Drue Leyton

Drue Leyton (12 July 1903 - 8 February 1997) was an American actress and member of the French resistance. She was born Dorothy Elizabeth Blackman in Somers, Wisconsin. She became an actress after a failed mariage and notably acted in Green Grow the Lilacs on Broadway and several Charlie Chan films.^[1] In 1937 Leyton moved to Paris with her future husband Jacques Terrane a Franco-American actor who died in Syria in 1941 fighting with the Free French forces.^[2]

Leyton broadcast for the Voice of America whilst acting in Paris in 1938 and her criticisms of the Nazi regime during these broadcasts earned her a promise of execution announced by Berlin radio.^[3] She was arrested by the Nazis when France became occupied by the German military but managed to escape from her prison camp with the help of French doctors by feigning cancer. She returned to her home in Barbizon in 1942 and joined the resistance movement helping 42 downed allied airmen escape to freedom and hid others in her home until the war ended. During this period she was known as Dorothy Tartière which was the real name of her husband.^[4] She wrote about this period in a book The House Near Paris.^[5]

References