, was deaf and their youngest Gonzalo was also a hemophiliac. Only the middle son, Juan, was healthy. Alfonso blamed Ena for their children's health problems, and their marriage deteriorated. In 1931, the King went into exile after Republican demonstrations and abdicated the throne of Spain in 1941. In 1934 Ena's children, Beatriz and Gonzalo, were in a car accident; though they were barely injured, Gonzalo was unable to stop bleeding and died at the age of 19. His eldest brother Alfonso also died in a car accident in Florida in 1938. Disheartened by the deaths of her children and the disintegration of her family, Ena lived throughout Europe for the rest of her life. She returned to Spain briefly in 1968 to stand as godmother to her great-grandson, Crown Prince Felipe. She was greeted warmly by the crowds, and when she left 50,000 people said goodbye to her at the airport. Victoria Eugenia von Battenberg, called "Ena", died on April 15, 1969.
- Additional Crew
- Director
- Actor
Maurice Béjart was born on 1 January 1927 in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was a director and actor, known for Bhakti (1970), Le sacre du printemps (1970) and Ballet for Life (1997). He died on 22 November 2007 in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Producer
Jacques Natteau was born on 15 November 1920 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]. Jacques was a cinematographer and producer, known for The Champagne Murders (1967), The Story of the Count of Monte Cristo (1961) and Never on Sunday (1960). Jacques was married to Yvonne Furneaux. Jacques died on 17 April 2007 in Lausanne, Switzerland.- Composer
- Music Department
Hans Haug was born on 27 July 1900 in Basel, Kanton Basel Stadt, Switzerland. He was a composer, known for Der achti Schwyzer (1940), Pionniers (1936) and Portrait of a Woman (1942). He was married to Idelette Françoise Budry. He died on 15 September 1967 in Lausanne, Canton de Vaud, Switzerland.- Gonzalo de Borbón was born on 5 June 1937 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was married to Emanuela Maria Pratolongo, María de las Mercedes Licer y García and María del Carmen Harto y Montealegre. He died on 27 May 2000 in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland.
- Gustaf Mannerheim was born on 4 June 1867 in Askainen, Finland. He was married to Anastasia Arapova. He died on 27 January 1951 in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland.
- Producer
- Actor
Werner Koenig was born on 20 April 1963 in Bavaria, Germany. He was a producer and actor, known for Legionnaire (1998), Spy Games (1999) and 2001: A Space Travesty (2000). He died on 12 November 2000 in Lausanne, Switzerland.- Music Department
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Karol Szymanowski was born on 6 October 1882 in Timoshovka, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire [now Timoshivka, Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine]. He was a writer, known for Le roi Roger (2009), Television Theater (1953) and The Polish Bride (1998). He died on 29 March 1937 in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland.- Neige Dolsky was born on 10 March 1911 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Three Colors: Red (1994), Auntie Danielle (1990) and La pêche miraculeuse (1976). She died on 31 December 2002 in Lausanne, Switzerland.
- Han Suyin was born on 12 September 1916 in Sinyang, Henan, China. She was a writer, known for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), Ton ombre est la mienne (1963) and A Many-Splendoured Thing (2023). She was married to Vincent Valantine Ruthnaswamy, Leon F. Comber and Tang Pao-huang. She died on 2 November 2012 in Lausanne, Switzerland.
- Maurice Sandoz was born on 2 April 1892 in Basel, Switzerland. He was a writer, known for The Maze (1953) and Spring-Heeled Jack (1950). He died on 5 June 1958 in Lausanne, Switzerland.