Biography

Mireille Balin

Jump to

Mireille Balin was one the most glamorous and best loved actresses of pre-war French cinema. She appeared in two of the best remembered French films of the 1930s: Pépé le Moko (1937) and Lady Killer (1937), both opposite Jean Gabin. After the German occupation of France and her separation from her long-time fiancé, the singer/actor Tino Rossi in 1942, she starred in several films and became the idol of the Paris High Society where she met the love of her life, Birl Desbok, an officer in the Wehrmacht. In the summer of 1944, as Paris was about to be liberated, she and Desbok fled Paris and tried to reach the Italian border but on September 28th, 1944 they were arrested by the FFI in Beausoleil (near Nice). Separated from Desbok, who was probably executed (she never knew what really happened to him), she was beaten and raped before being taken to Nice prison. She was soon transferred to Fresnes prison (near Paris) where she stayed until her release on bail on 3rd January 1945. She was forbidden to work for a year but once this restriction lifted, she went back to the studios to appear in what proved to be her last film La dernière chevauchée (1947), her frail constitution prevented her from appearing in any other films. She died in 1968, forgotten and broke.
- IMDb mini biography by: Christophe Greseque (chrisgreseque@hotmail.com)

Was fluent in Italian, which is quite evident in the film L'assedio dell'Alcazar (1940) (she was not dubbed).
Her father was from Monaco and her mother was Italian.
Companion during WWII of German officer Aloïs Deissböck which caused her many problems at the Libération.
Balin posed for some advertisements in Paris before she began acting in films.
Considered one of the finest actresses of French cinema in the 1930s, she was discredited by her fraternization with the Nazis.

Suggest an edit or add missing content