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Lili Damita

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Lili Damita Lili Damita (July 10, 1904 – March 21, 1994) was a French actress.

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[edit] Early life and education

Born Liliane Marie-Madeleine Carré in Blaye, France, she was educated in convents and ballet schools in several European countries, including France, Spain and Portugal. At 14, she was enrolled as a dancer at the Opera de Paris.

By age 16 she was performing in popular music-halls, eventually appearing in the Revue at the Casino de Paris. She also worked as a photographic model. Offered a role in film as a prize for winning a magazine beauty competition in 1921, she appeared in several French silent films before being offered her first leading role in Das Spielzeug von Paris by director Michael Curtiz. She was an instant success, and Curtiz directed her in two more films: Fiaker Nr 13 and Der Goldene Schmetterling. In the latter film, her acting was exceptionally good. She became the second wife of Hungarian born film director Michael Curtiz, but the marriage was over in less than a year following Curtiz's emigration to the USA. Damita continued appearing in German productions, being directed by Robert Wiene, Ernst Pabst and Graham Cutts.

[edit] Career

In 1928, at the invitation of Samuel Goldwyn she went to Hollywood, making her American debut in a film titled The Rescue. Leased out to various studios, she appeared with stars such as Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier, Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant, and James Cagney. Her films included the box office success The Cockeyed World. Other successes were the semi-silent The Bridge of San Luis Rey and This Is the Night. [1]

[edit] Personal life

In 1935 she married her second husband, a virtual unknown who would become Hollywood's biggest box office attraction, Errol Flynn, with whom she had a son, Sean born in 1941. Following the marriage, she gave up her film career. The couple divorced in 1942 and Damita eventually married in 1962 Allen Loomis, a Fort Dodge, Iowa dairy owner.

During the Vietnam Conflict, her son Sean Flynn was working as a freelance photo journalist under contract to Time Magazine when he and fellow journalist Dana Stone went missing on the road south of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on April 6, 1970. Although Damita spent an enormous amount of money searching for her son, he was never found and in 1984 was declared legally dead.

Lili Damita died of Alzheimer's disease in Palm Beach, Florida at the age of 89, but was interred in the Oakland Cemetery in Fort Dodge, Iowa, her third husband's hometown.

[edit] Selected filmography

[edit] Selected stage musicals

[edit] Marriages

  • Michael Curtiz, film director 1926 - 1926
  • Errol Flynn, film actor 1935 - 1942
  • Allen R Loomis, businessman 1962 - 1994 (officially divorced 1983)

[edit] Children

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