AKA Louis Gendre

Born: 19-Jun-1919
Birthplace: Marseille, France
Died: 14-Feb-2015
Location of death: Beverly Hills, CA
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor

Nationality: France
Executive summary: Kamal in Octopussy

Louis Jourdan made his film debut in 1939, in Le Corsaire with Charles Boyer. After his native France fell to Germany in 1940, Jourdan worked in films to support himself, and he was also a low-level operative with the French Resistance. He had his first starring role shortly after the liberation, in 1945's La Vie de Bohème. His first American film was Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case with Gregory Peck in 1947.

For the rest of his career, Jourdan worked as often in Hollywood as in Europe. In most of his English-language roles, he was typecast as a romantic Frenchman. He is probably best known for the musical Gigi, where he played a French playboy in his late 30s who seduced Leslie Caron the moment she came of legal age, while Maurice Chevalier sang "Thank Heaven for Little Girls". He came to hate his typecasting, and once said, "I'm proud to be a Frenchman, but I resent the image people have of the stupid, continental charmer. Against that type of role I fight pitilessly."

In other memorable performances, Jourdan played the philandering pianist in Letter from an Unknown Woman with Joan Fontaine, tried to steal Elizabeth Taylor from Richard Burton in The VIPs, and sang again with Chevalier and Shirley MacLaine in Can-Can. He was the unseen French-accented narrator of Irma la Douce with Jack Lemmon and MacLaine, and he played an unusually highbrow Count Dracula in a 1977 adaptation for BBC TV, which aired on PBS in America. Jourdan also had a flair for longwinded criminal masterminds, playing the suave Kamal Khan in the Bond thriller Octopussy, Dr. Anton Arcane in Swamp Thing and The Return of Swamp Thing, and the evil madman in the winery romance Year of the Comet, which was Jourdan's last film. He died in 2015.

Father: Henri Gendre
Mother: Yvonne Jourdan
Wife: Berthe Frederique (wife #2, m. 11-Mar-1946, one son)
Son: Louis Henry George Jourdan (b. 6-Oct-1951, d. 1981 suicide by drug overdose)

    Endorsement of Foster Grant

    FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
    Year of the Comet (24-Apr-1992) · Philippe
    The Return of Swamp Thing (12-May-1989)
    Counterforce (5-Feb-1988)
    Beverly Hills Madam (6-Apr-1986) · Douglas Corbin
    Double Deal (15-Sep-1983)
    Octopussy (6-Jun-1983) · Kamal
    Swamp Thing (16-Jul-1982) · Arcane
    Silver Bears (21-Apr-1978)
    Count Dracula (22-Dec-1977)
    The Man in the Iron Mask (17-Jan-1977) · D'Artagnan
    The Count of Monte Cristo (10-Jan-1975)
    The Great American Beauty Contest (13-Feb-1973)
    A Flea in Her Ear (19-Oct-1968)
    The Young Rebel (3-Nov-1967)
    To Commit a Murder (17-Apr-1967)
    Made in Paris (9-Feb-1966) · Marc Fontaine
    The V.I.P.'s (1-Sep-1963) · Marc Champselle
    The Count of Monte Cristo (6-Dec-1961)
    Amazons of Rome (1961) · Drusco
    Can-Can (9-Mar-1960) · Philipe Forrestier
    The Best of Everything (9-Oct-1959) · David Savage
    Gigi (15-May-1958) · Gaston Lachaille
    Dangerous Exile (1957) · Duc de Beauvais
    The Bride Is Much Too Beautiful (26-Oct-1956)
    Julie (17-Oct-1956) · Lyle Benton
    The Swan (26-Apr-1956) · Dr. Nicholas Agi
    Three Coins in the Fountain (20-May-1954) · Prince Dino di Cessi
    Decameron Nights (16-Nov-1953)
    Rue de l'estrapade (1953)
    The Happy Time (30-Oct-1952) · Uncle Desmonde
    Anne of the Indies (18-Oct-1951) · Capt. Pierre François LaRochelle
    Bird of Paradise (14-Mar-1951)
    Madame Bovary (25-Aug-1949) · Rodolphe Boulanger
    No Minor Vices (12-Nov-1948)
    Letter from an Unknown Woman (13-Sep-1948) · Stefan Brand
    The Paradine Case (31-Dec-1947) · Andre Latour

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