Fifi D'Orsay
Fifi D'Orsay | |
---|---|
File:Fifi d'Orsay.jpg | |
Born | Marie-Rose Angelina Yvonne Lussier April 16, 1904 |
Died | December 2, 1983 | (aged 79)
Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California |
Occupation(s) | actress, singer |
Years active | 1929-1973 |
Spouse | Maurice Hill |
Fifi D'Orsay (April 16, 1904 – December 2, 1983) was a Canadian-born actress.[1]
Biography
Fifi d'Orsay was born Marie-Rose Angelina Yvonne Lussier in Montreal. As a young typist filled with the desire to become an actress, she went to New York City. There, she found work in the Greenwich Village Follies after an audition in which she sang the song "Yes! We Have No Bananas' in French. In a burst of creativity, she told the play's director she was from Paris, France, where she had worked in the Folies Bergère. The show's impressed director hired her, billing her as "Mademoiselle Fifi".
While working in the show, she became involved with Ed Gallagher, a veteran actor who joined her in putting together a vaudeville act. Gallagher was half of the successful Broadway comedy team of Gallagher and Shean, and coached his protégée in the ways of show business.
After touring in vaudeville, she headed west to Hollywood. There, she adopted the surname "D'Orsay" (after a favorite perfume (fr)) and began a career in movies, often cast as the naughty French girl from "gay Paris".
While never a superstar, she worked hard at her craft, headlining with the likes of Bing Crosby and Buster Crabbe. For years, she kept alternating her appearances in film with continued performances in vaudeville and when age put an end to the glamour roles, she readily took jobs in television, including two appearances each on ABC's Adventures in Paradise (including as a Mother Superior in the 1960 episode "Castaways"), the CBS legal drama, Perry Mason in the 1961 episode "The Case of the Grumbling Grandfather", and on the CBS sitcom Pete and Gladys. She was a contestant in the February 23, 1956 television edition of Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life. At the age of sixty-seven, she returned to the stage in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Follies.
Fifi D'Orsay died from cancer on December 2, 1983 at the age of seventy-nine at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.[1] She was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Partial filmography
- They Had to See Paris (1929)
- Hot for Paris (1930)
- On the Level (1930)
- Women Everywhere (1930)
- Those Three French Girls (1930)
- Mr. Lemon of Orange (1931)
- The Stolen Jools (1931)
- Women of All Nations (1931) (uncredited)
- Young as You Feel (1931)
- The Girl from Calgary (1932)
- They Just Had to Get Married (1932)
- The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933)
- Going Hollywood (1933)
- Wonder Bar (1934)
- Three Legionnaires (1937)
- Submarine Base (1943)
- Nabonga (1944)
- Delinquent Daughters (1944)
- Dixie Jamboree (1945)
- The Gangster (1947)
- Wild and Wonderful (1964)
- What a Way to Go! (1964)
- The Art of Love (1965)
- Assignment to Kill (1968)
See also
References
- ^ a b United Press International (December 4, 1983). "Fifi d'Orsay, Movie Actress; Played French Flirts in 30's". New York Times. Retrieved 2013-12-23.
Fifi d'Orsay, the French Bombshell of 1930's motion pictures who was never able to visit France, has died at the age of 79. Miss d'Orsay was ill with cancer for several months before her death Friday at the Motion Picture and Television Country Hospital in suburban Woodland Hills.
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External links
- 1904 births
- 1983 deaths
- Actresses from Montreal
- American film actresses
- Canadian film actresses
- Vaudeville performers
- American people of French-Canadian descent
- Canadian emigrants to the United States
- Deaths from cancer in California
- 20th-century American actresses
- Actresses from California
- Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale)