Linda Christian

Mexican screen actress, who appeared in Mexican and Hollywood films, her career reaching its peak in the 1940s and 1950s. She played Mara in the last Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan film, Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948). She is also noted for being the first Bond girl, appearing in a 1954 television adaptation of the James Bond novel Casino Royale. In 1963 she starred in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "An Out for Oscar". Christian was a daughter of Dutch engineer and Royal Dutch Shell executive, Gerardus Jacob Welter (1904–1981), and his Mexican-born wife, the former Blanca Rosa Vorhauer (1901-1992), who was of Spanish, German and French descent. The Welter family moved a great deal during Christian's youth, living everywhere from South America and Europe to the Middle East and Africa. As a result of this nomadic lifestyle, Christian became an accomplished polyglot with the ability to speak fluent French, German, Dutch, Spanish, English, Italian and even a bit of haphazard Arabic and Russian. Christian had three younger siblings, a sister, actress Ariadna Gloria Welter (1930–1998), and two brothers, Gerardus Jacob Welter (born 1924) and Edward Albert Welter (born 1932). After she graduated from secondary school she had a fortuitous meeting with her screen idol Errol Flynn, who became her lover, and she was persuaded by him to move to Hollywood, and pursue an acting career. Not long after arriving in Hollywood she was spotted by Louis B. Mayer's secretary at a fashion show in Beverly Hills. He offered, and she accepted, a seven-year contract with MGM. Her stage name was invented by Flynn, who gave her the surname of Fletcher Christian of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. Flynn had played Fletcher Christian in a 1933 Australian film. She made her film debut in the 1944 musical comedy Up in Arms, co-starring Danny Kaye and Dinah Shore, followed by Holiday in Mexico (1946), Green Dolphin Street (1947), and what was perhaps her best-known film, Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948). She was the subject of a well-known photograph published in the 1 January 1949 issue of Vogue. Christian's fame, however, was largely derived from having been married to (and divorced from) the popular screen idol Tyrone Power (1949–1956). They were the parents of singer Romina Power and actress Taryn Power. Christian was later married to the Rome-based British actor Edmund Purdom (1962-1963). Linda Christian died in Palm Desert, California on 22 July 2011, at the age of 87. Link to Wikipedia biography