Fans frequently hailed Melina Mercouri as "the last Greek goddess," and while she earned her greatest renown as an actress and cultural advocate, she also proved herself a gifted vocalist who cut successful recordings in several tongues. Granddaughter of a onetime Athens mayor and daughter of a Parliament member, she entered the world as Anna Amalia Mercouri (occasionally rendered Merkouri) in Athens, Greece, on October 18, 1923, although certain references place the year between 1920 and 1925. Performing from her mid-teens onward, she ultimately entered Greece’s National Theater and earned widespread praise for her stage work.
Her screen bow arrived with the 1955 picture Stella, on whose Hadjidakis-scored soundtrack she also supplied vocals. Worldwide attention followed her lead performance in the 1960 comedy Never on Sunday, helmed by American expatriate Jules Dassin; cast as a free-spirited prostitute, Mercouri received an Academy Award nomination and captured Best Female Performance honors at Cannes that year, again contributing songs to the Hadjidakis soundtrack. Dassin guided her through additional features, among them 1962’s Phaedra (scored by Mikis Theodorakis) and 1964’s Topkapi (again with Hadjidakis music); in 1966 Dassin became her second husband. During the same period she made her Broadway entrance in Ilya Darling, the stage-musical adaptation of Never on Sunday.
Outspoken in life as on screen, Mercouri openly condemned the military junta that governed Greece from 1967 to 1974 and consequently found herself exiled for the duration. While abroad she issued a series of French-language albums for Universal that achieved respectable sales, if not on the scale enjoyed by her stepson, French pop star Joe Dassin. Titles from the exile years included Melina Mercouri, L'Oeillet Rouge, and Je Suis Grecque, yet the most celebrated remained 1973’s Si Melina M’Était Contée, which incorporated several Vangelis compositions, among them the single “Athenes, Ma Ville.”
With democracy restored, Mercouri returned to Greece and entered politics; elected to Parliament in 1977 under the Socialist banner, she served as Minister of Culture from 1981 to 1989. In that capacity she mounted a prominent effort to secure the return of the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum, further elevating her standing among Greeks. An unsuccessful 1990 bid for Mayor of Athens preceded her reappointment as Culture Minister in 1993. On March 6, 1994, she died in New York City from complications of lung cancer.
