French Actress Simone Signoret Dies at 64

PARIS —  Simone Signoret, one of the great actresses of the French cinema and a writer of note in her last years, died Monday of cancer at her country home in Normandy at the age of 64.

The Academy Award-winning star, who was married to actor-singer Yves Montand, had dominated France’s best-seller lists this year with a novel, “Adieu, Volodia.”

A leading actress in France for nearly four decades, she had continued working, despite her illness, until near her death. She had just completed the shooting of a four-part television series in which she played the director of a Paris music hall.

Miss Signoret was probably best known in the United States for her role as the older woman dropped by her young, ambitious lover, the late Laurence Harvey, in the British film “Room at the Top.” She won the Academy Award as best actress for that role in 1959.

A Force in France

But in France she was a figure who dominated movie making, working with all of the major directors here, including Henri-Georges Clouzot, Luis Bunvel, Marcel Carne, Costa-Gavras and Rene Clement. French audiences watched her transformation over the years from a young, sensuous beauty to an older, stout character actress.

There was an astonishing difference, for example, between the young, conniving murderer of Clouzot’s “Diabolique” of 1954 and the old Jewish prostitute in Moshe Misrahi’s “Madame Rosa” in 1977. Yet, in a remarkable testament to an actress, the transformation over the years lost her none of the loyalty and affection of the French public.

Miss Signoret rejected the trappings of stardom throughout her career. She made little effort to preserve a youthful image as she grew older, but let the wrinkles show and her waistline expand.

“I got old the way women who aren’t actresses grow old,” she once said.

Montand, whom she married in 1951, was working in a film in southern France at the time of her death. He flew immediately to their country home in the village of Autheuil-Authouillet.

Catherlien Allegret, Miss Signoret’s only child, was with her when she died.

Tributes poured in from the political and artistic worlds. Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, in a telegram to Montand, said that “with Simone Signoret has gone a great lady in the history of cinema and of literature.” Minister of Culture Jack Lang described her as “a stubborn defender until the end of hopeless causes” and said that “the departure of ‘Madame Rosa’ is a black Monday for the French cinema.”

Miss Signoret was born Simone Kaminker on March 25, 1921, in Wiesbaden, Germany, where her father, a soldier of a Jewish family, was part of the French occupation army in that country. The family returned to Paris when she was 2 years old.

Bit Movie Parts

When France signed an armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940, her father fled to Britain, where he joined the Free French forces of Gen. Charles de Gaulle. The rest of the family stayed behind, and Simone took her mother’s name to escape the concentration camps.

During the Nazi occupation of Paris, Miss Signoret met some of the young writers and film directors of that period and, without any training as an actress, began to work in bit parts in movies. She married Yves Allegret, a film director, after the war and began winning more substantial roles in film.

Stardom came to her in 1952 when she played in Jacques Becker’s “Casque d’Or,” and she quickly established herself as a major actress of the French cinema. After Jack Clayton’s “Room at the Top,” she played in several American movies, including Stanley Kramer’s “Ship of Fools” in 1965 and Sidney Lumet’s “The Deadly Affair” in 1967, but she never again made the impression in English-language movies that she had in “Room at the Top.”

But her credits mounted in French movies, and she had completed more than 40 at the time of her death, winning all of the awards open to French actors.

One of her directors, Pierre Granier-Defere, told the Associated Press in Paris: “Directors were haunted by the thought of botching her, of not letting her tap all her talent and resources. Young actresses absolutely adored her.”

Marries Singer

Miss Signoret met Montand, a young singer discovered by Edith Piaf, in 1949, and they were married in 1951, moving into Montand’s apartment on the Ile de la Cite, which remained their Paris home until her death. Montand developed as an actor during their marriage, the two performing together in the Paris theater in such plays as Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”

But they appeared in few films together. As a team, in fact, Montand and Miss Signoret were probably better known for their politics than their acting. They espoused many leftist causes in the 1950s and ‘60s, taking part, like many other French intellectuals, in Communist Party meetings and festivals. Miss Signoret once described herself as a fellow traveler but said that neither she nor her husband had ever joined the party.

In 1957, the State Department denied the Montands a visa, apparently because of their involvement in leftist causes. Two years later, modifying its position, the State Department notified them that the government had every right to refuse them entry but had waived those rights.

More recently, again like many French intellectuals, Montand and Miss Signoret began to moderate their views and move toward the right. She, however, never went as far as Montand, who has become a spokesman for many rightist causes. Instead, she concentrated her energies on human rights issues, including the struggle in France against racism.

Angers Communists

Earlier this year, however, she narrated a controversial television documentary that described the role of Jewish and other immigrant fighters in the Resistance against the Nazi occupation during World War II. The documentary angered the Communist Party because some of those interviewed on it accused the Communists of betraying the Jews and immigrant fighters during the war.

In later years, Miss Signoret turned to writing, publishing several works, including her best-selling memoirs, “Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be,” in 1977. Her first and only published novel, “Adieu, Volodia,” was both a critical and popular success. Miss Signoret said she drew on the experiences of both herself and Montand for her portrayal of two Jewish immigrant families in France between the two world wars.