Yvette Lebon

Yvette Lebon
Born(1910-08-14)14 August 1910
Died28 July 2014(2014-07-28) (aged 103)
Cannes, France
Resting placeForest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
OccupationActress
Years active1931–1971 (film)

Yvette Lebon (14 August 1910 – 28 July 2014) was a French actress.[1][2]

Biography

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Lebon studied music and art before going into acting. During World War II, she was the mistress of Jean Luchaire, a French journalist and press baron executed after the war for collaboration with France's German occupiers. She married American producer Nat Wachsberger and later moved to the United States with him. She lived there until his death in 1992. The couple had one son, Patrick, who became a film producer.[3]

Her first husband was Roger Duchesne, a French actor who was sanctioned after the war for collaborating with the German occupiers. They acted together in the film Gibraltar (1938).[3][4]

Her relationship with collaborator-press baron Luchaire "attracted the most opprobrium." Indeed, in a 2010 television documentary, according to one account, she admitted "I don't [know] how much theatre and film people knew about what was really going on. We felt privileged. There was always champagne. We didn't have ration books. We lacked for nothing."[3]

She also had a relationship with Sacha Guitry,[3] a prominent French dramatist-actor-director-playwright. He was charged with colluding with the German enemy but separate courts in 1945 and 1947 dropped his case, stirring controversy among the French public.[5]

Centenarian

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Lebon turned 103 in August 2013, and was France's oldest surviving actress until her death.[6][7][8]

Partial filmography

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References

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  1. ^ "Yvette Lebon". blogspot.com. Retrieved 20 September 2013.
  2. ^ "Yvette Lebon". flickr.com. 19 December 2011. Retrieved 20 September 2013.
  3. ^ a b c d Perrone, Pierre (August 11, 2014). "Yvette Lebon: French actress". The Independent. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  4. ^ Shatz, Adam (June 20, 2019). "Who does that for anyone?". London Review of Books. 41 (12). Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  5. ^ J.-P. Bertin-Maghit, "Guitry, Sacha" in Historical Dictionary of World War II France: The Occupation, Vichy, and the Resistance, 1938-1946, ed. Bertram M. Gordon (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 173.
  6. ^ Lebon celebrates 103rd birthday (in French), lepoint.fr; accessed 24 February 2014.
  7. ^ "Yvette Lebon, la doyenne des actrices françaises, est morte - Le Point" (in French). Lepoint.fr. 3 August 2014. Retrieved 2014-08-04.
  8. ^ Yvette Lebon: French actress
  9. ^ "Yvette LebonFilmography". fandango.com. Retrieved 20 September 2013.
  10. ^ "Yvette Lebon". mubi.com. Retrieved 20 September 2013.
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