Simone Signoret

Simone Signoret (French: [simɔnsiɲɔʁɛ]; born Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker; 25 March 1921 – 30 September 1985) was a French actress. She received various accolades, including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, a César Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, in addition to nominations for two Golden Globe Awards.

Early life

Signoret was born Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker in Wiesbaden, Germany, to Georgette (née Signoret) and André Kaminker. She was the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers. Her father, a pioneering interpreter who worked in the League of Nations, was a French-born army officer from an assimilated and middle-class Polish-Jewish and Hungarian-Jewish family, who brought the family to Neuilly-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris. Her mother, Georgette, from whom she acquired her stage name, was a French Catholic.

Signoret grew up in Paris in an intellectual atmosphere and studied English, German and Latin. After completing secondary school during the Nazi occupation, Simone was responsible for supporting her family and forced to take work as a typist for a French collaborationist newspaper Les nouveaux temps, run by Jean Luchaire.

Career

During the occupation of France, Signoret mixed with an artistic group of writers and actors who met at the Café de Flore in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter. By this time, she had developed an interest in acting and was encouraged by her friends, including her lover Daniel Gélin to follow her ambition.[citation needed] In 1942, she began appearing in bit parts and was able to earn enough money to support her mother and two brothers as her father, who was a French patriot, had fled the country in 1940 to join General De Gaulle in England. She took her mother's maiden name for the screen to help hide her Jewish roots.

Signoret's sensual features and earthy nature led to type-casting and she was often seen in roles as a prostitute. She won considerable attention in La Ronde (1950), a film which was banned briefly in New York City as immoral. She won further acclaim, including an acting award from the British Film Academy, for her portrayal of another prostitute, Amélie Élie, in Jacques Becker's Casque d'or (1951), which in France became a signature role for her. She appeared in many French films during the 1950s, including Thérèse Raquin (1953), directed by Marcel Carné, Les Diaboliques (1954), and The Crucible (Les Sorcières de Salem; 1956), based on Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

In 1958, Signoret acted in the English independent film Room at the Top (1959), and her performance won numerous awards, including the Best Female Performance Prize at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was offered films in Hollywood, but for the next few years worked in Europe—for example, with Laurence Olivier in Term of Trial (1962). She earned another Oscar nomination for her work on Ship of Fools (1965); was part of a cast of international stars recreating the liberation of Paris in Paramount's epic Is Paris Burning?; then, after working with Sidney Lumet on The Deadly Affair and The Sea Gull, she returned permanently to France in 1969.

In November 1960, Signoret was interviewed by John Freeman, about her career and life for BBC television series Face to Face. Signoret was one of only two women to be interviewed as part of the first iteration of the series, the other being renowned poet Dame Edith Sitwell.

In 1962, Signoret translated Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes into French for a production in Paris that ran for six months at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt. She played the Regina role as well. Hellman was displeased with the production, although the translation was approved by scholars selected by Hellman. Signoret's one attempt at Shakespeare, performing Lady Macbeth with Alec Guinness at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1966 proved to be ill-advised, with some harsh critics; one referred to her English as "impossibly Gallic".

Signoret won acclaim for her portrayal of a weary madam in Madame Rosa (1977) and as an unmarried sister who unknowingly falls in love with her paralyzed brother via anonymous correspondence in I Sent a Letter to my Love[fr] (1980). She continued to act until her death, working on the miniseries Music-Hall while terminally ill.

Personal life

Signoret's memoirs, Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be, were published in 1976. She also wrote the novel Adieu Volodya, published in 1985, the year of her death: this was autobiographical in its depiction of Jewish immigrants in France between the wars. Both books were best-sellers in France.

Signoret first married filmmaker Yves Allégret (1944–1949), with whom she had a son (Patrick) and a daughter Catherine Allégret. Patrick died nine days after his birth. Privately, Signoret blamed the hospital for his death as they had taken Patrick to a chapel for baptism and he shortly thereafter caught a cold and died. Signoret never spoke publicly about his death.

Her second marriage was to the Italian-born French actor Yves Montand in 1951, a union which lasted until her death; the couple had no children. They were both active in left-wing and humanitarian causes, although as they grew older she gravitated towards the political centre and he to the right.

Signoret died of colon cancer in Autheuil-Authouillet, France, aged 64. She was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, and Yves Montand later was buried next to her.

Signoret identified as Jewish. She was a supporter of a variety of Jewish causes, including the Zionist movement and the Soviet Jewry movement. She maintained relationships with many Israeli leaders and was critical of antisemitism in the French Communist Party. Because she was of patrilineal Jewish ancestry and was therefore not considered Jewish under traditional halakha, there was no religious ceremony at her funeral.

Filmography

Awards and nominations

Popular culture

• A BBC TV film, Madame Montand and Mrs Miller (1992), depicted the relationship between Signoret and Marilyn Monroe during the filming of Let's Make Love, when Monroe had an affair with Yves Montand. Sue Glover wrote the script and Pauline Larrieu played Signoret.
• Glover's subsequent stage-play on the same subject, Marilyn, premiered at the Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow in 2011, with Dominique Hollier playing Signoret.
• Singer Nina Simone (born Eunice Waymon) took her last name from Simone Signoret.

See also

• Cinema of France
• César Award for Best Actress
• List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
• List of French Academy Award winners and nominees

Notes

Works cited

• Bouchardeau, Huguette (2005). (in French). Paris: Flammarion. ISBN 2-08-068749-2.
• David, Catherine (1993). . Translated by Sampson, Sally. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press. ISBN 0-87951-491-4.

Further reading

• DeMaio, Patricia A. "Garden Of Dreams: The Life of Simone Signoret," 2014
• Signoret, Simone. Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978. ISBN 0-297-77417-4.

External links

• at IMDb
• at Rotten Tomatoes
• at TV Guide
• at The-Numbers.com