What was Charles Boyer''s attraction?

Bedroom eyes & intense charm.

His real life love story was grand & tragic:

"Boyer's marriage to British actress Pat Paterson, his first and only wife, was as romantic as his movies. It was love at first sight when they met at a dinner party in 1934. Two weeks later, they were engaged. Three months later, they were married. Later, they would move from Hollywood to Paradise Valley, Arizona. The marriage would last 44 years. Two days after his wife died from cancer in 1978, Boyer committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal while at a friend's home at Scottsdale. He was taken to the hospital in Phoenix where he died. He was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California, United States alongside his wife, and son Michael Charles Boyer, who had committed suicide playing Russian roulette after breaking up with his girlfriend in 1965 at the age of 21."

Not pretty boy handsome, but masculine and Continental, nice growly voice with an accent. A better actor than he was given credit for. And he wouldn't be a star today. Unfortunately.

American women loved his continental sophistication, he represented everything that was missing from their humdrum lives. %0D %0D Good actor, too.

To this day most Americans swoon over Brit, French and Italian accents. Spanish - not so much.

I BEG to DIFFER!

Aside from the bedroom eyes and the hypnotic voice, he was just overall very charismatic and a brilliant actor. He exuded intelligence and pathos. He was at his most romantically appealing in the 30s and 40s, in movies like Algiers, Mayerling, All This and Heaven Too, and Gaslight; in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, in both American and French films, he gave terrific character performances in The Earrings of Madame De..., Fanny, Barefoot in the Park, and Stavisky.%0D %0D One of my all-time favorites.

Gaslight was a fantastic film, and Boyer was great in it.

Yes, he was one of the greatest film actors, and though I never saw him onstage, he was reputed to have been terrific there as well. (Charles Laughton, no slouch himself, picked Boyer to play the title character in Laughton's legendary production of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell.) To see Boyer's range and depth on film, see Mayerling, Algiers, Love Affair, Hold Back the Dawn, Gaslight, Cluny Brown, and The Earrings of Madame de (with almost equally impressive performances from Danielle Darrieux and Vittorio De Sica). It's interesting to compare his performance in Love Affair to Cary Grant's in the remake, An Affair to Remember. Though Grant may have been an even more accomplished film actor, Boyer is warmer in the role, and sexier, elevating the movie beyond kitsch. Grant also played another role Boyer originated, this time on stage in a play called Kind Sir. The movie was called Indiscreet.

Boyer is hilarious in that episode of I Love Lucy, spoofing his screen image. He's especially funny when he sees that Lucy is on to him and he growls the way she taught him to -- a la Boyer. He was clearly a good sport. Everybody liked working with him, except maybe Billy Wilder, who says Boyer refused to do a scene in HBTD as Wilder wrote it. Then again, James Cagney and Jean Arthur also didn't like Wilder much -- and the three stars have little else in common, except their artistry and their immaculate, deeply felt sense of taste, something no one ever accused Wilder of having, as biting and funny as he could be.

In her typically caustic way, Bette Davis described how she once failed to recognize Boyer on the set of All This and Heaven, too. It seems he had taken off his lifts, toupee, and girdle. Still, she said she admired him tremendously and listed him among the few actors she thought had integrity and artistic ambition. Years after they made the film, Boyer wrote that Davis was the greatest movie actress he knew, though his favorite actress, the one he liked working with most, was Irene Dunne.

Very astute observation, R2. How would so many of the greats fare starting out today--Doris Day, the Hepburns, Bette Davis, Jack Lemmon, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Irene Dunne, Susan Hayward, to name only a few. Too bad everything in the entertainment media iscxreated with the youth generation and/or IQ's on the lower end of the scale.

All the qualities one might wish for in a first rate gigolo, in addition to his acting talent.

I've only seen him in Gaslight and that Lucy episode, he did have that sexy French accent going on.

[quote] "I'm sick at home tonight and watching a Lucy marathon".

Marie!

He was a little, paunchy, balding middle-aged dude successfully marketed to the American public as a sexy, exotic leading man (and played one in one cookie cutter romantic movie after another in the thirties and forties that could bore your face off) but he considered himself a character actor and he had the chops to prove it. After seeing him in about two dozen films in which he appeared slightly dangerous to Irene Dunne or Jean Arthur or Olivia de Havilland but then turned out to be a really nice guy, it's quite remarkable to see him in "Liliom" as a sleazy carny casually squeezing the tit of a girl he just met, or a homicidal psycho in "Mayerling," or a jolly French peasant in "Fanny."

I think his attraction was his intelligence, his craftsmanship as an actor (even in one of those boring romances he's always interesting to watch) and the fact that even when playing a horndog he never really came across as one. He was a thinking person's sex object.

Bump for Boyer because of the resurrection of THE CONSTANT NYMPH and seeing him in BACK STREET. Another great movie of his is HOLD BACK THE DAWN. Amazing actor, and I love his eyes.

The Lucille Ball played it you'd think he was Brad Pitt or Rock Hudson.

Any impression I was left with about Boyer was due to Ball's acting ability.

He and Irene Dunne had great chemistry in "Love Affair" and his Napoleon opposite Garbo was magnificent.

He really is all sorts of charming in the ILL episode. Nice touch with slapstick too when he was trying to leave the room and Lucy and Ethel rip his coat from stem to stern, get ink on his shirt, squash his hat and hit him with the door.

"Ahhhh, Looocy..."

Yeah, R18, that's what impressed me so about him in BACK STREET. He has great chemistry with his co-stars, always establishing a great connection with them.

There have been some very nice responses. I've learned many things here. Thank you all.

He was so wonderfully charming and funny in CLUNY BROWN. I saw that film before I saw GASLIGHT, and could not believe the difference in performance. It was as if his Gaslight character was the inverted image of his CLUNY BROWN charmster. Brilliant.

And I LOVED the way he said the word "squirrel" in CLUNY BROWN. Whenever I see a squirrel, I talk to it in my Boyer voice: "... if it makes you happy to feed squirrels to the nuts, who am I to say nuts to the squirrels?"

Sexy, beautiful-voiced, remarkable commanding actor.

No one has mentioned Tovaritch with Claudette Colbert. Love him.

He looks like the type of guy who would bring her flowers, tell her how beautiful she is and fuck her til she was limp with his big, fat cock.

Nothing.

This makes a change from the frequently reoccuring Van Johnson thread

he could be one of the most menacing villains on screen... you know, the ones that are all quiet and focused and deadly. He could also be a perfectly charming unattractive peasant. Lastly, he was many times a very convincing lover, the leading man who gets the beautiful woman at the end... or the hero who saves the beautiful woman and swoops her off her feet. I don't know of any actors today who could pull all those off. Maybe a few actors could pull off two of those character types but not all three.

Dorothy, did I ever tell you that your aunt Jean once swam nude in a pool with Charles Boyer?

I am trying to watch Gaslight, but I do not like Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman so far. Should I give up and watch the 1940 British version instead? (I have both)

Hurry, tell me which one is better!

Watch HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT with him and Jean Arthur, and you'll get his charm. A totally OTT love story, but he and Jean make it believable.

Yes, but should I watch the American or English version of Gaslight??

American for Bergman and delectable young Lansbury and the MGM production.

Boyer was not the most stunning looking, but he was intense and did connect with his co stars and could really act. Spells hot to me.

I remember him from films shown in our college Humanities class. He narrated films on music and art. There was an excellent one that he did on the Louvre. It was more than just an accent. He had a wonderful voice.

I saw Gaslight a couple of years ago and was thinking he really elevated his part above what could have been basically a Snidely Whiplash. His character was not written with a lot of layers, but he was a compelling evil.

None of the stars before 1960 were even remotely goodlooking save for Marlon Brando. That is why he changed so much of how the world viewed acting.

Part of it was it took men so long to rise through the studio system by the time they got to "A" status they were very old, with sunken chests and gray hair.

Woman on the other hand could rise on looks, ala...Rita Hayworth.

HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT comes on TCM tomorrow at 3:00 AM Pacific/6:00 AM Eastern.

Incidentally, QUEEN BEE starring DL fave Joan Crawford also airs later tomorrow.

I disagree, R36.

HISTORY is also available on TCM ON DEMAND, if you have it.

Also disagree with R36.

He had a great face and jaw line. Truly handsome. With that accent.. Ooolala!