by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy

Melina Mercouri was a Greek-born actress, singer, and politician. Born in 1920 and graduating from the National Theatre’s Drama School in 1944, she spent the next eleven years performing only on the stage. In 1949 she played Blanche DuBois in the Greek production of Streetcar Named Desire and gained international fame performing the song “Papermoon”. In 1955, that fame led to her debut film in which she played the titular role in Michael Cacoyannis’s Stella (a Greek retelling of Carmen) earning a nomination for Cannes Best Actress Award. Cannes is also where she met writer/director/actor (and her future husband) Jules Dassin. He was showing Rififi, his first film since being blacklisted during the McCarthy era. The two hit it off quickly and had a long-lasting personal and professional relationship. Mercouri would be featured in nine of Dassin’s eleven subsequent films (which is about half of the films she went on to make). At the time, they were both married, but each got a divorce in 1962 and they married each other in 1966.