Jeanne Sorel

Biography

Actress-musician Jeanne Sorel was the wife of late film producer Albert J. Cohen and mother to both actress Louise Sorel and Mishka Michon, who was Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation fundraiser at one time. Jeanne was born in Alexandria, Egypt but later moved to London for a time. In Hollywood from the 1930s, she was signed by Samuel Goldwyn to a film contract and groomed to become an exotic Greta Garbo-type but her film career never went any further than bit roles in a couple of films. Excelling as both a pianist and painter, she instead focused on raising a family, but returned to acting in later years. She established the Oxford Theater in Los Angeles and taught and performed on numerous occasions there. She also was glimpsed occasionally in films and on TV over the decades, including a small role in the movie B.S. I Love You (1971), that also featured daughter, Louise Sorel. She appeared on such TV shows as Medical Center (1969), Bewitched (1964) and The Monkees (1965). Her husband, Albert, was noted for producing such durable "B" action films as Remember Pearl Harbor (1942), The Fighting Seabees (1944), The Great Sioux Uprising (1953), Sign of the Pagan (1954), The Naked Brigade (1965) and Prehistoric Women (1950), the last of which featured Jeanne as a Stone Age mother. Jeanne Sorel died on January 27, 2003 of natural causes in Los Angeles, three days after her 90th birthday.