Madeleine Lebeau is worth watching for the emotional directness she brings to familiar types. Casablanca gives that quality its clearest use; the jealous mistresses and temperamental actresses elsewhere can leave her less to do.
Fi1m perspective
In Casablanca (1942), Madeleine Lebeau sings with tears on her face. Her Yvonne has been given less to do than originally intended: the part shrank as the script changed. Yet the close-up gives her feelings time to matter in a film led by its central romance. We were moved by the effort of singing through those tears; the feeling is plain without becoming a demand for sympathy. It is the clearest reason to pay attention to her.
Her early Hollywood appearances included Anni in Hold Back the Dawn (1941) and Anna Held in Gentleman Jim (1942). Across her work, discarded or jealous mistresses and nightclub singers recur. Those parts suit an actor willing to let emotion show, though they also risk making distress her principal occupation. Her singing voice was used again in Paris After Dark (1943). The attraction for us is how directly she lets a feeling register, without requiring the character to be agreeable first.
After the war she returned to France, working in French, British and Italian productions. Federico Fellini casts her as Madeleine, the French Actress, in 8½ (1963). Here the familiar type is the temperamental actress, which gives us a narrower reason to watch her than Yvonne's singing does. We recommend the film for its humour and unease, while finding it too forgiving of its central director's self-absorption. With Lebeau, the caution is that the description of the character can tell us too much of what to expect.
The jealous mistress and the temperamental actress both come with habits an audience already knows. Lebeau's emotional intensity can make those women worth attending to, but it cannot by itself make the writing less restrictive. That is a limit to the roles, rather than a reason to dismiss the actor. Start with Casablanca, and watch Yvonne as closely as the people the romance has taught us to follow.
Biography
Madeleine Lebeau was a French actress. Born Marie Madeleine Berthe Lebeau on 10 June 1923 in Antony, France, she died on 1 May 2016 in Estepona, Spain. She is best known for playing Yvonne, Humphrey Bogart’s discarded mistress, in Casablanca (1943).
Lebeau made her screen debut in an uncredited role in Young Girls in Trouble (1939). In 1940 she fled Nazi-occupied France with her then-husband, actor Marcel Dalio. They reached the United States via Portugal and Mexico. In Hollywood she appeared in Hold Back the Dawn (1941) and Gentleman Jim (1942).
She later played a French actress in Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963) and appeared in Angélique (1964). Lebeau was the last surviving credited cast member of Casablanca. She was married to screenwriter Tullio Pinelli from 1988 until his death in 2009.
