Charles Boyer

Born in the small town of Figeac in southwestern France, the son of a shopkeeper, Boyer fell in love with the theater as a shy, bookish boy and trained at the Paris Conservatoire, becoming a matinee idol of the French stage and silent screen before Hollywood beckoned. His early American ventures faltered, in part because studios had no idea what to do with a Frenchman, but he persisted and broke through in the mid-1930s.

What he offered was unlike anything the American cinema had: an air of world-weary sophistication, a caressing voice, and a gaze of frank, adult desire. He became the definitive screen romantic opposite the great leading ladies, tender and dangerous by turns. He was the exiled thief pining in the Casbah in Algiers (1938), the ardent lover of the original Love Affair (1939), and, most chillingly, the honey-tongued husband slowly driving his wife mad in Gaslight (1944), a role so indelible it gave the language a verb.

He earned repeated Academy Award nominations and the affection of audiences who savored his romantic melancholy, though he wore the "great lover" label with wry detachment; the tagline was a caricature of a subtle, intelligent actor. A patriot, he worked to rally American sympathy for occupied France during the war.

Boyer also proved a shrewd businessman, co-founding the pioneering Four Star Television, one of the most successful production companies of the medium's early years, and he found a whole new career in character roles and on the small screen. His life ended in tragedy: two days after his wife of forty-four years died of cancer, and grief-stricken, he took his own life just short of his seventy-ninth birthday. He is remembered as the most persuasive romantic import the American cinema ever received.