Charles Boyer

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Charles Boyer
from the film Love Affair (1939)
Born	August 28, 1899 Figeac, Lot, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Died	August 26, 1978 Phoenix, Arizona

Charles Boyer (August 28, 1899 – August 26, 1978) was a French actor who starred in several classic Hollywood films.

Born in Figeac, Lot, Midi-Pyrénées, France, Boyer started on the stage, but he found his success in European and Hollywood movies during the 1920s and 1930s. He continued to make films over the next several decades. He eventually became an American citizen.

Charles Boyer is best known for his role in the 1944 film Gaslight in which he tried to convince Ingrid Bergman's character that she was going insane. Some years earlier, it was Boyer's role in Algiers (1938) that caused many to credit him with the never-heard line "Come with me to the casbah."

In 1950, he appeared on the Broadway stage in one of his most notable roles, that of Don Juan, in a dramatic reading of the third act of George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. This is the act popularly known as Don Juan in Hell. It was directed by actor Charles Laughton. Laughton co-starred as the Devil, with Cedric Hardwicke as the statue of the military commander slain by Don Juan, and Agnes Moorehead as Dona Anna, the commander's daughter, one of Juan's former conquests. The production was a critical success, and was subsequently recorded complete by Columbia Records, one of the first complete recordings of a non-musical stage production ever made. As of 2006, however, it has never been released on CD.

In 1948 Charles Boyer was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. He continued to act until a few years before his death, his last major film role being that of the High Lama in a musical version of Lost Horizon (1973).

For his contribution to the motion picture and television industries, Charles Boyer has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6300 Hollywood Blvd.

Two days after his wife, British actress Pat Paterson, died from cancer, Charles Boyer committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal. He was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California, United States alongside his wife, and son Michael Charles Boyer, who had committed suicide in 1965 at the age of 21.