OBITUARY : Madeleine LeBeau
OBITUARY
Madeleine LeBeau
French actress who stole a famous scene in Casablanca and whose own life as a wartime fugitive mirrored the film’s plot.
The last surviving cast member of one of the greatest of all movies, Madeleine LeBeau was integral to the plot of the wartime classic, Casablanca. The French siren first appears as Yvonne, the current love interest of the cynical bar owner Rick Blaine (played by Humphrey Bogart). She asks: “Where were you last night?” to which Rick replies, “That’s so long ago I don’t remember.” She asks again, “Will I see you tonight?” to which Bogart replies, “I never make plans that far ahead.”
Having been jilted, she gets drunk and later reappears on the arm of a German officer, walking back into the bar in Vichy-controlled Morocco. When her new boyfriend and his comrades start singing a Nazi song, the fugitive resistance leader Victor Laszlo leads the bar in a stirring rendition of La Marseillaise — after Rick nods his approval to the band. The next shot is a close up of LeBeau with tears streaming down her face as she joins in the singing of the French anthem. At the end, she pumps her fist and shouts “Vive La France”.
Along with the movie’s finale, when Rick reveals the nobility he did not know he possessed to forsake the love of his life, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), and persuade her to get on the aircraft with Laszlo, LeBeau’s moment of defiance is among the most famous scenes in the film.
LeBeau did not need to simulate the tears as she was herself a fugitive from Nazi-occupied France. In 1940, she had fled Paris with her husband, Marcel Dalio, a Jewish actor 20 years her senior who was already established, having appeared in Jean Renoir’s films The Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game.
The newly married couple bought a passage on the cargo ship SS Quanza for its now famous transatlantic voyage from Lisbon. Along with around 100 Jewish refugees, they survived a hurricane during the crossing, but were thwarted in their attempt to get to Chile when the ship’s captain suspected that their visas were forgeries. Eventually, the couple were among the 86 passengers who were allowed to settle in America as political refugees after the personal intervention of the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. They headed to California and Dalio used his connections to gain an entrée to Hollywood.
Both she and Dalio were cast in Casablanca, which was shot almost entirely in the studio. Dalio played the croupier, Emil. On a personal level, the film was a disaster for LeBeau. Her marriage fell apart — Dalio filed for divorce on the grounds of desertion — and she lost her contract with Warner Bros shortly afterwards.
At the end of the war she returned to France. An indomitable character, she went on to appear in around 20 films and rebuilt her career by often playing fiery characters. This included a turn as a Parisian nightclub singer in the 1950 British film Cage of Gold opposite Jean Simmons, and a role as a temperamental actress in the Frederico Fellini film 8½. She later married the film’s screenwriter, Tullio Pinelli, who also wrote the script for La Dolce Vita. He died in 2009. She is survived by her stepson, the filmmaker Carlo Alberto Pinelli.
LeBeau looked back on Casablanca with some bitterness because so much of her dialogue was removed from the final cut. “They kept changing the script and, each time they changed it, I had less of a part,” she recalled. “It wasn’t personal, but I was so disappointed.” The tearful scene that was kept became a symbol of French patriotism — shared by thousands of French people on social media after the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015 — and gave her immortality on screen.
Madeleine LeBeau, actress, was born on June 10, 1923. She died on May 1, 2016, aged 92
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