French postcard. A.N., Paris, nr. 164. Cliche Sartony.

Jean Angelo (1875-1933) was a French actor of the silent era. L’Atlantide (1921), Nana (1926), Le comte de Monte Christo (1929) and, again, L’Atlantide (1932) are among his most famous films.

Jean Angelo, originally Jean Jacques Barthelemy, was born 17 May 1875 in Paris according to IMDB, but Cine-Artistes indicates the lesser probably date of 17 May 1888. In 1903 he started to perform on stage at the Theatre of Sarah Bernhardt. In 1908 he was one of the French actors who dared to cross the line and play in films too, as in the Film d’Art drama The Assassination of the Duc de Guise/L’assassinat du Duc de Guise (Andre Calmettes, Charles Le Bargy 1908). Angelo played in many dramas by Film d’Art and SCAGL as in Queen Elisabeth/Les amours de la reine Elisabeth (Louis Mercaton, Henri Desfonatines 1912), starring Sarah Bernhardt and Lou Tellegen. This film became a huge succes in the US and paved the way for Tellegen’s move to Hollywood; Angelo stayed in France, though, and played in some 24 short and longer films between 1908 and 1914, mostly in minor parts. In 1911 he played the republican revolutionary Enjolras in the four-part film Les Miserables, by Albert Capellani, and in 1913 also performed in the four-part serial Les Mysteres de Paris by Capellani.

When the First World War broke out in the Summer of 1914, Angelo was probably involved in the war, as he didn’t act in film in 1915-1916. In 1917 he contributed to the war propaganda film Meres francaises/Mothers of France (Rene Hervil, Louis Mercanton), starring Sarah Bernhardt. That year Angelo also went to the US to perform at Fort Lee, New Jersey, in the World Film production The Divine Sacrifice, directed by George Archainbaud and released early 1918. It was Angelo’s first major role, and also his only American performance, as he returned to France before the war was over, to play in the Pathe production L’expiation/The Expiation (Camille de Morlhon 1918), adapted from Guy de Maupassant and starring Gabrielle Robinne. In 1920 he probably had his first male lead in Les cheres images by Andre Hugon, and costarring Maxa.

In the 1920s Angelo became an acclaimed and sought after film star, famed for his athletic physique, his fencing skills, his distinction and seductiveness. Among Angelo’s best known performances of the 1920s is that of captain Morhange in L’Atlantide (1921) by Jacques Feyder, adapted from Pierre Benoit’s novel. Two French officers, captain Morhange and lieutenant St. Avit (George Melchior) are lost in the North African desert and meet the seductive and cruel ruler of Atlantis, Queen Antinea (Stacia Napierkowska). After that followed leads in various films, often adaptations of novels and stage plays: the comedy Fromont jeune and Risler aine/Fromont juinior and Risler senior (Henry Krauss 1921), L’ecuyere/The Rider (Leonce Perret 1922) with Gladys Jennings, La maison dans la foret/The House in the Forest (Jean Legrand 1922), La riposte/The Answered Letter (Viktor Tourjansky 1922) with Nathalie Lissenko, Le chant de l’amour triomphant (Tourjansky 1923) with Rolla Norman and Nicolas Koline, the Austrian film Die letzte Stunde/Hotel Potemkin (Max Neufeld 1924), L’aventurier/The Adventurer (Maurice Mariaud, Louis Osmont 1924), Barocco (Charles Burguet 1925) with Charles Vanel, and Le double amour/Double Love (Jean Epstein 1925) with Camille Bardou and Pierre Batcheff.

Angelo was Robert Macaire in Jean Epstein’s romantic comedy Les Aventures de Robert Macaire (1925), and he was the pirate Surcouf in the homonymous adventure film (1926) by Luitz-Morat. He gave a memorable performance as the count of Vandeuvres in Jean Renoir’s Franco-German adaptation of Zola’s Nana (1926), opposite Catherine Hessling as Nana and Werner Krauss as the count Moffat. Renoir asked him back for his Marquitta (1927), opposite Marie-Louise Iribe, one of the main actresses of L’Atlantide. After that Angelo joined Vanel, Bardou, Suzy Vernon and others for the drama Martyre (1927) while he was coupled with Italian diva Francesca Bertini in the melo La fin de Monte Carlo (1927).

After playing the lover of Huguette Duflos in Henri Debain’s blackmail story Chantage (1927), Angelo went to Berlin to play in Zwei unterm Himmelszelt (Johannes Guter 1927), starring Margarete Schlegel and Ernst Deutsch, and in Der Fall des Staatsanwalts M./Strange Case of District Attorney M (Rudolf Meinert, Giulio Antamoro), in which Maria Jacobini and Angelo had the leads. Back in France, Angelo starred in La ronde infernale (Luitz-Morat 1928), Una java (Henry Roussel 1928), and La vierge folle (Luitz-Morat 1929) with Emmy Lynn. Angelo then gave another memorable interpretation in Henri Fescourt’s prestigious adaptation of Dumas: The Count of Monte Christo/Le comte Monte Christo (1928), in which Angelo played the title role of Edmond Dantes, alias the count of Monte Christo, opposite Lil Dagover as Mercedes and an all star cas

Evelyn Dall (1918 - 2010)
American-born singer and actor who spent the war years in Britain

For those people for whom the words Itma, "Big-Hearted Arthur" and Ambrose conjure up fond memories, and the blitz less fond ones, the name of the American-born singer and actor Evelyn Dall, who has died aged 92, might ring a few syncopated bells. Dall spent the war years in Britain, during which time she co-starred with Tommy "It's That Man Again" Handley and Arthur Askey in a few musical-comedy films, and was a featured soloist with Bert Ambrose's dance band, performing at the Holborn Empire and the Mayfair hotel.

Billed as "The Blonde Bombshell", having filched the sobriquet from Jean Harlow, who had died some years before, the petite Dall, who was cute rather than sexy, gave chirpy support to the two cheeky comedians who traded on their radio fame for their lingering appeal. Dall ("doll" when pronounced by Americans) brought an element of Hollywood glamour to breezy, morale-boosting, wartime British musicals, though she had only appeared in a couple of Warner Bros musical shorts before coming to Britain in 1935.

Born Evelyn Mildred Fuss in the Bronx, New York, the daughter of a postal worker, she took her stage name from the surname of two grandchildren of the recently elected President Franklin D Roosevelt. She got her start aged 16 as part of a knockabout comedy act, "Side-Splitting Funsters" Fields, Marvin and Dall, touring in the then-thriving vaudeville theatres. She soon broke away from the act to become a solo "songstress", appearing in Billy Rose's Revue at the Casino de Paris, New York, and in the Monte Carlo Follies, which took her to Monaco, Paris and London. It was at Grosvenor House in Mayfair that Ambrose saw her perform with Sydney Lipton and his band.

In 1935, returning to the US, Dall was featured in the Broadway musical revue Parade, in which she sang Selling Sex, before being invited to join the Ambrose orchestra, with whom she appeared in rather revealing dresses. A few months after her arrival in England, Dall married Albert Holmes, the manager of the band, to enable her to stay in Britain legally, despite having an affair with Ambrose at the same time. (The marriage was dissolved a few years later.)

Dall's first starring film role was in Sing As You Swing (1937), in which she sang three songs. The wafer-thin plot of radio producers' rivalry also allowed plenty of time for Mantovani and his Tipica Orchestra, Nat Gonella and his Georgians and the Mills Brothers to perform. This was followed by Calling All Stars (1937), an enjoyable revue in which Dall shone in two numbers, Organ Grinder's Swing and I Don't Wanna Get Hot, with the Ambrose orchestra, in a cast that also included the Nicholas Brothers, Larry Adler and Elisabeth Welch. Dall co-starred with Ambrose in Kicking the Moon Around (1938), the silly narrative kept bubbly by its director Walter Forde, a specialist in British B-movie comedies. Forde also directed Dall in her last film, Time Flies (1944), opposite Handley, in which she sang: "I'm sitting on a cloud that's silver lined; feeling in a joyful frame of mind. Through the blue I see a view, a lovely world where dreams come true." This was the kind of optimism that British musical comedies peddled in those black times, hardly ever mentioning the war.

In He Found a Star (1941), Dall was third-billed below the Austrian-born comedian Vic Oliver and his wife Sarah Churchill (daughter of Winston), though she outshone the latter. Her next two films, King Arthur Was a Gentleman (1942) and Miss London Ltd (1943), in which she found an ideal partner in the bespectacled, diminutive Askey, were her best. At the same time, Dall was a regular on radio and in stage revues (often with Askey) and made a number of records. (According to Dave Cooper, the keeper of the Evelyn Dall flame, there are many extant recordings of songs still to be discovered.) In 1944, she starred in the West End production of the Cole Porter musical Something for the Boys (1944), in the role created by Ethel Merman on Broadway.

Dall returned to the US in 1946, and married the golfer Sam Winter, with whom she had a son and a daughter. Her children survive her.

• Evelyn Dall (Evelyn Mildred Fuss), actor and singer, born 8 January 1918; died 10 March 2010

Ronald Bergan The Guardian 23 May 2010