Arletty (born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat) (May 15 1898 - July 24 1992) was a French fashion model, singer, and actress.
Arletty was born in Courbevoie, France, to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, later appearing in plays and cabaret. Arletty’s career took off around 1936 when she appeared as leading lady in the stage plays Les Joies du Capitole and Fric-Frac, in which she starred opposite Michel Simon. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years before her French film debut in 1930.
In 1945, Arletty appeared in her most famous film role, the part of Garance in Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis. Arletty was imprisoned in 1945 for having had a wartime liaison with a German officer during the occupation of France. In this she was not unusual, as many French women behaved in this manner during World War II. She allegedly later commented on the experience, "My heart is French but my ass is international." After a moderately successful period as a stage actor in later life, an accident in 1963 left her nearly blind, forcing her to retire. One of her final screen appearances was in a small role as an elderly French woman in the 1962 epic The Longest Day.
On her passing in 1992, Arletty was cremated, her ashes interred in her hometown at the Nouveau Cimetière de Courbevoie.
In 1995 the government of France issued a series of limited edition coins to commemorate the 100th anniversary of film that included a 100 Franc coin bearing the image of Arletty.
Before Arlette-Leonie Bathiat went to the movies she was a secretary and had posed several times as a model for different painters and photographers. In 1920 she debuted on stage at a theatre. She only began to work in movies after 1930. After World War II she was condemned to prison for having been the lover of a German official during the ocupation of France. In 1963 she had an accident which left her almost blind. Her most important movies were filmed and directed by Marcel Carné ("Hotel du Nord (1938)" or "Enfants du Paradis, Les (1945)").
On leaving school, Arletty worked in a factory before becoming a model. She made her music-hall debut in 1918 and continued to appear on the stage until the early 1930's. Arletty rarely received top billing although she outshone the lead actors in most of her films, notably the popular classics Hôtel du Nord (1938) and Jour se lève, Le (1939). She always illuminated the screen with an unusual mixture of Parisian working-class sense of humour and her romantic beauty, qualities perfectly illustrated by her portrayal of Garance in Enfants du paradis, Les (1945) directed by Marcel Carné. After the Liberation, her career suffered a severe drawback owing to a liaison with a German Officer during the Occupation. For liberated France, she became the symbol of treason or what was called "horizontal collaboration," and for that she had to pay. And the price proved to be very high indeed. She was arrested and sent to Drancy concentration camp then to Fresnes prison (near Paris) where she spent 120 days. In December 1944, she was put under house arrest for another two years and condemned to three years work suspension. She was not invited to the premiere of 'Les enfants du paradis' in March 1945 which led French critique 'Jean Sadoul' to write: "Arletty bid farewell to the screen with the best role of her career." Once her work restriction lifted, however, she did return to the screen, notably in Portrait d'un assassin (1949), Huis clos (1954) and Air de Paris, L' (1954) and also acted on stage before blindness forced her to retire in the early Sixties. Few French actresses have been so missed.
