1928-08-02 ( 96 years old ) in Paris, France
Yoko Tani (谷洋子, Tani Yōko, 2 August 1928 – 19 April 1999) was a French-born Japanese actress and nightclub entertainer.
Tani was born in Paris. Her birth name was Itani Yōko (猪谷洋子). She has occasionally been described as 'Eurasian', 'half French', 'half Japanese' and even, in one source, 'Italian Japanese', all of which are incorrect.
French records (1958) show that her father and mother—both Japanese—were attached to the Japanese embassy in Paris, with Tani herself conceived en route during a shipboard passage from Japan to Europe in 1927 and subsequently born in Paris the following year, hence given the name Yōko (洋子), one reading of which can mean "ocean-child.". Tani would later play a diplomat's daughter in Piccadilly Third Stop.
According to Japanese sources, the family returned to Japan in 1930, when Yoko would still have been a toddler, and she did not return to France until 1950 when her schooling was completed. Given that there were severe restrictions on Japanese travelling outside Japan directly after World War II, this would have been an unusual event; however, it is known that Itani had attended an elite girls' school in Tokyo (Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School, currently Ochanomizu University Senior High School), and then graduated from Tsuda University. She subsequently secured a Catholic scholarship to study aesthetics at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) under Étienne Souriau.
Once back in Paris, Tani found little interest in attending university (although by her own account she persevered for two years despite understanding hardly anything that was being said). Instead, she developed a more compelling attraction to the cabaret, the nightclub, and the variety music-hall, where, setting herself up as an exotic oriental beauty, she quickly established a reputation for her provocative "geisha" dances, which generally ended with her slipping out of her kimono. It was here she was spotted by Marcel Carné, who took her into his circle of director and actor-friends, including Roland Lesaffre, whom she was later to marry. As a result, she began to get bit parts in films—starting as (perhaps predictably) a Japanese dancer, in Gréville's Le port du désir (1953–1954, released 1955)—and on the stage, with a role as Lotus Bleu in la Petite Maison de Thé (French adaptation of The Teahouse of the August Moon) at the Théâtre Montparnasse, 1954–1955 season. ...
Source: Article "Yoko Tani" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Movies
The Golden Lotus
1991-01-01
Koroshi
1968-11-28
Seven Golden Chinese
1967-12-12
To Chase A Million
1967-01-01
The Spy Who Loved Flowers
1966-08-12
Suicide Mission to Singapore
1966-06-02
Desperate Mission
1965-11-13
Invasion
1965-10-01
OSS 77 - Operazione fior di loto
1965-08-26
Bianco, rosso, giallo, rosa
1964-12-29
The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse
1964-09-17
F.B.I. Operation Baalbeck
1964-06-29
Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?
1963-12-25
Marco Polo
1962-04-13
My Geisha
1962-03-09
Ursus and the Tartar Princess
1961-12-30
Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World
1961-10-31
Piccadilly Third Stop
1960-09-05
The Savage Innocents
1960-03-20
First Spaceship on Venus
1960-02-26
Yoko Tani in London
1959-04-02
The Wind Cannot Read
1958-06-10
The Quiet American
1958-02-08
Fire in the Flesh
1958-01-17
The Ostrich Has Two Eggs
1957-08-29
裸足の青春
1956-10-16
Mannequins of Paris
1956-09-19
Women in Prison
1956-09-11
In the Manner of Sherlock Holmes
1956-06-05
Maid in Paris
1956-01-20
Pleasures and Vices
1955-09-02
House on the Waterfront
1955-04-15
The Babes Make the Law
1955-03-29
Vice Dolls
1954-10-18
Nights of Shame
1954-08-04
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