French vocalist Claudine Longet produced a sequence of hauntingly delicate recordings that continue to captivate collectors of refined, understated pop from the 1960s, yet her public recognition as a performer was ultimately overshadowed by a private tragedy, above all the fatal 1976 shooting of her partner, skiing champion Spider Sabich. Born in Paris on January 29, 1942, she moved to the United States at nineteen, established herself in Las Vegas, and took the principal dance role in the Folies Bergère revue. There she encountered singer Andy Williams, whom she had met years earlier as a child in France. Their marriage took place in 1961, though the fourteen-year age gap drew considerable criticism from Williams’ admirers.
While married to Williams, Longet paused her professional ambitions to raise children; she reemerged in 1964 with guest roles on series such as Combat!, Hogan’s Heroes, Run for Your Life, and The Rat Patrol, in addition to frequent appearances on The Andy Williams Show. She joined A&M Records in 1966 and achieved modest chart success with the single “Meditation.” Her debut album, Claudine, followed in 1967 and received some radio support for “Hello, Hello” as well as a Beatles cover of “Here, There and Everywhere.” The Look of Love arrived later that year, succeeded in 1968 by Love Is Blue; during the same period she shared the screen with Peter Sellers in the successful film The Party.
Longet’s fourth A&M release, Colours, also appeared in 1968. After issuing one more album for the label, Run Wild, Run Free, in 1970, she moved to Williams’ newly founded Barnaby imprint for We’ve Only Just Begun the following year—an ironically titled project, given that the couple’s marriage had dissolved months earlier, though she and their three children still joined his annual holiday television broadcasts for some time afterward. Her last official album, Let’s Spend the Night Together, came out in 1972, yet she had already taped enough material for another project that surfaced in 1993 as Sugar Me.
As her recording career waned, Longet began a relationship with Olympic skier Spider Sabich and relocated with him to Aspen, Colorado, in 1974, joining a circle of celebrities that included neighbors Jack Nicholson and John Denver. On the morning of March 21, 1976, Sabich was fatally shot when his Lüger pistol discharged in Longet’s hands. Although local opinion often portrayed the incident as deliberate murder amid reports of a deteriorating romance, the court convicted her solely of criminal negligence and imposed a thirty-day jail sentence. After her release she wed her defense attorney, Ron Austin, settled permanently in Aspen, and made only infrequent public appearances in subsequent years.
