Corinne Luchaire

French actress Corinne Luchaire was born in Paris in 1921. She left school to join a drama class and made her debut at 16 in a play written by her grandfather. The following year she starred in Prison sans barreaux, which was remade in English as Prison Without Bars, with Luchaire again in the lead. She spoke English fluently. Mary Pickford called her "the new Garbo." In 1939 she starred in Le Dernier Tournant, the first film version of The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Her father was journalist and politician Jean Luchaire, who supported the Vichy regime. Her grandfathers were a playwright and a painter. Her sister Florence was also an actress. Luchaire grew up around Nazis who visited the banker Kurt von Schröder, and she met Otto Abetz, the future German ambassador to Paris. She accompanied her father to Vichy Paris in 1940. She was briefly married to a French aristocrat, Guy de Voisins-Lavernière.

Luchaire stopped acting in 1940 due to tuberculosis. After D-Day, she journeyed to Germany and later was arrested in Italy. She was sentenced to ten years of dégradation nationale. Her father was executed for treason. In 1949 she published her autobiography, Ma drôle de vie. She died of tuberculosis in 1950 at age 28 and is buried in Paris.