Liliane Montevecchi

Vivid, show-stopping French entertainer Liliane (Dina) Montevecchi was born in Paris on October 13, 1932, and first put on ballet shoes at the age of 8. Nine years later, having entered the Conservatoire for two years of training and working with various companies, she would become a prima ballerina in Roland Petit's ballet company. Hollywood took a sudden interest in her in the early 1950s, along with other foreign-born ballet dancers such as Leslie Caron, Zizi Jeanmaire, and Moira Shearer. Signed to a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, she began appearing in their musicals. Studying at the Actor's Studio at one point, such cinematic ventures as The Glass Slipper (1955) and Daddy Long Legs (1955) (both starring Caron), plus Moonfleet (1955), Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956), The Sad Sack (1957), Me and the Colonel (1958), and the Elvis Presley vehicle King Creole (1958) came and went without much fanfare for Liliane. It was the live stage that would raise her to legendary status. First, she starred with the Folies Bergere for nine years, traveling all over the world. She then conquered Broadway in the 1980s, winning both Tony and Drama Desk awards for her flashy role in the musical "Nine", based on Federico Fellini's art-house film 8½ (1963). She earned a Tony Award nomination several years later with an equally flashy role in the musical "Grand Hotel". The entertainer, beloved for her delightful mangling of the English language, has appeared in concert at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and has vamped and camped with the best of them in her acclaimed cabaret shows and niteries from here to Timbuktu. These include the semi-autobiographical shows "On the Boulevard" and "Back On the Boulvards." She continued to go strong at age 70+ showing time and time again that she was a one-of-a-kind diva who knows no limit. In December 2010, she appeared with Kaye Ballard and Donna McKechnie in the musical revue "From Broadway with Love," and in early 2012, she joined Ballard once again, along with Lee Roy Reams in a second revue "Doin' It for Love." Never married, she died a few years later of colon cancer in her beloved New York on June 29, 2018.