‘Gigi’ actor Louis Jourdan, 93, dies

LOS ANGELES – Louis Jourdan, the dashingly handsome Frenchman who starred in “Gigi,” “Can-Can,” “Three Coins in the Fountain” and other American movies, has died. He was 93.

Jourdan’s biographer, Olivier Minne, said the actor died Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills.

“He was the last French actor from the Hollywood golden era,” said Minne, who is working on a book and documentary about Jourdan. “Louis was very proud of his career in America.”

Succeeding Charles Boyer as Hollywood’s favorite French lover, Jourdan romanced Joan Fontaine, Jennifer Jones, Grace Kelly and Shirley MacLaine in films during the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. He also showed that he could play a villain in “Julie” (1956), in which he was Doris Day’s husband, a psychopathic killer.

Jourdan’s film career reached a peak in 1957 with the Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe musical, “Gigi,” which won nine Academy Awards, including best picture.