The broken destiny of Martine Carol, the French Marilyn Monroe who died at 46

For younger people, his name may not mean anything. However, before the peak of Brigitte Bardot, Martine Carol was the most popular actress of the 1950s. Nicknamed the French Marilyn Monroe, Marie-Louise Mourer, her real name, shared many points in common with the latter. Born on May 16, 1920 in Saint-Mandé, nothing suggested that Martine Carol would become the next French icon. This is thanks to his role in the film Caroline Chérie, released in 1951, Martine Carol became a movie star. A long-awaited recognition since this is his 21st film since the start of his career in 1943.

At the time, her first stage name was Marlyse Harvey. But one of his partners, François Perrier, advised him to change his pseudonym. She then chooses Martine Carole, then Martine Carol without the letter “e” at the end. She then had success with the play The Road to Tobacco, then to the cinema with the films The Lovers of Verona, A Wedding Night, Beware of Blondes, The Secret of Saigon, We’ll Go to Paris, etc. If her acting is very serious, her life outside of film sets is much less so.

Martine Carol: a life shattered by numerous excesses

Like many celebrities, Martine Carol gets bogged down in alcohol and partying. It also increases the number of romantic relationships, each more unstable than the last. One of his companions, John Ringling North, owner of the Barnum circus, even went as far as lock him in a trailer. If her romantic relationships never last long, the starlet does not give up, unable to stay alone. “The love of men, that warms my heart”, she once declared, as reported actu.fr. Another sentence uttered by the actress clearly illustrates her sentimental issues: “How can you live more than eight days with the same man?”

In total, Martine Carol married four times. On September 14, 1949, she married Josef Stephen Crane, known as Steve Crane, an American actor and restaurateur who had previously been married to Lana Turner. Their separation was made official in May 1952. On July 15, 1954, the actress remarried Christian-Jaque, whom she had met two years earlier. Their story ended with a divorce on May 13, 1959. A few months later, on August 3, 1959, Martine Carol married André Rouveix, a young French doctor she met in Fort-de-France. But their union did not last and the actress filed for divorce in May 1961. Finally, she married British businessman Mike Eland on June 30, 1966 in London.

After the consecration, Martine Carol’s slow descent into hell

Four is also the number of suicide attempts by Martine Carol. The first comes after her breakup with Georges Marchal, when the actor preferred actress Dany Robin. In despair, Martine Carol threw herself into the Seine in April 1947. In 1962, the actress cut her veins in Tahiti, after being abandoned by a local soldier, who was 20 years younger than her. She started again in February 1963, still in Tahiti, after a period of intense alcoholism where she drank three bottles of champagne a day. If her third husband, the doctor André Rouveix, almost succeeded in putting her out of her demons, this time it was boredom which got the better of her mental health. Indeed, despite a healthy life without alcohol and surrounded by nature, Martine Carol attempted suicide in 1960.

After a long period of slack, her career resumed thanks to her last husband, Mike Eland. The latter manages to put her back on her feet. “Thanks to him, I don’t drink at all anymore. I love him like I’ve never loved. He’s the first virile man I’ve ever known. He keeps me alive. He doesn’t exploit me like the others. Hell, it’s over. It was with Mike that I had my first Christmas.”she declared at the time. If the star seemed happy again, destiny decided otherwise. In fact, she was found dead on February 5, 1967, naked in the bathroom of a Parisian hotel. The autopsy will reveal that Martine Carol died of a heart attack, due to her past excesses, at only 46 years old.