Eddie Constantine

Eddie Constantine (born Israel Constantine; October 29, 1913 – February 25, 1993) was a Jewish-American singer, actor and entertainer who spent most of his career in France. He became well-known to film audiences for his portrayal of secret agent Lemmy Caution and other, similar pulp heroes in French B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s.

His celebrity and status as something of a pop icon saw him work with prominent arthouse directors like Jean-Luc Godard (as Caution in Alphaville and Germany Year 90 Nine Zero), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (as himself in Beware of a Holy Whore 1971 and also World on a Wire), Jesús Franco, Agnès Varda, Rosa von Praunheim, Lars von Trier, William Klein and Mika Kaurismäki.

Constantine was born Israel Constantine in Los Angeles, California to Jewish immigrant parents, a Russian father and Polish mother; his father was a jeweler. In pursuit of a singing career, he went to Vienna for voice training. However, when he returned to the United States, his career failed to take off, and he started taking work as a film extra.

Having failed to make a career in the United States, Constantine returned to Europe in the early 1950s and started singing and performing in Paris cabarets. He was noticed by Edith Piaf, who cast him in the musical La p'tite Lili. Constantine also helped Piaf with translations for her 1956 album La Vie en Rose/Édith Piaf Sings In English and so he has songwriting credits on the English versions of some of her most famous songs (especially "Hymne à l'amour"/"Hymn to Love").

In the 1950s, Constantine was a star in France because of his role as the hard-boiled detective/secret agent Lemmy Caution (from Peter Cheyney's novels) in a series of French B-pictures, including La môme vert-de-gris (1953), This Man Is Dangerous (1953), Je suis un sentimental (1955), Lemmy pour les dames (1961) and Your Turn, Darling (1963).

He was hired by the Rank Organisation to play the lead in SOS Pacific but it was not a big success.

When not playing Lemmy Caution, Constantine often played a character that was still typicall a suave-talking, seductive, smooth guy although he often played that for laughs. He turned his accent and perceived American cockiness to advantage in such roles, and he later described his film persona as having been "James Bond before James Bond".

One of his best remembered later roles was as the visiting Mafia boss Charlie in the British gangster film The Long Good Friday (1980), a rare English-speaking role.