Danièle Gaubert

Born on August 9, 1943 in Nuars, Nièvre, France, Danièle Louise Régina Gaubert had a brief career as a teen model before being discovered by director Claude Autant-Lara, who chose her for the lead in his film Les régates de San Francisco (1960). She then starred as a rebellious teenager in a French suburb in Wasteland (1960), directed by Marcel Carné in an attempt to be part of the French New Wave. Daniele soon found that she was the darling of veteran directors working at the time and ended up playing supporting roles in a number of French, German and Italian productions. She reunited with Autant-Lara for the costume comedy Vive Henri IV... vive l'amour! (1961) in which she was the beautiful girl caught between 17th-century king Henri IV (Francis Claude) and a disinterested son (Jean Sorel). She went to Italy for Una storia milanese (1962) with Romolo Valli and to Germany for the musical The Gypsy Baron (1962) starring Carlos Thompson. One of her most memorable roles during this period was as the young mistress of aging industrialist Curd Jürgens in Begegnung in Salzburg (1964). She also appeared in the American-Japanese rescue drama Flight from Ashiya (1964) as the doomed girlfriend of Yul Brynner. Media reports during the film's production in October 1963 highlighted the fact that the bikini Daniele wears in the movie was made of Italian silk and weighed less than three ounces. Later that year she retired from movies and married Rhadamés Leonidas Trujillo, son of Rafael Trujillo, the assassinated dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for over 30 years. Rhadamés was imprisoned in Rouen in November 1964 on charges brought by his six half-brothers and half-sisters searching for the lost Trujillo fortune. Daniele gave birth to their daughter Maria Danielle in 1965 and to their son Leonidas Rhadames in 1966. By October 1967 she was left with her two children living in Normandy, France, which was when Trujillo met with Paris lawyers about a divorce. It is also at this time that Daniele decides to resume her film career. By the time she returned to movies in 1967, and for the next two years, she would not be given supporting roles in costume dramas but top billing in most of these productions, and be launched headlong into the heights of European "mod" cinema--cutting-edge art direction including plastic, inflatable furniture, walls (and ceilings) of mirrors, clothes with lots of flair and people and sights not seen these days outside of an "Austin Powers" movie. Her comeback film was The Big Softie (1967) with Jacques Perrin and Eva Renzi, followed by The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl (1968) in which she starred as a trapeze artist turned jewel thief. In May 1968 her divorce from Trujillo comes through in Paris. The settlement includes their country mansion, $150,000 in cash plus $1,000 per month in child support. Daniele then starred in her most famous role--as Marguerite Gautier in Camille 2000 (1969), an adult adaptation of Alexandre Dumas fils' "The Lady of the Camellias" set in the future, filmed in English, on location in Italy and directed by Radley Metzger. The cast included Nino Castelnuovo (from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)) and Philippe Forquet, returning to Europe after a brief career in Hollywood (where he had been the fiancée of Sharon Tate). Many consider the movie one of the more trendsetting, futuristic films that marked the end of the 1960s and was among one of the first high-profile adult films released during the early days of the MPAA ratings system in America. A photographer from "Playboy" magazine was on the set and Daniele was featured as a pictorial in the publication's May 1969 edition. The movie had its New York premiere in July 1969, the week of the moon landing, as the opening attraction at the Cine Lido theatre in Times Square. Later that same year she starred with Horst Buchholz in Come, quando, perché (1969) and the psychological drama of a man who after smoking pot at a party can see both the past and the future, Paris Does Not Exist (1969) as the girlfriend of Richard Leduc, under the supervision of psychiatrist Serge Gainsbourg--the film's psychedelic ending, featuring hundreds of pictures of Danielle rapidly edited into a sequence not lasting more than a minute stunned audiences of the day. On Christmas Eve 1968, while on vacation, she met French Olympic triple gold medalist skiing champion Jean-Claude Killy in his hometown, Val D'Isere, France, in the lobby of the La Bergerie ski lodge, operated by his parents. They soon became inseparable. She couldn't ski at all but they have plenty in common--she also found out that she was only three weeks older than he. During the making of "Camille 2000", it was the hope of many cast members that the success of this film would enable them to be cast in "international" films, namely those made in the US. In Daniele's case it did, but most likely not quite what she would have hoped for. With the success of The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Where Eagles Dare (1968), World War II action movies were back in vogue and were one of the few money=making genres for Hollywood studios, which at the time were being devastated by a string of huge-budgeted box-office musical flops. United Artists put into production Underground (1970) as a vehicle to launch Broadway musical legend Robert Goulet as an action star, with Daniele as his love interest. Filmed in the town of Enniscorthy, in County Wexford, Ireland (doubling for occupied France circa 1944), the movie ended up being a programmer, playing the lower half of double bills (released in the US as the supporting feature to UA's Ned Kelly (1970) with Mick Jagger), and soon disappeared from theaters. In December 1970 she accompanied Killy to Breckenridge, Colorado, the ski resort that would become their base in the US, as well as a home in Geneva, Switzerland. They refused to call themselves engaged but had been together almost since their first meeting. She followed Jean-Claude around the world and became part of the international skiing circuit. She would make only one more film--Snow Job (1972), a heist movie about a downhill ski instructor taking control of a robbery in the Italian mountains, with Jean-Claude in the leading role. They would marry secretly in the Haute Savoie village of Archamps on November 2, 1973. Soon they would have a daughter, Emilie, and Jean-Claude would adopt Daniele's two children from her marriage to Trujillo. During this time "Camille 2000" continued playing in theaters in many countries that had banned the movie when it was submitted for censorship in 1969 (opening as late as November 1974 in Australia), but by this time Daniele had the family and life she'd always wanted. In September 1974 both Daniele and Jean-Claude did an eight-page layout in "Oui" magazine, "The Killys at Home". This was her last work, as she retired from show business for the second and final time. Jean-Claude Killy would become one of the elder statesmen in international skiing. Daniele passed away on November 3, 1987, in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France, of cancer, aged 44. For Jean-Claude, the years with Daniele were plainly full of love and joy. In a 1990 interview he said she was the love of his life, the girl of his life for 20 years. He said he was set to retire and live with his wife forever, totally organized in all respects. He said that none of us are here for long and that his commitment comes for the occupation of the moment. At the time he was most likely involved in a project that embodied that commitment perfectly. Daniele was laid to rest in the small churchyard cemetery in the parish of Nègremont in Curvalle, located in the south of France, where her parents lived. Jean-Claude took one look at the church itself and knew exactly what had to be done. The church soon underwent an extensive renovation, all dedicated to the memory of Daniele. In the years that followed the entire town experienced a renaissance, with the new church helping to revive day pilgrimages to the relics and landmarks of the region's local Catholic saint, St. Fort of Bordeaux, notably on the occasion of his annual feast day, May 16. By 2008 live performances and concerts were being staged in the church, with the town's mayor Joel Marques saying at the time that he could not imagine events like these being a more fitting tribute to Daniele.