2024-02-26 10:57:00
Gene Tierney lovers know the scene by heart. We are in Laura Hunt’s living room. She was murdered. The detective leading the investigation falls asleep in the victim’s bourgeois apartment, a glass of whiskey in hand, after having once again contemplated the painting representing the dead woman. The sound of keys in the lock. The door opens, closes. Music invades the space. The painting becomes alive. The mysterious Laura Hunt, played by Gene Tierney, appears out of nowhere in front of Lieutenant Mark McPherson, played by Dana Andrews. The femme fatale is not dressed in a low-cut black dress. She wears a raincoat and a cream-colored cloche hat.
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The shy young girl from a good family does not need any artifice to saturate the screen with her distinguished beauty. High cheekbones, brown hair, light eyes. Imperfect teeth. Fifty-eight kilos for one meter seventy-three. American actress Gene Tierney remains one of the most beautiful faces in the world. The filmmaker Otto Preminger offers him, in Laura (1944), which Arte is rebroadcast this evening, a role for posterity. Gene Tierney, born in 1920 in Brooklyn and died in 1991 in Texas, is a presence-absence.
Over time, Gene Tierney has become a cult actress for movie fans. We encounter it in the songs of Étienne Daho, the admirations of Jean d’Ormesson, the novels of Patrick Modiano. She toured under the direction of Ernst Lubitsch, Otto Preminger, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Josef von Sternberg, Fritz Lang. She played alongside Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, Tyrone Power, Spencer Tracy. The greatest directors, the greatest actors.
His career includes thirty-six feature films and three plays. Gene Tierney has put his name in a number of mediocre films. The star was hampered by his psychological fragility, his restraint, his lack of ambition. But the actress Laura (1944) remains unforgettable in The Shanghai Gesture (1941), de Josef von Sternberg ; Heaven can wait (1943), d’Ernst Lubitsch; Mortal sin (1945), de John M. Stahl; The Adventure of Mrs Muir (1947), by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. His autobiography, Miss, you should make movies… (1979), remains a model of its kind. The actress mixes personal and professional, with unfeigned humility. She reveals her weaknesses. Gene Tierney found himself one day in a Houston department store. A saleswoman approaches her with a banal question: “Can I help you?” » At this simple sentence, she burst into tears.
Gene Tierney is the daughter of a wealthy insurance broker. A seemingly happy childhood. The crisis of 1929 and bad investments reduced the family’s lavish lifestyle. The teenager was sent for two years to the private school of Brillantmont, in Lausanne, Switzerland. She returned to the United States in 1938. During a family trip, Gene Tierney visited the Warner Bros. studios. The director Anatole Litvak, struck by her beauty, advised her to become an actress: “Miss, you should work in cinema… » She was accepted into the New York conservatory. She performed in plays and achieved commercial and critical success in The Male Animal (1940).
Gene Tierney and Howard Hugues, an unwavering friendship
Gene Tierney formed an unwavering friendship with aviator Howard Hughes. Depending on the version, they may or may not have had a romantic affair. Gene Tierney’s father set up the family company Belle-Tier to manage his daughter’s career. The actress’s income is placed there. The young actress is hired by Fox. She had a notable first role in The Shanghai Gesture (1941), by Josef von Sternberg. Gene Tierney will shine in the firmament for a handful of years. By the dawn of the 1950s, her best roles were behind her. Two imperfect men will behave perfectly towards her. Billionaire Howard Hughes and fashion designer Oleg Cassini. They will show him, until the end, friendship and love.
The turning point in his life was the birth of his disabled daughter. Gene Tierney was already tested when Daria Cassini was born in November 1943. The actress married in 1941, against the advice of her parents, the stylist Oleg Cassini in Las Vegas. He has a reputation as seductive and worldly. She becomes pregnant. She contracted rubella in 1943, during a visit to the Hollywood Canteen to boost soldiers’ morale. Daria Cassini was born deaf, partially blind, mentally handicapped. Howard Hughes pays all expenses so that Daria Cassini receives the best care. The novelist Agatha Christie will be inspired by the tragedy, in The mirror broke (1962). Gene Tierney separates from Oleg Cassini. During the filming of Dragon Castle, in 1946, she fell in love with the young lieutenant John F. Kennedy. They break up when the future president of the United States admits that he will not marry her. Gene Tierney returns to Oleg Cassini. They had a second daughter, Christina Cassini, in 1948. The couple divorced in 1952. Gene Tierney had a serious love affair with Prince Ali Khan, before marrying Texan billionaire Howard Lee in 1960. The Hollywood star died on November 6, 1991, in Houston, at the age of seventy, from emphysema. The cinema then abandoned it for a long time.
Electroshock and psychiatric hospitals
The first pages of his Memoirs: Gene Tierney hesitates to jump from the fourteenth floor of his building. She stays on the window sill for about twenty minutes, before finally giving up trying to get out of the window. She passed through two psychiatric hospitals in the space of three years. She suffered electroshocks. The year is 1958. Gene Tierney is on his way to a third psychiatric hospital the day after his failed suicide attempt.
In her Memoirs, she attempts to retrace the course of her life, to understand where the thread suddenly broke. Gene Tierney has been marked by multiple trials. She discovered that her beloved, much-admired father had stolen her money and been unfaithful to her mother; she had to oppose her parents to marry Oleg Cassini, before realizing that they were right; she will break up with her father whom she will hardly see again for sixteen years; she was actually in love with the young lieutenant John F. Kennedy before they separated.
The birth of his disabled daughter, Daria Cassini, was a pain never overcome. The good girl also discovered an inheritance of mental illness on the maternal side. The stomach cramps, endured almost all his life, were a handicap in his daily life. Gene Tierney felt a constant feeling of insecurity. The interpreter of Laura writes: “Money interested me more than fame. » His fears were multiple. The fear of ending up on the street, the fear of being abandoned, the fear of not being good enough.
Voltaire and Tolstoy
Gene Tierney says it several times in his autobiography: she does well when she hides behind a role, she does badly when she is forced to be herself. Memory loss, due to her serious nervous breakdowns and her internments in three different psychiatric hospitals over six years, hampered her acting. She suffered more than thirty electric shocks and was wrapped in an icy poultice. “Oddly enough, I knew I was getting better when I could start reading books again. » She likes to immerse herself in Voltaire and Tolstoy.
We met her on film sets, an essay by Nietzsche in hand. Gene Tierney temporarily becomes a saleswoman in a ready-to-wear store to get back into reality. She overhears two customers talking about her. The two women give him around fifty years. Gene Tierney was then thirty-eight years old. The offers at the cinema are becoming more and more humiliating. She ended her life in Texas. She reads, plays bridge, smokes.
In his Memoirs, Gene Tierney also recounts an entire era. The power of Hollywood studios, young actresses considered as fresh flesh, the social taboo of psychiatric disorders. The citizen has always been on the right. Gene Tierney noted during his meeting with John Kennedy: “As New England Republicans, we had a natural distrust of these rich Democrats who sided with the poor. » She will vote for Nixon, against Kennedy. In her autobiography, she gives wonderful portraits of Howard Hughes, Oleg Cassini, Clark Gable. Gene Tierney lovers love the subtle actress, the fragile woman. Subtlety and fragility are a thrill. She still remains a great actress for moviegoers today. Her sober playing, her intelligence, her hypnotic beauty. The actress of Razor wire (1946), d’Edmund Goulding, et du Mysterious Doctor Korvo (1949), by Otto Preminger, is remembered like a long dazzling moment.
In Mortal sin, she throws herself down the stairs in order to lose the child she is carrying. The scene is one of the strongest of his career. From everything she has experienced, Gene Tierney draws one conclusion: “Life is not a movie. » She helped break the taboo of mental illness; she starred in masterpieces; it remains a myth for film buffs. The film Laura is an investigation into a ghostly woman. The opening of the film: “I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. » In the unforgettable scene of Laurawhere Laura Hunt appears before Inspector Mark McPherson while everyone believes her to be dead, a legitimate doubt arises: is she a dream or a reality?
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