Dany Carrel
One
of the most underestimated starlet of the 50s and 60s, Dany Carrel was
a welcome breath of sexy exoticism in that period’s French cinema.
With sometimes gamine looks and a pair of incredible oriental eyes, Dany
played more often than not good-willed flirtatious girls in many European
melodramas and comedies, alongside top directors and stars. She always
was one of my favorite and it’s a shame that not much is available
online concerning her. So let’s try to correct that unfortunate
mistake, shall we?
Born on September 20, 1932 (or is it 1935?), in Tourane, Annam, French Indochina (now Da Nang, Vietnam), Yvonne Suzanne Chazelles du Chaxel was the child of French customs agent Aimé and native cutie Kam. It would be many years later that our actress would learn of her heritage. The truth is that Aimé had a legitimate wife back in Europe and still produced two children with Kam (Yvonne and her sister Alice). He died soon after, as Yvonne was shipped to France to meet a godmother that placed her in a religious institution right away. Dany Carrel eventually wrote an autobiographical novel in the early '90s, but I can’t get my hands on it! Let’s just say that her exotic look was probably what gave her entry in the world of moviemaking, after some theater studies.
Let’s jump
now to 1953, her movie debut (after a couple of television appearances).
The project is Dortoir des grandes (or Inside
a Girls' Dormitory in the USA). The director, Henri Decoin, proposes
to the young comedienne a change of name, suggesting Carrel as
a medical book written by a doctor named Alexis Carrel was lying on his
desk! Talk about scientific reasoning! Young Yvonne, tired of being nicknamed
Vovonne ou Vonette, chose herself the Dany
part, a diminutive that couldn’t be played with or distorted. The
cast of that first film was imposing for a French debutante: Jean Marais,
Françoise Arnoul, Jeanne Moreau and Louis de Funès.
For the next few years, Dany Carrel could be seen in minor melodramas and light comedies, often playing saucy girls from the working-class neighborhood, but never with a really mean streak. She co-starred with such acting giants as Jean Gabin or Gérard Philippe… and even Brigitte Bardot in Les grandes manœuvres. Quickly, she got main female starring roles in lower-budgeted pictures, but was a big revelation to the public for Portes des Lilas, a romantic tale of the lower classes. A flirtatious, sexy pixie was a good way to describe Dany’s characters at the time and this is the way she’s still mainly perceived to this day.
Sometimes tricked
by wanna-be bad boys, Dany retained her intelligence and never played
dumb. She began a phase of international projects, mainly staying in Europe,
but getting involved in Italian orBritish productions. Fans of horror
movies fondly remember her for two 1960 titles, Mill of the Stone
Women and The Hands of Orlac.
A Franco-Italian co-production, Mill of the Stone Women remains a worthy discovery, with effective macabre touches. Playing our main heroine Liselotte Carnin, Dany also gets to reveal a bit more of herself, as a perky nipple gets our attention when she’s tied down on a table and menaced by the mad doctor. The latter wants to make a blood transfusion to his sick daughter, resulting in many strange female wax figures popping up mysteriously in his museum. Dany makes for a very believable damsel in distress, even when co-starring with sexy Scilla Gabel. Let’s note that Dany appeared nude a couple of times on screen, as European cinema was not as constipated about naked flesh than the North American censorship of these years. For the times, nude usually meant a sideway glimpse at a naked breast...
Mel Ferrer and
Christopher Lee got to meet Dany for The Hands of Orlac,
which was simultaneously filmed in its French version, Les main
d’Orlac. Playing Eurasian Li-Lang, assistant to
Lee’s knife-thrower, she once again mixed sexiness and innocence
to great appeal. Not nearly as successful as Milll of the Stone
Women, let’s admit that Dany’ presence makes the
whole show. Honestly, now, did you notice her skimpy stage costume?
For some reasons, Dany was not a favorite of the French New Wave directors, like Truffaut, Godard, etc., probably because she was collaborating in too many "popular" films for their tastes. But that snobism didn’t stop her in finding worthwhile work. For the first half of the sixties, she was seen in more gangster pictures, with serious or comedic plots. She began co-starring with the great comedy geniuses of that ear, mainly Jean Lefebvre, Jean Carmet, Jean Rochefort… Still looking like a saucy teenager in her late thirties, Dany began to slow down on movie roles. She got a good supporting part in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s La prisonnière, playing a nude model sweating it out when only wearing a see-through raincoat under harsh lights for a fetish photo session. Very inticing!
After 1972’s
Trois milliards sans ascenseur, an heist movie, Dany
mainly concentrated her career on television roles (films and mini-series),
with a couple of big screen comedies in the early eighties. She was last
seen in 1987 for an episode of the series Les enquêtes Caméléon.
In 1994, she supervised the TV adaptation of her book L’annamite,
recalling her youth (she even appeared as herself). Actress Gaëlle
Le Fur played the Yvonne/Dany role. The same year, she could
also be seen in the play Laisse parler ta mère.
One of a kind in the looks department in French cinema of the fifties and part of the list of actress who began to push the boundaries of frank eroticism on the big screen, Dany Carrel is often remembered for her bob haircut of dark reddish hair, exquisite cheekbones and friendly manners, always being able to save a movie from tedium from her mere presence. You can’t measure how important it was for me to make her a guest at this website.
