Arletty

Elegant, husky-voiced French star of the 1930s and 40s, remembered for her roles in four classics of poetic realism: "Hotel du Nord" (1938), "Daybreak" (1939), "The Devil's Envoys" (1942) and "Children of Paradise" (1945). With her striking features and aloof, mysterious air, Arletty was a kind of French Marlene Dietrich. In the 50s she divided her career between the stage and film until an accident in 1957 left her temporarily blind. Arletty returned to film in the war epic "The Longest Day" (1962) but recurring blindness sent her into retirement again soon after. Briefly jailed as a collaborator after WWII because of an affair with a German officer, she never married and had no children.