Drue Leyton

Drue Leyton (born Dorothy Elizabeth Blackman; 12 June 1903 – 8 February 1997) was an American actress and member of the French Resistance. She also was billed as Freya Leigh.

Acting She became an actress after a failed marriage and acted in Green Grow the Lilacs on Broadway and several Charlie Chan films. and We Are No Longer Children (1932), for which she was billed as Freya Leigh.

In 1937, Leyton acted in a Works Progress Administration Theatre Project in New York. She went from there to England, where she performed in Golden Boy.

In France, Leyton produced and interviewed people on programs for Radio Mondial, operated by France's Ministry of Information. The programs were designed to promote France to an American audience. In September 1942, she was arrested by the Nazis after northern and western France came under German occupation — but only because she was an American woman, her true identity unknown to the authorities. She 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 hiding others in her home until the war ended. She was assisted at times in hiding the airmen by Sylvia Beach, American-born owner of the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company. wrote about this period in a book The House Near Paris.

Personal life Leyton met Tartière in New York in 1937, and they wed in 1938 in London.

Death On 2 February 1997, Leyton died in Corona del Mar, California.

Filmography