Camille Janclaire(1917-1999)
- Actress
A brilliant young actress in pre-WW II Vienna, Hanni Melvyn (her
European stage name,in honor of her hero, Melvyn Douglas) was rehearsing the
role of "Titania" in Shakespeare's "A Mid-Summer Night's Dream",
directed by the internationally acclaimed Max Reinhardt, when Hitler annexed
Austria. In the early hours of that fateful day, Johanna and her family
escaped to Hungary and, later, to the United States. In New York City,
at acting school trying to lose her accent, Johanna met a young
handsome actor in Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne's famous theater company. His
name was Cameron Mitchell. They married, Cam starred on Broadway in the original
production of "Death of A Salesman", they moved to Hollywood where
Cameron's career took off, and had four children. During this time,
Johanna made one film entitled Three Stripes in the Sun (1955) with Dick York and Aldo Ray under
the stage name of "Camille Janclaire" (the name she and Cameron later
gave to their daughter). After their divorce twenty years later,
Johanna went on to become one of the top businesswomen in North
America, a pioneer woman entrepreneur in the Canadian meat-packing
industry, inheriting the roles of president and chairwoman of the board
from her father, Fred Mendel, who founded Intercontinental Packers
after his arrival in Canada in 1940. Later, Cameron and Johanna
reconciled and were together until his death in 1994.
