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Maria Amalia " Melina" Mercouri (, 18 October 1920She once gave her year of birth as 1922, ancestrylibrary.com. Accessed 4 May 2022. – 6 March 1994) was a Greek actress, singer, activist, and politician. She came from a prominent political family for multiple generations. She received an Academy Award nomination and won a French Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for her performance in the film Never on Sunday (1960) and an Italian David di Donatello for Topkapi. Mercouri was also nominated for one Tony Award, three Golden Globes, and two BAFTA Awards in her acting career. In 1987 she was awarded a special prize in the first edition of the Europe Theatre Prize.
Mercouri was a member of the Hellenic Parliament, elected as a representative of PASOK. In October 1981, she became the first female Minister of Culture and Sports. She has the longest tenure of any of Greece's Ministers of Culture, having served from 1981 to 1989, and then from 1993 until her death in 1994, during PASOK governments. Mercouri's political activism included her long campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles. One of her greatest achievements was the establishment of the European Capitals of Culture, with Athens chosen as the first capital in 1985. Melina Mercouri: Actor, politician and champion of culture (1920-1994) (PDF), europa.eu Retrieved 12 July 2023
Melina's mother, Irene Lappa, was the sister of Admiral Pyrros Lappas, who served as Chief of the Naval Staff, Secretary General of the Olympic Games Committee, and Chief of the Military House of King Paul. Melina's uncle, George S. Mercouris, held extreme right-wing political views. He was a founder of the Greek National Socialist Party and a governor of the National Bank during the occupation. This so angered the Mercouri family that they refused to attend his funeral in 1943.
In September 1938, she was accepted at the Drama school of the National Theatre with fellow students including Despo Diamantidou and Alexis Damianos.
Mercouri was later criticized for living in comfort in a 400 square meters apartment at Avenue Akademias 4, much of which had been commandeered by the Germans at a time when the Greek people were starving and for not contributing to the national resistance. Melina had commented on this period of her life, both in her autobiography, "I was born a Greek," and on television as Culture minister, taking responsibility for her non-participation in the Resistance during the Occupation.
Lycurgos Kallergis, a member of EAM and the Left during the Occupation, said: "Although I was and am a left-winger, the issue of the opulence in which she lived did not bother me. After all, Melina was hosting people, feeding people, helping friends.... " The great Greek writer Alki Zei also agrees with this view, stating that during the period of occupation, Melina was hiding left-wingers and giving them money.
At the same time, her brother, Spyros Mercouris, had joined the Resistance as a member of the EPON. Many times, according to testimonies, Melina would secretly take Yadikiaroglou's money and give it to her brother for the Resistance, hiding both him and his comrades in the organization while helping her impoverished colleagues. It was known that during the occupation, despite her then-husband's objections, Melina's house, on her own instruction, was always open and welcoming to many people in need, providing them with food and shelter.
Despite occasional criticisms, her dislike of the Nazi occupiers is demonstrated by an incident during the occupation where she disobeyed Schutzstaffel men while at a bar, despite the threat of being shot.
A number of people with strong resistance activities during the occupation became close friends of hers, including writer Iakovos Kambanellis (who wrote 'Stella with the Red Gloves' especially for her), actress Olympia Papadouka, actor Manos Katrakis, actor and secretary of the EAM theatre Dimitris Myrat, writer Alkis Zei, director Nikos Koundouros, and Manolis Glezos.
During the civil war, although Melina Mercouri lived in Kolonaki, which was controlled by the British, she visited her friends and colleagues who had been arrested for their political beliefs. Years later, Aleka Paizi gratefully recounted Melina's visit to the prison where she was being held, to support her.
After 1950, she moved to Paris, where she appeared in boulevard plays by Jacques Deval and Marcel Achard, and met French playwrights and novelists such as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Colette and Françoise Sagan. In 1953, Mercouri received the Marika Kotopouli Prize. Mercouri returned to Greece in 1955. At the Kotopouli-Rex Theatre, Mercouri starred in Macbeth by William Shakespeare and L'Alouette by Jean Anouilh.
She garnered international acclaim when she starred in Never on Sunday (1960), of which Dassin was the director and co-star. For this film, she earned the Best Actress Award at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Profile, bafta.org; accessed 6 December 2014.
After this, she starred in Phaedra (1962), for which she was nominated again for Best Actress in the BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. Her role in Topkapi (1964) garnered her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The directors with whom Mercouri worked included Joseph Losey, Vittorio De Sica, Ronald Neame, Carl Foreman, and Norman Jewison. She starred in the Spanish language film The Uninhibited (1965) by Juan Antonio Bardem.
On June 11, 1967, Mercouri appeared on one of the final episodes of What's My Line (the venerable panel show would leave the air that fall, after eighteen years).
Mercouri continued her stage career in the Greek production of Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth (1960), under the direction of Karolos Koun. In 1967, she played the leading role in Illya Darling (from 11 April 1967 to 13 January 1968) on Broadway theatre, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical. Mercouri's performance in Promise at Dawn (1970) earned her another Golden Globe Award nomination.
Mercouri concentrated on her stage career in the following years, playing in the Greek productions of The Threepenny Opera and, for a second time, Sweet Bird of Youth, in addition to the ancient Greek tragedies Medea and Oresteia. She retired from film acting after making her last film, A Dream of Passion (1978), directed by her husband, Jules Dassin.
In 1987, the jury of the Europe Theatre Prize awarded her a special prize of the presidency with the motivation: "For the devotion and the commitment of an artist who joins her own theatrical experience with the political belief and the ideal of European culture."
Mercouri's last performance on stage was in the opera Pylades at the Athens Concert Hall in 1992, portraying Clytemnestra.
Her recordings of "Athenes, ma Ville", a collaboration with Vangelis, and "Melinaki", were popular in France. Her recording of "Feggari mou, Agapi mou" (Phaedra) was later covered by Marinella in 1965.
When her Greek citizenship was revoked, she said: "I was born a Greeks and I will die a Greek. Those bastards were born fascists and they will die fascists".Helen Vlachos (1971). 9780902999008, (10 Gayfere St., SWIP 3HN), Doric Publications Ltd.. . ISBN 9780902999008 In London, she worked with Amalia Fleming and Helen Vlachos of Kathimerini against the junta of the colonels.
In the Greek legislative elections of 1974, she was a PASOK candidate in the Piraeus B constituency, but the 7,500 votes were not enough to secure a seat for her in the Hellenic Parliament (she needed 33 more votes), but she was successful in the elections of 1977, after conducting a grass-roots campaign. (1981). 9780844734057, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. . ISBN 9780844734057
As Minister for Culture, Mercouri took advantage of her earlier career to promote Greece to other European leaders. She strongly advocated the return to Athens of the Elgin Marbles that were removed from Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, and are now part of the British Museum collection in London.
In 1983, she engaged in a televised debate with the then director of the British Museum, David M. Wilson, which was interpreted by many as a public relations disaster for the British Museum. In anticipation of the return of the marbles, she held an international competition for the construction of the New Acropolis Museum, designated to display them and finally established in 2009.
One of her greatest achievements was the establishment of the institution of the European Capital of Culture within the framework of cultural policy of the European Union. She had conceived and proposed the idea in 1983, with Athens being the first title-holder in 1985. She was also a devoted supporter of the Athens bid to host the Centennial Olympic Games.
In 1983, during the first Greek presidency of the Council of the European Union, Mercouri invited the Ministers for Culture of the other nine member states of the European Union at Zappeion, in order to increase the people's cultural awareness, since there was not any reference to cultural questions in the Treaty of Rome, which led to the establishment of formal sessions between the Ministers of Culture of the European Union.
During the second presidency of Greece in 1988, she supported the cooperation between Eastern Europe and the European Union, which was finally implemented one year later with the celebration of the Month of Culture in Eastern countries.
Mercouri commissioned a study to integrate all the archaeological sites of Athens to create a traffic-free archaeological park to promote the Greek culture. She introduced free access to museums and archaeological sites for Greek citizens, organized a series of exhibitions of Greek cultural heritage and modern Greek art worldwide, supported the restoration of buildings of special architectural interest and the completion of the Athens Concert Hall, and backed the establishment of the Museum of Byzantine culture in Thessaloniki.
In June 1986, Melina Mercouri spoke at the Oxford Union, the debating society, on the matter of the Parthenon Marbles and whether they should remain in London or be returned to Greece. She argued passionately for the Marbles' reunification. She said the Marbles are more to Greece than just works of art: they are an essential element of Greek heritage, which ties directly into cultural identity. She said: "You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us. They are our pride. They are our sacrifices. They are our noblest symbol of excellence. They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy. They are our aspirations and our name. They are the essence of Greekness."
After PASOK's win in the election of 1993, she was reappointed to the Ministry for Culture. Her major goals in this brief second term in office were: to create a cultural park in the Aegean Sea in order to protect and enhance the environment and civilization of the Aegean Islands, and to link culture with education at all education levels, introducing a system of post-training of teachers.
In the late 1940s, Melina met Pyrros Spyromilios, whom she was with for seven years. He was alleged to be the great love of her life before she met Jules Dassin. Pyrros Spyromilios was a naval officer and a hero of the Albanian front. He died in March 1961 due to heart hypertrophy, which devastated Melina, even though five years had passed since their separation.
In 1955, she starred in her first feature film, Stella. The film competed at the Cannes Film Festival, and during its screening, she met and fell in love with Jules Dassin. She was married to him until the end of her life.Abecassis, M. (2018). An anthology of french and francophone singers from A to Z: “Singin' in french”. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Her sole immediate survivor was her husband, Jules Dassin. The couple had no children. She received a state funeral with Prime Minister's honours. She was buried at the First Cemetery of Athens four days later.
The Melina Mercouri Foundation was founded by her widower. After her death, UNESCO established the Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes (UNESCO-Greece) which rewards outstanding examples of action to safeguard and enhance the world's major cultural landscapes.
| 1955 | Stella | Stella | |
| 1957 | He Who Must Die | Katerina | |
| 1958 | The Gypsy and the Gentleman | Belle | British film for Joseph Losey |
| 1959 | The Law | Donna Lucrezia | |
| 1960 | Never on Sunday | Ilya | Won—Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress Nominated—New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress |
| 1961 | Long Live Henry IV... Long Live Love | Marie de Médicis | |
| The Last Judgment | Foreign lady | ||
| 1962 | Phaedra | Phaedra | Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama |
| 1963 | The Victors | Magda | |
| Canzoni nel mondo | Herself | ||
| 1964 | Topkapi | Elizabeth Lipp | Won—Golden Plate David di Donatello Award Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical |
| 1965 | The Uninhibited | Jenny | |
| 1966 | A Man Could Get Killed | Aurora | |
| Maria | |||
| 1969 | Gaily, Gaily | Lil | |
| 1970 | Promise at Dawn | Nina Kacew | Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama |
| 1974 | The Rehearsal | Belle | |
| 1975 | Once Is Not Enough | Karla | |
| Kipros | Herself | ||
| 1977 | Nasty Habits | Sister Gertrude | |
| 1978 | A Dream of Passion | Maya | |
| 1981 | Gynaikes stin exoria | Narrator | Voice, short, (final film role) |
On 18 October 2015, Google Doodle commemorated her 95th birthday.
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