Belinda Lee

[KELT]

[SIZE=4]G[/SIZE]orgeous BELINDA LEE was born in England in 1935. She attended the Tudor Arms Academy (theatrical school) and afterwards was spotted by film director VAL GUEST who helped get her into movies. GUEST also introduced her to photographer CORNEL LUCAS who was very well known in Europe for the studio portraits he did for RANK; after a courtship, the two would marry in 1954. The marriage lasted five years. LEE made about 15 movies in England between 1954 & 1959. When she divorced LUCAS, she moved to Italy and managed to make about 17 films there in the next few years.

An affair that she had with the married PRINCE ORSINI was condemned by the Pope and had ORSINI' family barred from the Vatican. This was scandalous news when this occurred in'58. Following the on again, off again romantic hijinks with the PRINCE, BELINDA began a tumultuous relationship with Italian director GUALTIERO JACOPETTI who is not only known for his fast living but for his penchant for underage girls which gets him into trouble consistently. In March of 1961, BELINDA who had been staying in Las Vegas with GUALTIERO head to Los Angeles. Travelling with his assistant director and a professinal driver, the car blows a tire while on US Highway 91 near San Bernadino. JACOPETTI breaks a leg, the two men have minor injuries, but BELINDA LEE is thrown from the car and almost decapitated. She will live another 20 minutes. The patrolman in whose arms the actress dies will recall her as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. Actor ROSSANO BRAZZI (South Pacific) comes on the scene not long after, and will have nightmares from having lifted the sheet that covered LEE'S body. He recalled for an article published in 1975 that her head was almost severed from her body. She was 25. BELINDA' remains were cremated and interred in a columbarium at HOLLYWOOD MEMORIAL PARK. The following year JACOPETTI will have great success with the release of his documentary about some of the cruel and morbid aspects of life around the world entitled MONDO CANE.

JACOPETTI

[leevancleef]

Great post, i think that Belinda was beyond GORGEOUS. Can you see a little resemblance to ANITA EKBERG?
She was the favorite pin-up of the british magazines of the 50s. i remember reading that she was offered some roles in Hollywood but she preferred to stay in Europe.

[Kathyf]

She was beautiful. Interesting post.

[MorbidMolly]

Kelt....you always have the most amazing post....great info

[Lisamarie]

What eyes!!! Poor thing what a tragic story.

[hoxharding]

She was a beauty-
Best thing about 'Mondo Cane': The mysterious dance of the Hula! Wonder and gasp as tourists in Hawaii learn the mystical dance of the Hula!
(honestly, this was one of the last segments in the film)

[Stonecold]

Stunning woman.

[Guest]

Date of Birth
15 June 1935, Budleigh Salterton, Devon, England, UK

Date of Death
12 March 1961, near San Bernardino, California, USA (road accident)

Knockout blonde Belinda Lee was born in Devon, England to a hotel owner (father) and florist (mother) on June 15, 1935. An incredible beauty while still in her early teens, she attended the Rookesbury Park Prep School at Hampshire and St. Margaret's at Devon. Expressing an avid interest in acting, she focused on dramatics at the Tudor Arts Academy at Surrey, then gained entry at RADA. She was noticed and signed by the Rank Studio Organization while performing at the Nottingham Playhouse and artificially groomed in starlet parts, the first being The Runaway Bus (1954). That same year she married Rank Studio photographer Cornel Lucas. Belinda worked intently in films but found frustration typed as a buxom, peroxide blonde. Boxed in as a second-string Diana Dors, she played a bombshell foil to Benny Hill in Who Done It? (1956) and was served up as sexy window dressing opposite both John Gregson in Miracle in Soho (1957) and Louis Jourdan in Dangerous Exile (1957). After divorcing Lucas, Belinda headed off to Italy for a change of pace and atmosphere but only got more of the same roles. This time she played temptresses in lowbudget spectacles. It all ended much too soon for the 26-year-old when she was killed in a car accident while vacationing in California.

Of all the actresses who came to a tragic early end, Belinda Lee is the most interesting. She emerged at the right time - the 1950s - but in the wrong country - the U. K. - whose film industry was dominated by decision-makers who had little idea of what films to make and, seemingly, little idea about women.

Belinda Lee was very, very attractive with the kind of looks that the world was impressed by in the 1950s. She had an extremely photogenic face, with a gently curving nose, high cheek bones and unusually shaped eyes. She also had exceptionally elegant legs, which were much appreciated by photographers and magazine editors.

Belinda was born in Devon, the south-west corner of England, in 1935. Nineteen years later, after having allegedly trained at the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Arts, she played a dumb blonde in "The Runaway Bus" opposite Frankie Howard, Margaret Rutherford and Petula Clark(!) for which she received good notices. She was then Amanda, one of the nubile and naughty schoolgirls in "The Belles Of St.Trinians".

After two years - sometimes above the title - in movies that are so undistinguished that they appear neither on television nor in Halliwell's "Film Guide", she was given a contract with the Rank Organisation.

At that time Rank, bewildered by the decline in cinema attendances and mesmerised by the old Hollywood, believed its best policy was to mimic the major Hollywood studios. Apparently Rank had not noticed that Hollywood was also suffering, was re-thinking many ideas and was changing as fast as it could. Rank decided that it too would have starlets, and Belinda Lee was to be one of them.

As a starlet, Belinda was duly photographed and her pictures were sent to magazines which, unsurprisingly, were happy to print them, sometimes on their front covers. Belinda also supplied the press with trivia about herself. For example, in the aftermath of Ava Gardner's performance in "The Barefoot Contessa", Belinda let it be known that she too liked to wander about barefoot. Today such tittle-tattle is easy to ridicule, but at the time it was the stock-in-trade of ambitious starlets. However Belinda was luckier than most starlets: she was given parts in movies. Indeed the single most consistent feature of Belinda's career is that she never stopped working. She may have been publicised as a glamour girl with hypnotic legs, but in fact she was a work horse.

Unfortunately most of the work was playing chaste and sympathetic young women whose highest ambition is to comfort a fumbling inadequate, played by the likes of Norman Wisdom or Ian Carmichael. In British films in the mid-1950s, good-looking girls were not allowed to have strong emotions or a healthy sex drive, were not expected to have career ambitions or even a desire to travel the world. Belinda avoided these saccharine roles as much as possible, and in her films with both Wisdom and Carmichael, she played the villainess. However she could not avoid them altogether.

Belinda was a sufficiently good actress to bring to these roles the mixture of warmth, compassion, modesty and good humour that Rank believed filmgoers wanted. She also brought far more glamour than other actresses, and this produced a divided response from journalists and the public. Some people adored her playing of nice girls. Others, not recognising that Belinda was impeded by screenplay and studio, felt she was antiseptic. (One columnist, itemising his hopes for movies in the year ahead, included a wish to "see Belinda Lee well and truly kissed"!)

In view of her work rate and the direction her career was to take, it is likely that Belinda was fully aware of the shallowness of Rank's view of women. It is probable that she longed to play a different type of woman.

In 1957 Belinda graduated from aspiring starlet to authentic star. In that year Rank made two attempts to create real women with normal instincts. Neither attempt was done well, neither screenplay was competently structured, but they were major steps in the right direction. In between these two films Belinda traveled to Rome for her first foreign movie and became involved in a romance that, possibly, changed her life and career.

In "Dangerous Exile" Belinda played a spirited young woman looking after the refugee heir to the French throne. Lushly lit by Geoffrey Unsworth but hampered by the dialogue - she calls the boy "Honey" (!) - Belinda was womanly and forceful. For many, this was a revelation. There was much press comment on how Belinda had suddenly matured on screen from a well-scrubbed sixth-form girl into a full-grown woman, despite wearing thick crinoline dresses and playing opposite a thirteen year old boy.

Belinda then went to Rome to play the female lead in "La Venera Di Cheronea" (a.k.a. "The Goddess Of Love"). While in Rome, Belinda met Prince Filippo Orsini, and soon the media was reporting that an adulterous romance was in full swing. (Both Belinda and Orsini were married.) As the Orsini family had links to the Vatican, this was the stuff of scandal, and quickly Belinda became a major European celebrity.

Belinda returned to England for "Nor The Moon By Night" (a.k.a. "Elephant Gun"), a very thin story, in which she was even allowed to suggest sexual desire! Playing a young woman caring for a hypochondriac mother while conducting a pen-letter love affair, she goes to Africa to marry a man she has never met but finds herself falling for his brother. Again Belinda's screen presence was strong enough to hold the audience's attention despite the weakness of the material.

At this point, when she had firmly established that she was more than just a good-looking starlet, Belinda left the British film business and moved to Italy. Did she jump or was she pushed? There were rumours that she had attempted suicide and that Rank, terrified of a possible scandal, had dropped her. There were other rumours that she had gone to Italy to fulfill her emotional life. After all these years, does anyone know the truth?

Belinda's career thereafter was completely different. The parts she played, the colour of her hair, her publicity photographs: all were in marked contrast to her British period. No longer a refined English rose, she was presented coarsely, often unflatteringly, sometimes in dubious taste, and projected a sullen carnality that alarmed many of her British fans. Letters were written to the fan magazines in protest, but to no avail. Belinda Lee did not come home.

Freed from the constraints of The Rank Organisation, Belinda adopted the same strategy in choosing roles that Elizabeth Taylor was now using in Hollywood. Strong, sexually driven women, harpies and harridans even, who controlled and manipulated men, these were the parts that kept Belinda busy. A blackmailing whore in Germany or an unfaithful wife in Italy, Lucrezia Borgia or Messalina, Belinda churned out one film after another; two in 1958, four in 1959, five in 1960 and finally three in 1961 until her untimely death. Most of these films have been unavailable for years and it is now difficult to assess her work. Derek Elley's excellent book, "The Epic Film", praises Belinda's work within that genre and makes its unavailability all the more frustrating. Perhaps the DVD boom will restore Belinda's work to the public domain. (A DVD of Belinda's last movie "Constantino Il Grande" (a.k.a "Constantine And The Cross") is offered continuously on Ebay. However its origin is questionable, established DVD traders avoid it, and no positive feed-back about its quality has yet emerged.)

Her death was hideous. Belinda was traveling as a passenger by car in California when her vehicle was involved in a crash. She was thrown from the car and within minutes was dead.

[Shannon]

Just discovered this lady today when looking up celebs with last name Lee. Her death is kind of Jayne Mansfield-esque, maybe. Anyway, tragic death.

[Jacksmum]

http://photos.lucywho.com/belinda-lee-photos-t8386.html

[deathhaghun]

Sad sad story. She seemed to have to world at her feet and to die such an ugly death like that.

[VeuveClicquotNJ]

When Jacopetti died in 2011, he was interred next to/with Belinda Lee:

http://www.findadeath.com/forum/show...ight=jacopetti

VCNJ~

[JimC]

Lovely woman - I'd never heard of her before now.
Tragic end.

[Dangitbawb]

Just discovered this lady today when looking up celebs with last name Lee. Her death is kind of Jayne Mansfield-esque, maybe. Anyway, tragic death.

I have to agree, but only in the manner of death. It seems that Ms Lee was on her way up, where Jayne (I must say a fascinating woman!) had pretty much exhausted her career from the big screen. Both tragic losses...

[BillySmartsC]

Cor blimey she was a cracker!