Irène Bordoni

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Irène Bordoni

Irène Bordoni (January 16, 1895 - March 19, 1953) was a singer and a Broadway theatre and film actress. Born in Ajaccio, Corsica, France from Italian family she had been a child actor, performing in Paris on stage and in silent films for a few years when she came to the United States in 1912. At age seventeen, she made her Broadway debut in a Shubert brothers production of "Broadway to Paris" at the Winter Garden Theatre.

Noted for her seductive brown eyes and coquettish personality, Irène Bordoni is probably best remembered from musical theatre as the star of the 1928 Cole Porter musical "Paris" that featured the song "Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love)" which became Porter's first big success. Bordoni would record and sing many times live and on radio another Cole Porter song, "Let's Misbehave" with Irving Aaronson and His Commanders dance band. The song has been included on the soundtrack of five motion pictures including Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972), Pennies from Heaven (1981) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994).

In 1929 her Broadway play "Paris" was adapted to a sound film for which she reprised her starring role. The film featured use of the Vitaphone sound-on-disk sound system and was shot in early Technicolor. That year Bordoni also performed a song for the Warner Brothers film The Show of Shows produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. Her status as a major star of the American stage was such that in his song "You’re the Top," Cole Porter included the reference: "you’re the eyes of Irene Bordoni." During the 1930s she continued to perform on stage and starred in another Warner Brothers musical comedy film. In 1940, Bordoni was part of another major Broadway success with the Irving Berlin musical "Louisiana Purchase" and again reprised her role on film in a 1941 Paramount Pictures production with Bob Hope. She had another success in 1951 in the role of "Bloody Mary" in the national tour of the musical, South Pacific.