Yoko Tani

Known for ActingBorn 1928-08-02Died 1999-04-19Paris, France

Yoko Tani (谷洋子, Tani Yōko, 2 August 1928 – 19 April 1999) was a French-born Japanese actress and nightclub entertainer. Tani was born in Paris. Her birth name was Itani Yōko (猪谷洋子). She has occasionally been described as 'Eurasian', 'half French', 'half Japanese' and even, in one source, 'Italian Japanese', all of which are incorrect. French records (1958) show that her father and mother—both Japanese—were attached to the Japanese embassy in Paris, with Tani herself conceived en route during a shipboard passage from Japan to Europe in 1927 and subsequently born in Paris the following year, hence given the name Yōko (洋子), one reading of which can mean "ocean-child.". Tani would later play a diplomat's daughter in Piccadilly Third Stop. According to Japanese sources, the family returned to Japan in 1930, when Yoko would still have been a toddler, and she did not return to France until 1950 when her schooling was completed. Given that there were severe restrictions on Japanese travelling outside Japan directly after World War II, this would have been an unusual event; however, it is known that Itani had attended an elite girls' school in Tokyo (Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School, currently Ochanomizu University Senior High School), and then graduated from Tsuda University. She subsequently secured a Catholic scholarship to study aesthetics at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) under Étienne Souriau. Once back in Paris, Tani found little interest in attending university (although by her own account she persevered for two years despite understanding hardly anything that was being said). Instead, she developed a more compelling attraction to the cabaret, the nightclub, and the variety music-hall, where, setting herself up as an exotic oriental beauty, she quickly established a reputation for her provocative "geisha" dances, which generally ended with her slipping out of her kimono. It was here she was spotted by Marcel Carné, who took her into his circle of director and actor-friends, including Roland Lesaffre, whom she was later to marry. As a result, she began to get bit parts in films—starting as (perhaps predictably) a Japanese dancer, in Gréville's Le port du désir (1953–1954, released 1955)—and on the stage, with a role as Lotus Bleu in la Petite Maison de Thé (French adaptation of The Teahouse of the August Moon) at the Théâtre Montparnasse, 1954–1955 season. ... Source: Article "Yoko Tani" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.Read more

Movies & web series

Les Dossiers de l'Agence O

Maid in Paris

Suicide Mission to Singapore

Mannequins of Paris

Cinépanorama

Koroshi

Seven Golden Chinese

Love on Rainbow Island

In the Manner of Sherlock Holmes

Man in a Suitcase

House on the Waterfront

To Chase A Million

The Sweet and the Bitter

OSS 77 - Operation Lotus Flower

Desperate Mission

The Savage Innocents

My Geisha

Vice Dolls

Piccadilly Third Stop

The Wind Cannot Read

Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World

The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse

The Babes Make the Law

Invasion

Shirley's World

Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?

F.B.I. Operation Baalbeck

The Partner

Armchair Theatre

Softly from Paris

Ben Casey

The Quiet American

Pleasures and Vices

The Ostrich Has Two Eggs

Ursus and the Tartar Princess

Nights of Shame

The Spy Who Loved Flowers

Fire in the Flesh

The Silent Star

Marco Polo

Bianco, rosso, giallo, rosa

Women in Prison

The Golden Lotus

Drama 61-67

Yoko Tani in London