May Britt
May Britt ( born March 22, 1933, Lidingö; actually Maybritt Wilkens ) is a former Swedish actress.
May Britt is considered as a discovery of the Italian film producer Carlo Ponti. Together with director Mario Soldati this was in 1951 traveled to Sweden to a leading lady for the planned film Lucrezia to find the Red Corsair. To this end, they sighted in a Stockholm studio photo images from multiple models and met while on the employees Maybritt Wilkens, who eventually offered the role. Under the stage name " May Britt " it was used in Italy primarily as a cool blonde seductress in a rather second-rate melodramas and costume dramas such as The she-wolf of Calabria and Sicily passion.
Through her role as Sonya Rostova in the rotated in Italy by King Vidor film adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace (1956 ) Britt was also known in the U.S. and shortly thereafter brought to Hollywood. Here she starred opposite Marlon Brando in The Young Lions and at the side of Robert Mitchum and Robert Wagner in combat pilot. Then they tried to highlight the Swedish born in a remake of Sternberg 's classic The Blue Angel great. But directed by Edward Dmytryk film proved not only in artistic and commercial terms, a flop, but also revealed the limited acting abilities of Britt.
In 1960, she retired completely back from the film business. This year, Britt married the singer Sammy Davis Jr., for which she had recently converted to Judaism. The wedding was accompanied by the public and the media of racist undertones. At this time, the so-called mixed marriages were forbidden in 31 states of the USA by the "anti- miscegenation law" explicitly. In 1967, this practice was by a supreme court judgment to an end.
The couple had one daughter and adopted two sons.
After the divorce from Davis in 1968 Britt took her acting career again and participated in several television series, most recently in 1988 in the short-lived series sample. For the horror film Haunts (1977 ) she appeared for the last time in front of a movie camera.