Illa Meery (16 May 1915 – October 2010) was a Russian-born French adventuress, singer, film actress and possibly Soviet spy who became involved in the French black market under German occupation.[Chandler p.272]
Émigrée
She was the daughter of count Alexandre Alexandrovitch Tchernychev-Bezobrazov and Marie Nicolaïevna née Chtcherbatova. She arrived in France in 1919 with her parents and older brother as refugees from the October Revolution, first in
Marseille, then
Paris. She attended the Russian school in rue Daru.
Film actress and Chanel model
She appeared in several early French films in the 1920s, notably in
Zouzou as Barbara, the topless foil for Années folles sensation
Josephine Baker, who in that film became the first black woman to star in a French feature film.
[ Katherine Groo. “Shadow Lives: Josephine Baker and the Body of Cinema.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 54, no. 1, 2013, pp. 7–39. Page 19. Available on JSTOR. Accessed 1 Aug. 2023] She later became a model for
Chanel, then Schiaparelli. At that time she was living with the painter , a friend of Philippe de Rothschild. She became his mistress and he got her a part in the film
Lac aux dames (Lake of Ladies), a film he financed, based on a screenplay by
Colette and directed by André Gide's
former lover Marc Allégret.
Later she met professional crook Joseph Goldstein a.k.a. Dorélis. They became a couple and she was soon threatened with expulsion as a stateless person holding a Nansen passport. On 19 July 1939 she married the actor Henri Garat.[ Archives de Paris 16e, marriage license number 1131, 1939 (page 27/31)] In 1940, the couple took refuge in Brazil and lounged on the beach there ith the exiled Carol I of Romania.[
Google Books version has no page numbers but multiple pages at the beginning of that chapter are devoted to her]
Mobsters and Nazis
On her return to France in 1942, she developed ties with the Occupation authorities and black market figures, and was associated with various scandals under the name of Madame Garat. She became the mistress of
Henri Lafont, head of the
Carlingue, and was one of the women known as the Countesses of the Gestapo.
[ She had many affairs with German officers, notably with members of the SD.
]
As the mistress of Hans Leimer, an SS officer tasked with shipping requisitioned artwork and other goods to Germany,
Fourth Republic criminal justice
Arrested by the Americans in May 1945, she was returned to French authorities and imprisoned in Fresnes prison on 6 September. On 5 June 1945, she was sentenced by the tribunal de la Seine to two years in prison and the confiscation of one third of her assets. She was also sued in the civil courts by someone who said she had appropriated assets, in litigation that went on for years.
She claimed to have been a Soviet agent since 1935 and to have penetrated German counterintelligence around 1942,[Patrice Miannay, Dictionnaire des agents doubles dans la Résistance.] but no evidence was found to support this.
Selected filmography
Bibliography
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Chandler, Charlotte. Marlene: Marlene Dietrich, A Personal Biography. Simon and Schuster, 2011.
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Reissued:
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(about Roger Griveau)
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Patrice Rolli, La Phalange nord-africaine (ou Brigade nord-africaine, ou Légion nord-africaine) en Dordogne: Histoire d'une alliance entre la Pègre et la Gestapo; 15 March–19 August 1944, Éditions l'Histoire en Partage, 2013, 189 pages (mostly about Alexandre Villaplane and Raymond Monange)
External links
