Madeleine Le Beau

Marie Madeleine Berthe Le Beau was born on 10 June 1923 in Antony, France, and died on 1 May 2016 in Estepona, Spain, at the age of 92. A French actress who worked across film and stage in Europe and the United States, she is best remembered for her role in the 1942 Warner Bros. film Casablanca and for her single Broadway appearance in the 1945 play The French Touch.

Le Beau's screen career began with an uncredited appearance as a student in the 1939 French melodrama Young Girls in Trouble. That same year she married actor Marcel Dalio, whom she had met while the two were performing in a play together. In June 1940, as German forces advanced on Paris, Le Beau and Dalio fled the city and made their way to Lisbon. The couple is believed to have received transit visas from Aristides de Sousa Mendes, which allowed them to travel through Spain and into Portugal. After two months they obtained visas to Chile, but when their ship, the S.S. Quanza, stopped in Mexico, those visas were discovered to be forgeries, stranding them along with approximately 200 other passengers. During the seven weeks the ship spent seeking a port, Le Beau learned English. The couple eventually secured temporary Canadian passports and entered the United States.

Her Hollywood debut came in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), a film starring Charles Boyer and Olivia de Havilland. The following year she appeared in Gentleman Jim, an Errol Flynn film based on the life of Irish-American boxer James J. Corbett. Later in 1942, Warner Bros. cast her as Yvonne, the discarded mistress of Humphrey Bogart's character, in Casablanca, signing her to a contract of $100 per week for twenty-six weeks. Dalio appeared in the same production as Emil the croupier. On 22 June, while Le Beau was filming her scenes, Dalio filed for divorce in Los Angeles on the ground of desertion; the divorce was finalized in 1942. Warner Bros. terminated her contract shortly before the film's release. Among her most recognized moments in Casablanca is the scene in which French nationals sing "La Marseillaise" to drown out German soldiers performing "Die Wacht am Rhein." The camera recorded genuine tears on Le Beau's face during the sequence, and she can be heard crying out "Vive la France! Vive la démocratie!" at the anthem's conclusion. Many of the actors in that scene were themselves refugees from Europe. Following the death of Joy Page in April 2008, Le Beau became the last surviving credited cast member of the film.

After Casablanca, Le Beau appeared in two additional American productions. She took a substantial role in the 1943 war drama Paris After Dark, which also featured her former husband, and had a smaller part in Music for Millions (1944). In 1943 she also performed in a production of The Desert Song at Camp Roberts, California, an entertainment engagement arranged through MGM. Her sole Broadway credit came in 1945, when she appeared in The French Touch, a play directed by René Clair.

Following the end of World War II, Le Beau returned to France and resumed her acting career. Her subsequent credits included Les Chouans (1947) and the British film Cage of Gold (1950), in which she appeared alongside Jean Simmons. She went on to make approximately 20 more films, primarily French productions, among them La Parisienne (1957), starring Brigitte Bardot, and Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963). Her final two films were Spanish productions released in 1965. In 1988 she married Italian screenwriter Tullio Pinelli, who had contributed to the screenplay of 8½. Le Beau died after breaking her thigh bone, and French culture minister Audrey Azoulay issued a statement following her death.