au revoir, m. jourdan

The dashing Louis Jourdan, who passed on Saturday - February 14 -  at the amazing age of 93, was something of an anomaly.

First case in point:  He was a classically handsome movie star who was married to the same woman for 68 years - until his beloved Berthe's death in 2014 - and there were no scandals during those nearly seven decades.

No extramarital affairs. No dalliances. No easy movie-set flirtations.

Another observation: Due to his proficiency with the English language, which he spoke fluently early on, Jourdan is a Frenchman better known for his American films (the first of which was Alfred Hitchcock's "The Paradine Case" in 1947) than for his Gallic movie career (which started in 1939 with Marc Allégret's "Le corsaire").  In fact, he had barely a hint of an accent.

More: Despite his good looks, Jourdan was rarely the dreamy leading man in his films.  Quite the contrary, he could be refreshingly petulant and irritable (as he was in Vincente Minnelli's "Gigi"), an uptight prig (Walter Lang's "Can-Can"), a heel (Jean Negulesco's "The Best of Everything," above with Suzy Parker), a psycho husband (Andrew Stone's "Julie"), a callous rake (Max Ophuls’s "Letter from an Unknown Woman") and an outright villian (John Glen's "Octopussy" and Wes Craven's "Swamp Thing" and its sequel). And he sang - unexpectedly - as he did, rather well, in both "Gigi" and "Can-Can."

But his matinee-idol status was cemented by what was indeed a dreamy-leading-man role in  Jean Negulesco's "Three Coins in a Fountain" in 1954.

Louis Jourdan was born Louis Robert Gendre in Marseille, France on June 19, 1921.  For his career, he took his mother's maiden name.  He acted in a whopping 86 movies and TV shows (again, predominantly American) and served as a soothing, unseen raconteur for an 87th - speaking the witty expository narration of Billy Wilder's "Irma La Douce" (1963):

"This, then, is the story of Irma La Douce...

A story of passion, bloodshed, desire and death...

Everything, in fact, that makes life worth living." 

One fascinating fact about Jourdan's career that has been overlooked by the various obituaries and appreciations:  He was the original male lead, opposite Barbara Harris, in the 1965 Alan Jay Lerner-Barton Lane musical, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever," playing the psychologist, Dr. Mark Bruckner, to Harris' Daisy Gambel.

He played the role during its Boston tryout at the Colonial Theatre but was replaced by John Cullum before the show reached Broadway.  His character was originally written as a Frenchman but the nationality was changed to accomodate Cullum.  However, when Vincente Minnelli filmed the musical in 1970 with Barbra Streisand (in the Harris role), the doctor was again a Frenchman - this time played by Yves Montand.

But Minnelli changed the character's name to ... Marc Chabot.

French, you know.

Note in Passing: Oddly enough, Minnelli had directed Jourdan in both "Madame Bovary" and "Gigi."  Given that, it's a bit curious that he didn't give Jourdan at second chance at "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever."