Florence Marly Pics

Florence

Marly

02 June 1919

Slim

Obrnice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)

Gemini

09 November 1978

Glendale, California, USA

heart attack

White

Smekalova

Tokyo File 212 (1951) .... Steffi Novak

Czech

Female

Alluring Czech-born actress Florence Marly, of Slavic descent, initially expressed interest in becoming an opera singer. At age 18, however, she was discovered by the 33-year-old renown French director Pierre Chenal while a student of art and literature at the Sorbonne. He put her almost immediately into his film _L`alibi (1937)and her film career was born. They married the following year and she continued to figure in many of his subsequent films including The Lafarge Case (1937), `Sirocco (1938), The Last Turn (1939), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1939), The Idol (1952) and Confession at Dawn (1953). In 1940, she managed to flee Paris prior to the Nazi occupation and spent her war years in Argentina where she appeared in a couple of films. She returned to France in the post-war years and was nominated for a Cannes Film Festival award for Les Maudits (1947) (The Damned) which was directed by Chenal, then decided to chance it with Hollywood and Paramount Studios in 1948 as an exotic foreign import. When not appearing in the typical intrigue and espionage movies expected of her opposite such stars as Ray Milland in Sealed Verdict (1948) and Humphrey Bogart in Tokyo Joe (1949), she entertained American troops in Korea. Branded a Communist and blacklisted in the early `50s, Florence left America but was eventually cleared and returned when it was found her name was confused with the Russian club singer Anna Marly who was on the "subversive" list. Divorced from Chenal in 1955, she married an Austrian count the following year, but their marriage, too, would not survive. By this time, her film career was practically finished, but in subsequent years she would go into another direction as a writer and composer. She died in the Los Angeles area at age 60 of a heart attack.

Hanna Smekalova

Actor/Actress, Writer, Composer

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