Program credits from the Playbill for Tovarich at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1962.
Jean-Pierre Aumont
General Prince Mikail Alexandrovitch Ouratieff
Paris-born Jean-Pierre Aumont was flanked by Katherine Cornell and Philip Merivale on his American initiation in Henri Bernstein's Rose Burke at the Curran Theatre, San Francisco, in mid-January '42. Two weeks later M. Aumont accepted a flattering bid from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and that same season starred with Susan Peters in Assignment in Brittainy and with Gene Kelly in The Cross of Lorraine. Early in '43 Aumont enlisted with the Free French Forces, with them served in Tunisia, Italy and France, and was awarded both the Legion d'Honneur and the Croix de Guerre with two palms for gallantry in action. World War II at an end, Aumont resumed his screen career in Hollywood. Successively he co-starred with Ginger Rogers in Heartbeat, with Yvonne de Carlo in Scheherezade, with Maria Montez- his first wife- in Atlantis and with Leslie Caron in Lili. In his first New York engagement Aumont was starred by the Theatre Guild in My Name is Aquilon, Philip Barry's adaptation of L'Empereur de Chine, Aumont-written comedy which had enjoyed great success in Paris earlier. This was in February '49. Six years later he was again under Theatre Guild management in The Heavenly Twins, derived from Albert Husson's Les Paves du Ciel. As recently as April '60 he played Farou in A Second String, Lucienne Hill's dramatization of a Collette novel, at the Eugene O'Neill. When tapped for the role of Vivien Leigh's consort in Tovarich last March, M. Aumont was starring with Melina Mercouri in Flora at Les Theatre des Varietes, Paris. As a fledgling player in Paris, Aumont profited from association with two French immortals, actor-director Louis Jouvet and playwright Jean Cocteau. Assigned the role of Oedipus in Cocteau's The Infernal Machine, Aumont became a star over night. Subsequently he added to his dramatic stature with eloquent and incisive performances in Pelleas and Melisande, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Design For Living, Amphytrion 38 and plays of such skilled dramatists as Henri Bernstein, Sacha Guitry, Jean Giradoux and Jean Anouilh. First of Aumont's sixty French films was Lac aux Dames. The success he scored in this screen play was echoed in Drole de Drame and Hotel du Nord. His most recent French films include The Blonde From Buenos Aires, Domenica D'Estate, The Seven Deadly Sins, directed by Vadim, Les Egrements, and the shortly to be released Disney film The Horse Without a Head. M. Aumont is the author of a book of memoirs entitled Souvenirs Provisoires and of five plays two of which, L'Empereur de Chine and his dramatization of Irwin Shaw's Lucy Crown, have enjoyed great overseas success. On our television screens he has given deft performances in Arms and the Man, Crime and Punishment, The Sound of Silence and Intermezzo.