Dany Robin

This pert, delicate-looking French dish with the piled-high blonde hairdo was a one-time threat to the sexy, kittenish pedestal 'Brigitte Bardot' stood on during the 1950s. Born on April 4, 1927, the lithe and luscious Dany Robin trained as a ballerina as a child and eventually made her way to the Opera de Paris. At age 19, however, she opted for a movie career. Studying at the Paris Conservatoire, she made her screen debut in Lunegarde (1946) and grew quickly in popularity as a sensual but virginal heroine of light, fluffy comedy with such pictures as Les amoureux sont seuls au monde (1948) (Monelle), L'éventail (1947) (Naughty Martine), Frou-Frou (1955), and Mimi Pinson (1958) endearing her to Gallic audiences. Working for such legendary directors as 'Marcel Carne' and René Clair, Dany first turned heads in the latter's film Le silence est d'or (1947) (Man About Town) opposite French sensation Maurice Chevalier. Though most of her films were produced in her homeland, she took in international pictures from time to time in the 1960s, appearing in the British sex comedy Les femmes du général (1962) opposite Peter Sellers and the innocuous Connie Francis starrer En suivant mon coeur ! (1963) here in the U.S. Her last film would be in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller L'étau (1969), also an American production. Divorced from French heartthrob Georges Marchal, she married producer Michael Sullivan and retired. On May 25, 1995, Dany was tragically killed in a fire that occurred inside her Paris apartment. She was 68. Show less «