LILIANE MONTEVECCHI

(13 October 1932 - 29 June 2018)

The French actress, singer, dancer and cabaret artist Liliane Montevecchi, who has died from colon cancer aged 85, was the epitome of the sophisticated entertainer. She began her career aged 18 as a dancer with Roland Petit’s company in Paris. Later she joined the Folies Bergère for nine years and then she took over in Robert Dhéry’s Broadway revue La Plume de Ma Tante in the late 1950s, but she had to wait until 1982 before being really discovered in Maury Yeston’s musical Nine based on Fellini’s film 8½ (Otto e mezzo), for which she won a Tony and a Drama Desk Award. Following that success came Grand Hotel, another Maury Yeston musical based on the Vicki Baum novel and the MGM film with Garbo. Other musicals she did included Irma La Douce, Gigi, Hello, Dolly! and Liliane played the Witch in The Wizard of Oz with Mickey Rooney. She toured the world with her one-woman show, having appeared at Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. She was also in the famous 1985 concert performance of Sondheim’s Follies at Lincoln Center. Liliane was always a joy to interview with her irresistible charm and sometimes broken English. I last saw her a decade ago when she was still singing, still dancing and still lifting one leg onto the piano – not bad at 77! She attended classes at The Actors’ Studio with Marilyn Monroe, but her subsequent film career never amounted to very much, although she did get to work with some famous Hollywood names. Her first film was Femmes de Paris (1953) with Michel Simon. She was then under contract to MGM in the 1950s, appearing in secondary roles which required an element of dance, such as The Glass Slipper, with Leslie Caron and Michael Wilding, Daddy Long Legs with Caron again and Fred Astaire. She was a gypsy in Fritz Lang’s Moonfleet with Stewart Granger, danced in Viva Las Vegas! with Dan Dailey and Cyd Charisse, played Juanita in The Living Idol, appeared with Jerry Lewis in The Sad Sack, with Brando in The Young Lions, with Elvis in King Creole, and with Danny Kaye in Me and the Colonel. Television then occupied her time until Jean Yanne’s film Chobizenesse in 1975. Then there was Wall Street with Michael Douglas, The Idol, a French romantic drama, and How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days with Matthew McConaughey. Liliane’s last film was 4 Days in France in 2016.

MICHAEL DARVELL