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Yvette Mimieux

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Yvette Mimieux
Mimieux in c. 1975
Born
Yvette Carmen Mimieux

(1942-01-08)January 8, 1942
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
DiedJanuary 17, 2022(2022-01-17) (aged 80)[a]
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
OccupationActress
Years active1956–1992
Spouses
  • Evan Harland Engber
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1959, divorced)​
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1972; div. 1985)​
  • Howard Ruby
    ​
    (m. 1986)​

Yvette Carmen Mimieux[1] (January 8, 1942 – January 17, 2022)[a] was an American film and television actress. She is perhaps known best for her breakout role in The Time Machine (1960). She was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards during her acting career.[citation needed]

Early life and career

Mimieux was born in Los Angeles[2] on January 8, 1942,[3] to René Mimieux, who was French, and Maria Montemayor, who was Mexican.[4] According to her mother's obituary,[5] Mimieux had at least two siblings, a sister, Gloria, and a brother Edouardo.[4]

Talent manager Jim Byron suggested she become an actress.[6]

Mimieux's first acting appearances were in episodes of the television shows Yancy Derringer and One Step Beyond in 1959.[2]

MGM

Mimieux appeared in George Pal's film version of H. G. Wells's 1895 novel The Time Machine (1960) starring Rod Taylor, in which she played the character Weena. It was made for MGM, which put her under long-term contract. Her first film, however, Platinum High School (1960), produced by Albert Zugsmith for MGM, which was released two months before The Time Machine.[2][7]

Mimieux guest-starred in an episode of Mr Lucky, then was one of several leads in the highly popular teen comedy Where the Boys Are (1960), which became less humorous in the sequence where Mimieux’s character is sexually assaulted at one of the party houses and she is found wandering the streets afterward, traumatized, in a moving and serious aside from the rest of the film.[8][9][10]

MGM put Mimieux in the ingenue role in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1961), an expensive flop.[11] Arthur Freed wanted to team her and George Hamilton in a remake of The Clock, but it was not made.[12]

Mimieux had a central role in Light in the Piazza (1962) with Olivia de Havilland and George Hamilton, playing a mentally disabled girl. The film lost money but was well regarded critically. She later said:

"I suppose I have a soulful quality. I was often cast as a wounded person, the 'sensitive' role."[13]

Mimieux was slated for a role in A Summer Affair at MGM, but it was not made.[14]

Mimieux had a small part in Pal's The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1963), another commercial disappointment. Also later that year, she appeared in Diamond Head (1963) with Charlton Heston.[2]

Mimieux went to United Artists for Toys in the Attic, based on the play by Lillian Hellman and co-starring Geraldine Page and Dean Martin.[2]

While at MGM, Mimieux guest-starred on two episodes of Dr. Kildare alongside Richard Chamberlain. She played a surfer suffering from epilepsy, a performance that was much acclaimed.[15] In her appearance she was the first person on American television to show her navel.[2]

Mimieux made a cameo as herself in Looking for Love (1964) starring Connie Francis and played Richard Chamberlain's love interest in Joy in the Morning (1965), a melodrama.[citation needed]

Post-MGM

Mimieux was in a Western with Max von Sydow for 20th Century Fox, The Reward (1965); the Disney comedy Monkeys, Go Home! (1967); and a heist film The Caper of the Golden Bulls (1967).[16]

Mimieux did The Desperate Hours (1967) for TV and was reunited with Rod Taylor in the MGM action movie Dark of the Sun (1968). In 1968, she narrated a classical music concert at the Hollywood Bowl.[17][18]

In 1969, Mimieux was top-billed in Three in the Attic a hit for AIP,[19] and appeared in the critically acclaimed 1969 movie The Picasso Summer alongside Albert Finney. The following year, she was the female lead in The Delta Factor , an action film.[citation needed]

Television

Mimieux had one of the leads in The Most Deadly Game (1970–1971), a short-lived TV series from Aaron Spelling. She replaced Inger Stevens, who had been slated to star, but committed suicide one month before production began.[20] Around this time Mimieux had a business selling Haitian products and studied archeology; she would travel several months of each year.[21]

In 1971, after making the TV movies Death Takes a Holiday (1971) and Black Noon (1971), Mimieux sued her agent for not providing her with movie work despite having taken her money.[22]

Mimieux was an air hostess in MGM's Skyjacked (1972), starring Charlton.Heston[23] and was in the Fox science-fiction film The Neptune Factor (1973).[24]

By the early 1970s, Mimieux was unhappy with the roles offered to actresses:

"The women they [male screenwriters] write are all one dimensional. They have no complexity in their lives. It's all surface. There's nothing to play. They're either sex objects or vanilla pudding."[25]

Mimieux had been writing for several years prior to this film, mostly journalism and short stories. She had the idea for a story about a Pirandello-like theme:

"...the study of a woman, the difference between what she appears to be and what she is: appearance vs reality...[the more I thought about the character] the more I wanted to play her. Here was the kind of nifty, multifaceted part I'd been looking for. So instead of a short story, I wrote it as a film."[25]

Mimieux wrote a thriller, which she took to producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, who then produced it for ABC as a television film. It aired as Hit Lady (1974).[25]

In 1975, Mimieux starred in The Legend of Valentino, in which she played Rudolph Valentino's second wife, Natacha Rambova, and she the Canadian thriller Journey into Fear.[citation needed] In 1976, Mimieux made a pilot for a TV sitcom based on Bell, Book and Candle, but it was not picked up.[citation needed]

Later movies

Mimieux played a falsely imprisoned woman victimized by a sadistic guard in the film Jackson County Jail (1976) with Tommy Lee Jones for New World Pictures, which was a box-office hit.[citation needed]

Mimieux appeared in some horror-oriented TV movies, Snowbeast (1977), Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978), and Disaster on the Coastliner (1979). She also did the TV movies Ransom for Alice! (1977) and Outside Chance (1978).[citation needed]

Later, Mimieux co-starred in the first PG-rated Walt Disney Productions feature, The Black Hole (1979). She had the lead in Circle of Power (1981).[26]

Mimieux was in the TV movie Forbidden Love (1982) and Night Partners (1983) and guest-starred on The Love Boat and Lime Street.[citation needed]

Mimieux made Obsessive Love (1984), a television film about a female stalker which she co-wrote and co-produced:

"There are few enough films going these days, and there are three or four women who are offered all the good parts. Of course I could play a lot of awful parts that are too depressing to contemplate.... [Television] is not the love affair I have with film, but television can be a playground for interesting ideas. I love wild, baroque, slightly excessive theatrical ideas, and because television needs so much material, there's a chance to get some of those odd ideas done."[27][28]

Mimieux had the lead in Berrenger's (1985), a short-lived TV series and had a supporting role in the TV movie The Fifth Missile (1986).[citation needed]

Mimieux guest-starred in a TV movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Desperate Deception (1990). Her last film was Lady Boss (1992).[1]

Personal life and death

Mimieux married Evan Harland Engber on December 19, 1959, but kept the marriage secret for almost two years.[29] She was married to film director Stanley Donen from 1972 until their divorce in 1985,[1] and then to Howard F. Ruby, chairman emeritus and founder of Oakwood Worldwide.[30][31]

Late in life, she took up painting and created a personal website for the exposition of her works.

Mimieux died at her home in Los Angeles on January 17, 2022, at the age of 80.[a]

Filmography

Television work

Recordings

  • The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm 1962 (MGM Records), as The Dancing Princess
  • Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs Du Mal) 1968 (Connoisseur Society), reading excerpts of Cyril Scott's 1909 translation with music by Ali Akbar Khan

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Mimieux's representatives confirmed to The New York Times and People Magazine she died on Monday (January 17) night.[2][32] The initial Deadline Hollywood report states that she was found dead Tuesday (January 18) morning,[33] and her date of death was reported as January 18, 2022 by some citations.[34]

Citations

  1. ^ a b c "Yvette Mimeiux". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Gates, Anita (January 18, 2022). "Yvette Mimieux, Who Found Fame With 'The Time Machine,' Dies at 80". The New York Times. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  3. ^ "UPI Almanac for Monday, Jan 8, 2018". United Press International. January 8, 2018. Archived from the original on January 8, 2018. Retrieved September 21, 2019. …actor Yvette Mimieux in 1942 (age 76)
  4. ^ a b "Yvette Mimieux". United States Library of Congress. Retrieved January 11, 2020. Photographs show actress Yvette Mimieux with family and friends. Includes Mimieux at home with parents, father René, mother Carmen, sister Gloria, and brother Edouardo.
  5. ^ "Obituaries". Los Angeles Times: A18. January 24, 2000.
  6. ^ "Under Hedda's Hat: The Mystery of Yvette Mimieux" Chicago Tribune, June 9, 1963. p. H36.
  7. ^ Yvette steals the show: A year ago she was on our cover. Now look at the girl--she's had two movies, five proposals and starred at the Debs' Ball! Actors are out! by Hyams, Joe. Los Angeles Times December 6, 1959: J21
  8. ^ "Where the Boys Are (1960) Directed by Henry Levin". LETTERBOXD. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
  9. ^ Levy, Emanuel. "WHERE THE BOYS ARE (1960): Iconic Spring Break Movie, Starring Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Yvette Mimieux". EmanuelLevy.com. Emanuel Levy - Cinema 24/7. Retrieved March 25, 2013.
  10. ^ New Pictures Get Go-Ahead Signals: Karlson, Levin Will Direct for Widmark and Pasternak, by Scott, John L. Los Angeles Times May 18, 1960: A11.
  11. ^ YVETTE MIMIEUX SIGNED: Actress Gets Role in 'Four Horsemen of Apocalypse'. New York Times August 12, 1960: 11.
  12. ^ Mimieux, Hamilton Teamed: Film Is Remake of 'Clock'; Mary Costa Going to Rome, by Hopper, Hedda. Los Angeles Times June 7, 1961: B10.
  13. ^ The Mystique of Actress Yvette Mimieux, by By Megan Rosenfeld. The Washington Post November 29, 1979: D13.
  14. ^ Yvette Mimieux to Do 'Summer Affair': Changes in Motion Picture Code Decried by Rock Hudson, by Hopper, Hedda. Los Angeles Times February 23, 1962: C16.
  15. ^ Yvette Mimieux in Television Debut -- Los Angeles Times September 5, 1963: C12.
  16. ^ Yvette Mimieux's Got a Secret, by Hopper, Hedda. Los Angeles Times April 11, 1965: m4.
  17. ^ Foster Conducts Program at Bowl, by Arlen, Walter. Los Angeles Times August 15, 1968: e24.
  18. ^ Yvette Looking Ahead to Grandmotherhood, by Boyle, Hal. Los Angeles Times August 11, 1967: d17.
  19. ^ Ebert, Roger (December 20, 1968). "THREE IN THE ATTIC". RogerEbert.com. Chicago Sun-Times.
  20. ^ Yvette Mimieux in Cast of Deadly Game. Los Angeles Times May 19, 1970: f18.
  21. ^ Actress Mixes Altruism and Business, by JUDY KLEMESRUD. New York Times September 23, 1970: 54.
  22. ^ "Film Agency Sued by Yvette Mimieux". Los Angeles Times. August 21, 1971. p. 20.
  23. ^ Soares, Emily. "Skyjacked (1972)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
  24. ^ Servi, Vera (May 28, 1972). "Mmovies: Yvette Mimieux's Front Page Performance". Chicago Tribune. p. K14.
  25. ^ a b c "Yvette Mimieux's Right for This Role". Los Angeles Times. October 7, 1974. p. E17.
  26. ^ "Circle of Power (1981) Directed by Bobby Roth". LETTERBOXD. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
  27. ^ 'Obsessive Love,' Movie With Yvette Mimieux, By JOHN O'CONNOR. New York Times October 2, 1984: C18.
  28. ^ MIMIEUX PRODUCES A MOVIE FOR TV, by Farber, Stephen. New York Time1 Oct 1984: C.17.
  29. ^ "Yvette Mimieux Married". The New York Times. Associated Press. October 27, 1961. p. 27. ... has been secretly married since 1959 ... Records show that she was married to Evan Harland Engber here [in Los Angeles] on Dec. 19. ... Mr. Engber, who was recently discharged from the Army ... Abstract only; full article requires subscription.
  30. ^ Eng, Dinah (September 4, 2014). "Howard Ruby: The father of corporate housing". Fortune. Archived from the original on June 2, 2019. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  31. ^ "About Oakwood > Executive Committee > Howard Ruby: Chairman, Founder and COO". Oakwood Worldwide. Archived from the original on January 10, 2020.
  32. ^ "The Time Machine Actress Yvette Mimieux Dead at 80". People. January 19, 2022. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  33. ^ "Yvette Mimieux Dies; Actress/Writer Who Starred In 'The Time Machine' Had Just Turned 80". Deadline Hollywood. January 18, 2022. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
  34. ^ Dagan, Carmnel (January 18, 2022). "Yvette Mimieux, Star of 'The Time Machine,' 'The Black Hole,' Dies at 80". Variety. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
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