Taina Elg, the Finland-born actress and dancer who starred reverse Gene Kelly within the colourful 1957 George Cukor musical Les Ladies and with Kenneth Extra within the 1959 remake of the spy thriller The 39 Steps, has died. She was 95.
Elg died Could 15 in an assisted care facility in her native Helsinki, her household told the Helsinki Occasions.
On Broadway, Elg labored alongside Raul Julia within the 1974-75 revival of Frank Loesser’s The place’s Charley? — she earned a Tony nomination for greatest featured actress in a musical for that — and within the 1982-84 unique manufacturing of Tommy Tune’s 9, the place she performed the mom of his character, Guido.
Her breakthrough in Hollywood got here together with her flip as cabaret dancer Angèle Ducros in MGM’s Les Ladies, which additionally starred Mitzi Gaynor and Kay Kendall and featured music from Cole Porter. She and Kendall shared the Golden Globe for greatest actress in a musical or comedy for his or her work.
Within the Rank Organisation’s remake of The 39 Steps, Elg portrayed the schoolteacher Miss Fisher, who inadvertently will get concerned with a British diplomat (Extra’s Richard Hannay) out to decipher and break up a sinister plot in opposition to England. (The 1935 unique, after all, was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starred Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll.)
From left: Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, Gene Kelly and Taina Elg in 1957’s Les Ladies.
Courtesy Everett Assortment
The daughter of pianists, Taina Elisabeth Elg was born in Helsinki on March 9, 1930. She appeared in her first movie at age 10, danced with the Finnish Nationwide Ballet in Helsinki and went on to check ballet in Sweden in Stockholm and Gothenburg and in London with the Royal Ballet.
She was found in London by American movie producer Edwin H. Knopf and, within the wake of the Hollywood success loved by fellow Scandinavian Anita Ekberg, signed to a seven-year contract by MGM.
Elg appeared alongside Lana Turner in The Prodigal (1955) and Diane (1956), then obtained a Golden Globe for greatest feminine international newcomer for her efficiency in Gaby (1956), starring Leslie Caron.
In her follow-up to Les Ladies, she starred as a Frenchwoman who owns a farm within the struggle comedy Imitation Basic (1958), starring Glenn Ford and Pink Buttons. Her final film beneath contract at MGM was the African journey Watusi (1959), starring George Montgomery.
Together with her movie profession waning, Elg moved to the stage and starred because the title character in a touring manufacturing of Irma La Douce in 1962. In 1970, she made the primary of her seven Broadway appearances, portraying a nun in Josh Logan’s Look to the Lillies, primarily based on the 1963 Sidney Poitier movie Lilies of the Area.
Later, she toured with Gigi in 1984-85 and with Titanic in 1999-2000.
In 1980-81, Elg stood out as Olympia Buchanan, the banished first spouse of Texas tycoon Asa Buchanan (Philip Carey), on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Reside. Her character memorably falls over a balcony at a dressing up social gathering to her loss of life.
Her résumé included the movies The Bacchantes (1961), Hercules in New York (1970), Liebestraum (1991) and Barbra Streisand’s The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) and the cleaning soap operas The Medical doctors, Guiding Gentle, The Fringe of Night time and Loving.
Her son is jazz guitarist Raoul Björkenheim.
Elg was married to economist and importer Carl “Poku” Björkenheim from 1953 till their 1958 divorce and to educator Rocco Caporale from 1982 till his loss of life in 2008, when she left New York after greater than three many years to return to her dwelling nation. 4 years earlier, she obtained the celebrated Order of the Lion from Finland.