Suzy Delair

From the close of the 1940s into the first years of the 1960s, Suzy Delair ranked among France’s most prominent and sought-after film personalities worldwide. Blessed with striking beauty and a playfully provocative screen presence, she moved with equal assurance between comic and dramatic roles. Long before her breakthrough on screen, she had already spent many years performing as a cabaret singer; international recognition arrived when she portrayed the entertainer Jenny Lamour in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1947 thriller Quai des Orfèvres, released in the United States under the title Jenny Lamour. The next year brought her a major French success with the recording “Avec Son Tra-La-La,” yet her cinematic commitments were already expanding, leading her to divide her energies between music and film for roughly the next fifteen years. During this period she appeared alongside Laurel & Hardy in their final, uneven feature Atol K (also known as Utopia) from 1950, joined Fernandel in Fernandel the Dressmaker in 1956, and delivered a striking dramatic turn that same year in Gervaise. Her ongoing musical activity yielded enough cabaret material for a substantial CD collection and secured her inclusion on at least one anthology of classical songs.