|
 Jourdan, who also worked frequently on stage and television,
died at home, Olivier Minne, his friend and biographer, told
Reuters by telephone from Paris.
Jourdan starred in "Gigi," one of the most successful movies of
the 1950s, as the dashing Gaston, who realizes he is falling for
the title character, played by Leslie Caron, as she evolves from
tomboy to courtesan-in-training.
"Gigi" dominated the 1959 Academy Awards with nine Oscars, a
record at the time, including best picture and best director for
Vincente Minnelli.
Jourdan sang the movie's title tune and it won the Oscar for
best song, even though Maurice Chevalier's "Thank Heaven for
Little Girls" in the film was perhaps more memorable.
Jourdan grew up as Louis Gendre in Cannes, where his father was
a hotelier, and went to the prestigious Ecole Dramatique in
Paris to study acting. He took his mother's last name for his
movie career, which had just begun when it was interrupted by
World War Two. The occupying Nazis ordered Jourdan to make
propaganda films but instead he fled back to the south of
France, where he joined his brothers in printing and
distributing pamphlets for the French Resistance.
Jourdan's acting career resumed after the war and he soon came
to the attention of American producer David O. Selznick, who
brought him to Hollywood for a crucial role in Alfred
Hitchcock's 1947 film "The Paradine Case," starring Gregory
Peck.
The next year he stood out in "Letter from an Unknown Woman" as
a concert pianist haunted by his ambivalence for a woman, played
by Joan Fontaine, who had loved him for decades.
Jourdan was so handsome and debonair that typecasting was
inevitable and for a while he resisted the romantic leads, which
often led to him being suspended by Selznick under Hollywood's
autocratic studio system.
'FRENCH CLICHE'
"My basic disagreement with producers was that I didn't want to
be perpetually cooing in a lady's ear," Jourdan said in a 1960
interview with Coronet magazine. "There is not much aesthetic
satisfaction in it."
He later said he reconciled with his Hollywood image as "the
French cliché."
In addition to "Gigi," Jourdan's notable films included "Three
Coins in the Fountain" (1954), "The Swan" (1955) with Grace
Kelly, "The Bride Is Much Too Beautiful" (1956) with Brigitte
Bardot and "Can-Can" (1960), which co-starred Frank Sinatra and
Shirley MacLaine.
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In "Julie" (1955) he had a chance to break from the stereotype by
playing Doris Day's psychotic husband and television and stage work
also provided more varied roles, including playing a homosexual
attracted to a man played by James Dean in "The Immortalist" on
Broadway.
"It was quite revolutionary for him to accept playing a homosexual
on stage," said Minne, his biographer.
"His legacy in the industry was that he brought some kind of French
elegance. That was his nature, in his way of speaking and behaving,
his gestures," said Minne. Jourdan was a passionate lover of
classical music and was friends with artists and intellectuals,
Minne said.
Later in his career directors discovered that Jourdan also could
play evil villains - albeit handsome, urbane evil villains - such
the Afghan prince Kamal Khan, James Bond's nemesis in the 1983 film
"Octopussy."
In Wes Craven's 1982 horror film "Swamp Thing" he was the evil
immortality-obsessed Dr. Anton Arcane and reprised the role "The
Return of the Swamp Thing" in 1989.
Jourdan's charm was lost on Elizabeth Taylor, however. In the 1963
movie "The V.I.P.s," he was an aging playboy having an affair with
Taylor but the actress, then in the midst of her stormy first
relationship with Richard Burton, was upset by a story that
Jourdan's wife, Quique, had written about her for Paris Match
magazine. Taylor reportedly insisted that Jourdan apologize in front
of the cast and crew but he refused.
In 1985 Jourdan went on a touring stage version of "Gigi," playing
the dapper Honore, the role filled by Chevalier in the movie. He
retired from acting in 1992 and in 2010 France presented him the
Legion of Honour award.
Jourdan and Quique, who met during his time in the French
underground, married in 1946. He was once asked about the contrast
between his long-running marriage and the playboy roles he so often
filled on screen and said: "When one has been married more than 30
years it would be absurd not to admit there had been some sort of
difficulties at some times ... but the important thing is that we
have weathered them."
The Jourdans' only child, Louis Henry Jourdan, died of a drug
overdose in 1981.
(Reporting and writing by Bill Trott in Washington, additional
reporting by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago; Editing by Nick Zieminski and
Eric Walsh)
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