Florence Marly

Highly alluring Czech-born actress Florence Marly, born on June 2, 1919, initially expressed intentions of being an opera singer. At the age of 18, however, she was discovered by the 33-year-old renown French director Pierre Chenal while a student of art and literature at the Sorbonne. Chenal put her immediately into his film The Alibi (1937) and an acting career was ignited instead. Chenal and his protégé married the following year and Florence continued to figure into many of his films including The Lafarge Case (1938), Sirocco (1938)_ and Le dernier tournant (1939). Managing to flee Paris prior to the Nazi occupation, the couple arrived in Argentina in 1944 and stayed there for several years where she appeared in a few films -- La piel de Zapa (1943), End of the Night (1944) and, for her husband, Viaje sin regreso (1946). Returning to France in the post-war years, she was nominated for a Cannes Film Festival award for her performance in The Damned (1947) [The Damned] directed by Re