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Lili DamitaFrench actress
Date of Birth: 10.07.1904
Country:  France |
Content:
Biography of Lily Damita
Early Life and CareerLily Damita was a French actress, best known for her marriages to famous figures in the film industry - director Michael Curtiz and actor Errol Flynn. She was born as Liliane Marie Madeleine Carré on July 10, 1904, in the city of Blaye in southwestern France. Damita received her primary education in a women's monastery and later trained at ballet schools in various parts of Europe, including France, Spain, and Portugal. At the age of fourteen, she joined the dance troupe at the Paris Opera, and by sixteen, she was successfully performing in Parisian music halls and posing for photographers.
In 1921, Damita won a beauty contest and received a small role as a prize. In 1922, she made her screen debut under the pseudonym Lily Deslys in the silent film "The Emperor of the Poor". By 1925, she had adopted the stage name Lily Damita and landed her first leading role in the film "Paris Doll" directed by the renowned Michael Curtiz (who later won an Oscar for "Casablanca" in 1943). During the filming, Damita and Curtiz began a romance, and they got married a year later. In 1926, Curtiz directed his wife in two more films - "Taxi Number 13" and "The Golden Butterfly" - but soon after his departure to the United States, he left her.
Hollywood Career and Personal Life
Two years later, movie magnate Samuel Goldwyn invited Damita to Hollywood, and in 1929, she made her American film debut in the adventure romance "Rescue". Her career in America progressed relatively steadily, although she appeared in only a few films. She starred alongside established and up-and-coming stars such as Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier, Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant, and James Cagney.
In May 1935, Damita married the future famous actor Errol Flynn, after which she practically stopped focusing on her career and left the film industry in 1937. In 1941, she gave birth to their son Sean (who later became an actor). However, the couple divorced in 1942. In 1962, Damita remarried Allen Loomis, a businessman from Iowa, but they also divorced in 1983.
Tragedy and later years
In the years that followed, Damita experienced a tragedy involving her son. During the Vietnam War, Sean worked as a war journalist for Time magazine, and on April 6, 1970, he and his colleague Dana Stone went missing while traveling south from Phnom Penh. Damita invested a great deal of effort and money into the search for her son, but it yielded no results. In 1984, Sean was officially declared dead. In 1994, Lily Damita passed away at the age of eighty-nine from Alzheimer's disease.
Aside from her native French, Damita was fluent in English and could converse in Spanish, Portuguese, and German. She also had some knowledge of Italian and Hungarian.
