Illa Meery

Illa Meery (16 May 1915 – October 2010) was a Russian-born French adventuress, singer, film actress and possibly Soviet spy who became involved in the French black market under German occupation.

Émigrée She was the daughter of count Alexandre Alexandrovitch Tchernychev-Bezobrazov and Marie Nicolaïevna née Chtcherbatova. She arrived in France in 1919 with her parents and older brother as refugees from the October Revolution, first in Marseille, then Paris. She attended the Russian school in rue Daru.

Film actress and Chanel model She appeared in several early French films in the 1920s, notably in Zouzou as Barbara, the topless foil for sensation Josephine Baker, who in that film became the first black woman to star in a French feature film. She later became a model for Chanel, then Schiaparelli. At that time she was living with the painter , a friend of Philippe de Rothschild. She became his mistress and he got her a part in the film Lac aux dames (Lake of Ladies), a film he financed, based on a screenplay by Colette and directed by André Gide's former lover Marc Allégret.

Later she met professional crook Joseph Goldstein a.k.a. Dorélis. They became a couple and she was soon threatened with expulsion as a stateless person holding a Nansen passport. On 19 July 1939 she married the actor Henri Garat. In 1940, the couple took refuge in Brazil and lounged on the beach there ith the exiled Carol I of Romania.

Mobsters and Nazis On her return to France in 1942, she developed ties with the Occupation authorities and black market figures, and was associated with various scandals under the name of Madame Garat. She became the mistress of Henri Lafont, head of the French Gestapo, and was one of the women known as the Countesses of the Gestapo. but no evidence was found to support this.

Selected filmography Princess Olala (1928) as Hedy The Abduction of the Sabine Women (1928) as Ria, a showgirl Cagliostro (1929) as Jeanne de la Motte Lake of Ladies (1934) as Anika Zouzou as Barbara (1934)