Louis Jourdan, debonair French star of ‘Gigi,’ dies at 93

Louis Jourdan, debonair French star of ‘Gigi,’ dies at 93

Jourdan often played the stereotypical suave French gentleman who sweeps women off their feet, a typecasting that did not sit well with him early on.

Louis Jourdan, a French actor who is known for his roles in the films “Gigi” and “Octopussy,” passed away Saturday. He was 93.

His biographer, Olivier Minne, said that Jourdan died at his home, according to a Reuters report.

“Gigi” was one of the most successful films in the 1950s, and Jourdan took on the role of Gaston, a dashing man who falls in love with the title character, played by Leslie Caron, as she develops from a tomboy into an elegant woman.

The movie swept the 1959 Academy Awards, winning a then-record nine Oscars, including one for best picture and best director.

Jourdan won an Oscar as the singer of the title tune, which was chosen as best song.

Jourdan, who also spent a lot of his career on stage and in television, was practically born into filmmaking as he grew up in Cannes, site of the famous film festival — albeit his childhood happened years before the film festival was established in 1946. His father was a hotelier, and Jourdan was sent to Ecole Dramatique in Paris to study acting, taking his mother’s name for his movie career.

World War II interrupted his movie plans as the Nazis took over France, and Jourdan was ordered to make propaganda films. Instead, Jourdan fled to the south of France and joined his brothers in printing pamphlets to aid the French Resistance.

When the war was over, Jourdan went back to acting and caught the eye of David O. Selznick, who asked him to come to Hollywood for a role in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1947 film “The Paradine Case.” A year later, his role in “Letter from an Unknown Woman” as a concert pianist won him acclaim as a handsome and debonair character. However, this led to Jourdan being typecasted as the handsome French gentleman, so much so that he was bothered by being turned into what he later called “the French cliche.”

He would go on to do more notable films, including “Three Coins in the Fountain” and “The Swan,” among others.

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