Ivan Nikolai Desnitskij was born in Peking, China on December 28, 1922. His Russian father, Nikolai Desnitsky, gained French citizenship and worked as a secretary at the French embassy. His mother was Swedish.
Ivan attended schools in Tehran, Washington, Paris and Brisbane. He trained as an actor in Paris. His first work in film was costume drawing and decorating. Ivan was bilingual in French and German.
As Ivan Desny he played his first small roles in London in 1947 and 1949, the director David Lean cast him in a leading role in the 1950 film “Madeleine”. Here he played alongside Ann Todd and Leslie Banks. Desny became internationally known in 1952 with the role of the senator's son Fred Clarke, who in the Sartre adaptation "The Honorable Harlot" seduces the witness to a murder of a colored man and tricks her into giving false testimony about the perpetrator, his cousin. He would go on to appear in more than 150 films, both in Germany and France.
In 1980, Desny received an honorary German Film Award for "his continued outstanding individual contributions to the German film over the years."
Desny died in Ascona Switzerland of pneumonia on April 13, 2002, at the age of 79.
Desny appeared in two Euro-westerns: as Colonel Calleja in 1967’s “Guns for San Sebastian” and as Baron von Schroeder in the TV series “The Alaska Kid” in 1991.
DESNY, Ivan (aka Juan Desny, Yvan Desny)
(Ivan Nikolai Desnitskij) [12/28/1922, Peking, China – 4/13/2002,
Ascona, Switzerland (pneumonia)] – film, TV actor, married to actress Ghislaine
Arsac (Ghislaine Fick) [1930–1991] (1985-1991).
Guns for San Sebastian – 1967 (Colonel Calleja)
The Alaska Kid (TV) – 1991 (Baron von Schroeder)
No comments:
Post a Comment