Jean Seberg

Jean Seberg (Marshalltown, Iowa, November 13, 1938 - Paris, August 30, 1979) was an American actress, remembered for her participation in numerous films, including: Joan of Arc (1957), Good morning, sadness (1958), À bout de souffle (1960) and Lilith (1964). She is an icon of the French nouvelle vague .

Seberg died at the age of 40 in Paris, the victim of an overdose of barbiturates; the police determined that the actress committed suicide but other sources determine this last fact as "dubious". Seberg is also known for being one of the most publicized victims of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Counterintelligence Program, in retaliation for her support of various civil rights groups during the 1960s, for for these reasons there is doubt about his death.

Biography

Jean Dorothy Seberg was born on November 13, 1938, in Marshalltown, Iowa, the daughter of Dorothy Arline (née Benson), a substitute teacher, and Edward Waldemar Seberg, a pharmacist. Her family was Lutheran and of Swedish, English and German descent. Her paternal grandfather, Edward Carlson, came to the United States in 1882 and observed that "there are too many Carlsons in the New World." He changed the family name to Seberg in memory of the water and mountains of Sweden. Seberg had a sister, Mary-Ann, and two brothers: Kurt and David, the younger of whom was killed in a car accident at the age of 18 in 1968. In Marshalltown, Seberg cared for Mary Supinger, about eight years her junior. she, who became a stage and screen actress like Mary Beth Hurt. After high school, Seberg enrolled at the University of Iowa to study dramatic arts.

Film career

With Otto Preminger

Seberg made her film debut in the title role of Joan of Arc in Saint Joan (1957), based on the play by George Bernard Shaw, having been chosen from 18,000 applicants by director Otto Preminger in a talent search for which offers were received from 18,000 candidates

When she was cast on October 21, 1956, Seberg's only acting experience had been a single season of summer stock performances. The film generated a lot of publicity, but Seberg commented that she was "embarrassed by all the attention." Despite the great uproar, dubbed a "Pygmalion experiment" in the press, both the film and Seberg received poor reviews.

Her second collaboration with Preminger was Good morning, sadness (Bonjour tristesse, 1958), an adaptation of the successful novel by Françoise Sagan.

Seberg renegotiated his contract with Preminger and signed a long-term contract with Columbia Pictures. Preminger had the option to use her in another film, but they never worked together again. His first film at Columbia was the hit comedy A Coup de Grace (1959), starring Peter Sellers.

French Race

She appeared as the female lead in Jean-Luc Godard's At the End of Escape (À bout de souffle, 1960) as Patricia Franchini, co-starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film became a huge international success, and critics praised Seberg's performance; Film critic and director François Truffaut even hailed her as "the best actress in Europe". Thanks to this she became a muse of the Nouvelle Vague .

Back in the United States, he made another film for Columbia, Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960). In France, after appearing in Time Out for Love (Les grandes personnes, 1961), Seberg took the title role in François Moreuil's directorial debut, Love Play (La Recreation, also 1961). He followed with Five Day Lover (L'amant de cinq jours, 1962), Congo vivo (1962) and In the French Style (1962), a French-American film starring Stanley Baker released through Columbia. He also appeared in the anthology film The most beautiful swindlers in the world (Les plus belles escroqueries du monde, 1963) and A free escape (Échappement libre, 1964), which brought her together with Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Seberg starred with Warren Beatty in the American film Lilith (1964) for Columbia, which led critics to recognize Seberg as a serious actress. She returned to France to make Diamonds Are Brittle ( Un milliard dans un billard , 1965).

Return to Hollywood

In the late 1960s, Seberg was spending more and more time in Hollywood. Moment to Moment (1965) was filmed primarily in Los Angeles; only a small part of the film was shot on the French Riviera. In New York she acted in A Fine Madness (1966) with Sean Connery and under the direction of Irvin Kershner.

After making Pendulum (1969), Seberg appeared in his only film musical, Paint your wagon, i> 1969), based on the stage musical by Lerner and Loewe and co-starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood. Her singing voice was dubbed by Anita Gordon. Seberg also starred in the disaster film Airport (Airport, 1970).

Later career

Seberg was François Truffaut's first choice for the central role of Julie in La noche americana (La Nuit américaine, 1973) but, after several unsuccessful attempts to contact her, he gave up and he cast British actress Jacqueline Bisset instead.

Seberg's last appearance in an American film was in the television movie Mousey (1974). She remained active throughout the 1970s in European cinema, appearing in Bianchi Cavalli d'Agosto (White Horses of Summer) (1975), The Great delirio (Le Grand Délire, 1975, with her husband Dennis Berry) and Die Wildente (1976, based on The Wild Duck, from Ibsen).

FBI Operation COINTELPRO

A COINTELPRO document that describes the FBI's plans to 'neutralize' Jean Seberg for his support for the Black Panther Party.

In the late 1960s, Seberg provided financial support to groups that supported civil rights, such as the NAACP, as well as Native American school groups such as the Meskwaki Bucks in the Tama settlement near his hometown of Marshalltown, for whom he purchased basketball uniforms. As part of his & # 39; dirty tricks & # 39; Targeting black liberation and anti-war groups, beginning in 1968, the FBI learned of several gifts Seberg had made to the Black Panther Party, totaling $10,500 (estimated) in contributions; these were noted among a list of other celebrities in internal FBI documents later declassified and released to the public under FOIA requests.

The FBI operation against Seberg, directly supervised by J. Edgar Hoover, used techniques from the COINTELPRO program to harass, intimidate, smear, and discredit her. The stated objective of the FBI was a "neutralization" unspecified from Seberg with a subsidiary objective of "causing her embarrassment and serving to degrade her image in the public eye", taking the "usual precautions to avoid Office identification";. The FBI's strategy and modalities can be found in its interoffice memos.

In 1970, the FBI created a false story from a San Francisco-based informant that the baby girl Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her husband, Romain Gary, but by Raymond Hewitt, a member of the Black Panther Party. The story was reported by Los Angeles Times gossip columnist Joyce Haber, and was also printed by Newsweek magazine, in which Seberg was directly named. Seberg went into preterm labor, and on August 23, 1970, gave birth to a 4-pound (1.8 kg) girl. The girl died two days later. Seberg held a funeral in his hometown with an open casket that allowed reporters to see the baby's white skin, refuting the rumors.

Exchange of information between the FBI headquarters and the Los Angeles FBI in plans to defame Jean Seberg.

Seberg and Gary later sued Newsweek for libel and defamation, seeking $200,000 in damages. He claimed that he had become so angry after reading the story that he went into premature labor, resulting in the death of his daughter. A Paris court ordered Newsweek to pay the couple US$10,800 in damages and ordered Newsweek to print the judgment in its publication, in addition to eight other newspapers.

Seberg's investigation went far beyond publishing slanderous articles. According to friends interviewed after his death, she experienced years of aggressive in-person surveillance (constant stalking), as well as robberies and other means of intimidation. These newspaper reports make it clear that Seberg was aware of the surveillance. FBI files show that she was wiretapped, and in 1980, the Los Angeles Times published records of intercepted phone calls from her in Switzerland. American surveillance was deployed while she was residing in France and while she was traveling in Switzerland and Italy. FBI files reveal that the agency contacted the "FBI Legat" (legal attaches) at the US embassies in Paris and Rome and provided files on Seberg to the CIA, Secret Service and military intelligence to help monitor Seberg while she was abroad.

FBI records show that Hoover kept President Richard Nixon informed of FBI activities related to the Seberg case through Nixon's chief of internal affairs, John Ehrlichman. Attorney General John Mitchell and Assistant Attorney General Richard Kleindienst were also briefed on FBI activities related to Seberg. The FBI made its initial admission to targeting Seberg by spreading a false rumor shortly after his death was announced.

Possible Hollywood Blacklist

At the peak of his career, Seberg suddenly stopped acting in Hollywood movies. She was reportedly dissatisfied with the roles she had been offered, some of which she claimed bordered on pornography. She was not offered any big Hollywood roles, regardless of the size of her. Experts on the FBI's actions in the COINTELPRO project suggest that Seberg was "effectively blacklisted" from Hollywood movies.

Personal life

On September 5, 1958, at the age of 19, Seberg married François Moreuil, a French lawyer (aged 23) in his native Marshalltown, having met him in France 15 months earlier. They divorced in 1960. Moreuil had ambitions to work in movies and directed his ex-wife in Love Play. He said the marriage was "violent" and that Seberg "got married for all the wrong reasons."

On living in France for a period of time, Seberg said in an interview: “I'm enjoying it to the fullest. I have been tremendously lucky to have gone through this experience at an age where I can still learn. That doesn't mean I'll stay here. I am in Paris because my work is here. I am not an expat. I'll go where the work is. French life has its drawbacks. One of them is formality. The system seems to be based on saving the most of yourself for those closest to you. Perhaps that's better than the other extreme in Hollywood, where people give so much of themselves in public life that they have nothing left for their families. Even so, it's hard for an American to get used to. I often get excited at a lunch table just because the hostess discreetly says that coffee will be served in the other room.... I miss that carefree American kindness, the kind that makes people smile. I also miss blue jeans, milk shakes, thick steaks, and supermarkets.”

Despite extended stays in the United States, Seberg remained in Paris for the rest of his life. In 1961 she met French aviator, French resistance fighter, novelist, and diplomat Romain Gary, who was 24 years her senior and married to author Lesley Blanch. Seberg gave birth to her son, Alexandre Diego Gary, in Barcelona on July 17, 1962. The birth of the child and the first year of his life were hidden, even from close friends and family. The divorce between Gary and Blanch took place on September 5, 1962, and she secretly married Seberg on October 6, 1962 in Corsica. During her marriage to Gary, Seberg lived in Paris, Greece, the south of France, and Mallorca. She filed for divorce in September 1968, which was consummated on July 1, 1970. She had an affair with the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes. Since 2009, her son has resided in Spain, where he runs a bookstore and supervises the literary and his father's real estate

On March 12, 1972, Seberg married director Dennis Berry. The couple separated in May 1976, but were never divorced. Her next lover was the aspiring French filmmaker Jean-Claude Messager. In 1979, while she was still legally married to her ex-husband Berry de ella, Seberg went through "a form of marriage"; with the Algerian Ahmed Hasni. He convinced her to sell her second apartment on Rue du Bac and kept her proceeds (reportedly 11 million francs in cash), announcing that she would use her money to open a restaurant in Barcelona. The couple left for Spain, but she soon returned to Paris and hid from Hasni, who Seberg claimed had badly abused her.

Death

Jean Seberg Tomb

Seberg disappeared on August 30, 1979. Nine days later, on September 8, her body was found wrapped in a blanket in the backseat of her Renault, parked near her Paris apartment in the 16th arrondissement. Police found a bottle of barbiturates, an empty bottle of mineral water and a note written in French by Seberg addressed to his son. In part it read: "Forgive me. I can't live with my nerves anymore". In 1979, the Paris police ruled his death a probable suicide, but the following year additional charges were brought against unknown persons for "failing to help a person in danger."

Romain Gary, Seberg's second husband, called a press conference shortly after her death in which he blamed the FBI's campaign against Seberg for his deteriorating mental health. Gary claimed that Seberg "went psychotic" after the media reported the false story the FBI had leaked implying that she had been pregnant by a Black Panther member in 1970. Gary claimed that Seberg had repeatedly attempted suicide on the anniversaries of the child's death (August 25). Her body rests in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Repercussions

Six days after the discovery of Seberg's body, the FBI released Freedom of Information Act documents admitting its defamation of Seberg, while making statements attempting to distance the agency from Hoover-era practices. The FBI's campaign against Seberg was further discussed by Time magazine in a cover story titled 'The FBI vs. Jean Seberg'.

In June 1980, the Paris police filed charges against "persons unknown" in connection with Seberg's death. Police stated that Seberg had such a high amount of alcohol in her system at the time of her death that she would have left her in a coma and unable to get into her car without her help, and she was not found. alcohol in the car. Police theorized that someone was present at the time of Seberg's death and did not seek medical attention. In December 1980, Seberg's ex-husband Romain Gary committed suicide.

In popular culture

• In 1983, a musical based on Seberg's life, named Jean Seberg, by the writer Julian Barry, the composer Marvin Hamlisch and the litrist Christopher Adler, appeared at the National Theatre in London.

• In 1986, pop singer Madonna recreated the iconic look Seberg's souffle bout in his "Papa Don't Preach" musical video, wearing a blond haircut pixieA French striped sweater shirt and pants capri Black in the style of the Seberg character A souffle bout.

• In 1991, actress Jodie Foster, a fan of Seberg's performance in Breathless, bought Played Out's film rights: The Jean Seberg Story, David Richards's Seberg biography. Foster was ready to produce and stare at the movie, but the project was cancelled two years later.

• In 1995, Mark Rappaport created a documentary about Seberg, From the Journals of Jean Seberg. Mary Beth Hurt played Seberg in a voice over. Hurt was born in Marshalltown, Iowa in 1948, attended the same high school as Seberg.

• The 2000 short film Je t'aime John Wayne is a tribute parody to Breathless, with Seberg played by Camilla Rutherford.

• In 2004, French author Alain Absire published Jean S., a fictional biography. Seberg's son, Alexandre Diego Gary, filed a lawsuit, unsuccessfully trying to stop the publication.

• Also in 2004, Seberg is remembered in the song of the Divine Comedy "Absent Friends":

• Since 2011, the birthplace of Seberg, Marshalltown, Iowa, has held an annual Jean Seberg International Film Festival.

• In 2019, Amazon launched an original Seberg life-based film called Seberg that focuses on its battle against the FBI, with the main role played by Kristen Stewart.

Filmography

Awards

BAFTA Awards

Golden Globes