Darling Légitimus

Acting

Darling Légitimus

Born 1907-11-21 · Le Carbet, Martinique

Mathilda Marie Berthilde Paruta (21 November 1907 – 7 December 1999), better known as Darling Légitimus, was a French actress. In 1983, she received the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for her performance in the film Sugar Cane Alley. Born on 21 November 1907 at Le Carbet in Martinique, she spent her early years in Caracas, Venezuela. Mathilda Paruta arrived in Paris, France, at age of 16, wanting to become a dancer. She met Victor-Etienne Légitimus, son of the government deputy, Hegesippe Jean Légitimus, and went on to become his lifelong companion and bear him five children. Known for a long time as Miss Darling, she later chose to go by the name of Darling Legitimus. She performed as a dancer in La Revue Nègre (1925) with Josephine Baker, and posed for Picasso as well as for sculptor Paul Belmondo, father of Jean-Paul Belmondo, the actor. During the 1930s, Darling wrote, composed and sang numerous Caribbean songs such as Biguine and Mazurka. She often performed alongside known musicians of the era, including "Pe En Kin Sosso" and his band. She also performed in plays by Jean Genet (Les Nègres) and Aimé Césaire. She was directed on the big screen by Raymond Rouleau in Les Sorcieres de Salem (The Crucible) alongside Simone Signoret and Yves Montand, and Le Salaire de la Peur (Wages of Fear) by Henri Georges Clouzot, with Sacha Guitry, Jean-Claude Brialy and Bernardo Bertolucci. In 1983, at the age of 76, she won the Volpi Cup for the best female interpretation of "The Mostra of Venise", also for her role in La Rue Cases-Nègres (Sugar Cane Alley), directed by her compatriot Euzhan Palcy. During her long life, she was acquainted with a great number of famous actors, among them Arletty, Fernandel, Marlon Brando and Pierre Brasseur. She also took part in numerous ORTF (Office de Radio-diffusion de la Television Française) productions, of which a telefilm by Jean-Christophe Averty, Les verts Paturages (The Green Pastures, written by Marc Connelly), was produced. She died on 7 December 1999 at Kremlin-Bicetre in the Val de Marne near Paris, in France, without any more acting roles after Sugar Cane Alley in spite of hopes of her nomination and rewards. The writer, Calixthe Beyala and Caribbean actor Luc Saint-Eloy, representatives of "Liberté" collective came up on stage at the César ceremony in 2000, to claim one of the largest presence on French television screens and to pay her a public tribute, since the organizers had "forgotten" to name Darling as one of the previous year's great losses. Source: Article "Darling Légitimus" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Acting credits

Last Tango in Paris poster
6.9

A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.

Last Tango in Paris

1972

The Wages of Fear poster
8.0

In a run-down South American town, four men are paid to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin into the jungle through to the oil field. Friendships are tested and rivalries develop as they embark upon the perilous journey.

The Wages of Fear

1953

The Fire Within poster
7.6

Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.

The Fire Within

1963

La Dernière Bourrée à Paris poster
5.5

Young Berthe, deeply moved by a cinema screening of the notoriously sultry Le Dernier Tango à Paris, goes to the address where most of the action takes place, a building overlooking the Bir-Hakeim Bridge metro station. Reality suddenly seems to mimic fiction when she discovers not only an apartment advertised for rent, but also a man prostrate in a corner who seems to be waiting for her. Hoping for the same torrid embrace as in the film, she discovers that he is in fact preoccupied only by the apartment's defects. Attempting to embark on a passionate affair, she learns that the man suffers from libido problems.

La Dernière Bourrée à Paris

1973

The Witches of Salem poster
6.9

Salem 1692. The young Abigail, seduced and abandoned by John Proctor, accuses John's wife of being a witch in revenge. A series of tragic trials soon befall Salem as fear and suspicion blur the lines of reality.

The Witches of Salem

1957

A Missionary poster
10.0

Dreaming of heroic deeds, a young missionary soon becomes disillusioned.

A Missionary

1955

Tourbillon poster
7.0

Taking advantage of the shooting of a film, gangsters stage a hold -up. A black man, Selim, is unfairly accused.

Tourbillon

1953

Sugar Cane Alley poster
6.8

Martinique, in the early 1930s. Young José and his grandmother live in a small village. Nearly everyone works cutting cane and barely earning a living. The overseer can fine a worker for the smallest infraction. The way to advance is to do well in school. José studies hard and succeeds in an exam allowing him to attend school in the capital. With only a partial scholarship, the tuition is very costly. José and his grandmother move to Fort-de-France to make José's studies easier...

Sugar Cane Alley

1983

Le Cri du cormoran, le soir au-dessus des jonques poster
5.9

Alfred Mullanet, an unlucky player who lives on his wife's income, becomes in a few moments the object of interest of two thugs, Kruger and Mister K.

Le Cri du cormoran, le soir au-dessus des jonques

1971

Bouboule 1er, roi nègre poster
7.0

Georges Vinot nicknamed Bouboule, a colorful but naive Parisian, falls prey to a gang of diamond thieves. Not only do they manipulate him into smuggling stolen precious stones into Senegal but they have bought life insurance on his head, which means they are prepared to do anything to liquidate him. But Bouboule succeeds in thwarting all their traps and eventually decides to settle down in a Senegalese village, of which he becomes... king!

Bouboule 1er, roi nègre

1934

Three Feet in a Bed poster
6.2

In spite of his failures as a peddler, Casimir guaranteed his fiance that this time the vacuum cleaners will work for good. But he's still unsuccessful until he go to the appartment of Paul-Andre, a painter who was engaged by correspondence to a rich south-American woman. That's exactly when she arrive armed with a gun infuriated after she had received a rupture letter from the man she had never seen. She mistakenly took Casimir as her painter lover. Casimir his ready to flee until he learned she owned many hotels, a thousand rooms in fact. "A thousand rooms, a thousand vacuum cleaners", he suddenly think.

Three Feet in a Bed

1950

Les verts pâturages poster
5.0

A French TV movie directed by Jean-Christophe Averty , broadcast on December 24, 1964 . The Old Testament set in Louisiana with an all black cast.

Les verts pâturages

1964

The Toilets Were Closed from the Inside poster
5.2

A bus conductor gets dressed for work in the morning, goes to the toilet, where he is killed by a bomb. The Commissioner and his fat, bumbling assistant, Inspector Charbonnier are put on the case. After interviewing friends, wives, colleagues, and spying on strangers who might be connected, our heroes trace the assassin down to a mental institution where, it seems, the murder victim has been an inmate for the last three years...

The Toilets Were Closed from the Inside

1976

Women Are Like That poster
5.9

American FBI agent Lemmy Caution arrives in France to track down a dangerous spy.

Women Are Like That

1960

Églantine poster
6.5

Léopold, a young schoolboy, returns from boarding school to spend the summer vacations with his family. He is delighted to see his grandmother Eglantine again. The good times spent with all those close to him make him forget the stress of school. But with the start of the new school year fast approaching, Léopold learns of Eglantine's death.

Églantine

1972

Flesh and the Woman poster
4.2

In this romance, a jilted lawyer joins the French Foreign Legion to help him forget his faithless love. While in the desert he espies a village beauty who is the exact double of his true-love.

Flesh and the Woman

1954

The Doll poster
5.5

An avant-garde political satire that takes place in a mythical country in South America. The dictator has been replaced by a look-alike revolutionary, and the dictator's wife has been replaced by a robot.

The Doll

1962

The Road to Damascus poster
8.0

Saul De Tarse is a Roman soldier who is making rough all over. He arrives at the Golgotha when the apostles remove the cross. He ruthlessly persecutes the Christians, even though they are his own friends.

The Road to Damascus

1952

Les trois cousines poster
8.0

To receive the inheritance of his uncle, who died in Brazil, Claude, who has no money, must absolutely marry one of his three cousins.

Les trois cousines

1947

The Ghostly Rental poster
7.7

At the end of the 19th Century, young Fanning finishes his studies in theology at the University of Cambridge. During a walk through the countryside, the boy, inspired by the lecture of romantic novels, discovers an abandonned house, from which an old man is coming out. He returns to the house regularly without ever seeing its mysterious inhabitant. Fanning finally surprises the old man while he is sitting on a bench at the cemetery and manages to gain his confidence...

The Ghostly Rental

1965

Le Bateau à soupe poster
7.5

Hervé is a tough sea captain in command of the "Duchesse Anne", a rum-trading ship. But the sea dog hides a tender heart and he allows Marie-Douce, a poor slum girl who dreams of seeing the wide world,on board. To have her accepted by the crew, he passes her off as his niece. A seasoned master like him, wise enough to ban alcohol use on his ship, should have known better : a beautiful girl on the deck cannot but unleash the savage instincts of all those men without women.

Le Bateau à soupe

1947

A Friend Will Come Tonight poster
6.1

Commander Gerard and his band of guerrillas have found the ideal hideout: a nursing home in the Alps where, along with the mentally ill, are also hiding a Jewish girl and a Swiss doctor who might be a spy for the Germans ...

A Friend Will Come Tonight

1946

La bande du Rex poster
10.0

What do Patricia, Badou, François, Dingo and P'tit Jeannot have in common? They live in the Paris suburbs, they are young, they are on the verge of breaking away from school, from the working world or from the Army. Their meeting place is "La Javanaise", a bar held by no-nonsense Janine and her lighter husband Lucien. There they mix with their idol, Daniel, also known as Frankie Mégalo, a film projectionist and a rocker without a band. Most of the efforts of these born idlers will consist in finding a band and a venue for Frankie to perform and in laying hands on cash by means fair or foul to go to the Southern sun.

La bande du Rex

1980