Nicole Croisille

Born around 1931, this versatile figure in entertainment gained attention in France through an array of roles: as dance partner to Georges Reich, as a comic performer at Le Theatre Nationale De Paris where she starred in the extended run of Loin De Rueil, as a mime alongside Marcel Marceau, and as a vocalist under contract first to Fontana then to AZ. Her main base of activity remained North America, where a month-long cabaret stint at Chicago’s Playboy Club prompted reviewers to rank her artistically—though not in sales terms—alongside Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. A supporting appearance in Claude Lelouch’s motor-racing drama Un Homme Et Une Femme brought further notice when she performed the bossa-nova title track ‘Samba Saravah’ and additional duets with Pierre Barouh. Francis Lai composed the score for the first French film soundtrack to reach a million copies, an achievement driven chiefly by several months on the US chart. The picture itself captured the Grand Prize at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, confirming Croisille’s global standing as an all-round entertainer.