DALIAH LAVI

(12 October 1940 - 3 May 2017)

Trained first as a dancer, the Palestine-born actress Daliah Lavi was popular as a sex symbol in European films before hitting the global market, notably in the US and UK. Her first film in 1955 was Swedish, followed by productions in Germany, France and Italy. Her first American film, Vincente Minnelli’s Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), was the director’s sequel to his 1952 film The Bad and the Beautiful. Lavi was in Abel Gance’s Cyrano et d’Artagnon (1964) with José Ferrer and Jean-Pierre Cassel and then came Lord Jim (1965), which put her on the world map. After that she was in Ten Little Indians with Hugh O’Brian, The Silencers with Dean Martin, The Spy With a Cold Nose with Laurence Harvey, the first (spoof) version of Casino Royale, Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon, Nobody Runs Forever, Some Girls Do, and Catlow (1971), but not very much after that, just occasional TV series (including an episode of Sez Les, with Les Dawson in 1972).

MICHAEL DARVELL