LILI DAMITA

Lili Damita was born Liliane Marie Madeleine Carre in 1904, and at 16 she was a model and dancer, and the next year she won a beauty pageant and got a movie contract and appeared in over a dozen silent movies. When she turned 21 she married 38 year old European director Michael Kertesz. Their marriage only lasted less than a year, and after divorcing, Kertesz, who had been born Mano Kaminer in Hungary, moved to Hollywood. There he became Michael Curtiz, the greatest Warner Bros director of all time, directing Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Angels with Dirty Faces, White Christmas, and The Adventures of Robin Hood (one of 11 movies Curtiz made with Errol Flynn, who was made a star by Curtiz in his first starring role in Captain Blood in 1935). Back to Lili Damita! She stayed in Europe until 1928, when Sam Goldwyn hired her to appear in The Rescue, released the following year. American audiences loved her look, and when she made talking movies, they loved her thick French accent too. She had a string of successes, but by 1935 her career was winding down, and she married unknown actor Errol Flynn (perhaps introduced by her ex-husband, Curtiz) and when Flynn quickly became a major star, she basically retired. They had a son, Sean, in 1941, but Flynn was a legendary womanizer, and they divorced the following year. In 1962, Damita married a dairy farmer, but in 1970, son Sean, who had appeared in a few movies, went missing in Cambodia, and Damita spent a fortune trying to find him, finally declaring him legally dead 14 years later. Damita developed Alzheimer's, and passed away in 1994 at the age of 89. Her tombstone was inscribed with "She touched so many lives, brightened so many days" and she is more remembered today for her off screen life than for the movies she made.