~1~ AUGUST BIRTHDAYS - CHARLES BOYER
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28
3 MOVIES

One of very few Frenchmen to enjoy success in American movies, Charles Boyer (1897-1978) emerged as one of the screen's "great lovers" in such films as Algiers (1938), in which he memorably romanced Hedy Lamarr -- although he never said to her, as his imitators would have it, "Come wiz me to zee Casbah." Born in Figeac, France, Boyer made his stage and film debuts in 1920 and quickly emerged as a matinee idol in his native land. Although an exploratory visit to Hollywood in 1929 proved relatively fruitless, Boyer returned in 1934 to begin his American career in earnest.

Boyer amply proved his potency as a dreamily magnetic leading man in screen romances with Marlene Dietrich in The Garden of Allah (1936), Claudette Colbert in Tovarich (1937) and Greta Garbo in Conquest (1937), in which his Napoleon more than holds his own with Garbo's Marie Walewska. The latter film won Boyer the first of four Oscar nominations as Best Actor. The bittersweet Love Affair (1939) with Irene Dunne was such a success that it would inspire two remakes. Boyer made several superior films in the 1940s including All This, and Heaven Too (1940) with Bette Davis, Hold Back the Dawn (1941) with Olivia de Havilland and Gaslight (1944), in which he provides memorable menace to Ingrid Bergman as her devious husband.

Beginning in the 1950s Boyer doffed his toupee to emerge as a character actor in international films and American television and on London and New York stages. He received his final Oscar nomination for playing the philosophical Cesar in Fanny (1961). In 1943 Boyer had won an honorary Oscar for his "progressive cultural achievement in establishing the French Research Foundation in Los Angeles." He committed suicide with an overdose of barbiturates in 1978, two days after the death of Patricia, his wife since 1934.

The movies in TCM's birthday tribute to Charles Boyer are Tovarich (1937), Love Affair (1939) and All This, and Heaven Too (1940).

Other star birthdays being celebrated during the month of August on TCM include Esther Williams (8/8), director Alfred Hitchcock (8/13), Gene Kelly (8/23), cinematographer James Wong Howe (8/28), Ingrid Bergman (8/29) and Joan Blondell (8/30).

By Roger Fristoe ~1~