Casablanca Actress Madeleine Lebeau Dies

The French star, who was reported to be the last surviving member of the 1942 Oscar-winning movie, died 1 May (16) in Estepona, Spain.

Filmmaker Carlo Alberto Pinelli, Lebeau’s stepson, confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter on Saturday (14May16), and revealed she had passed away after breaking her thigh bone.

She is best known for her role as Yvonne, the jilted mistress of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine, in the iconic movie. In one of the most famous moments from the film, she was seen tearing up and shouting “Vive La France” as clients in Rick’s Cafe defiantly sang La Marseillaise to drown out German soldiers.

The Parisian star was born in 1923, and fled Nazi-occupied France for Hollywood with her then husband and fellow actor Marcel Dalio, in 1940. The pair both appeared in Casablanca, with Dalio playing the croupier Emil.

She starred in two more American films – 1941’s Hold Back the Dawn, and opposite Errol Flynn in the 1942 boxing biopic Gentleman Jim – before returning to France after the Second World War had ended.

Back in her homeland, she appeared in 20 more films, going on to play a French actress in filmmaker Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning 8½ (1963), which was co-written by her second husband, Italian screenwriter Tullio Pinelli. He died in 2009, aged 100.

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