Mathilda Marie Berthilde Paruta (21 November 1907 – 7 December 1999), better known as Darling Légitimus, was a French actress. In 1983, she received the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for her performance in the film Sugar Cane Alley.
Born on 21 November 1907 at Le Carbet in Martinique, she spent her early years in Caracas, Venezuela. Mathilda Paruta arrived in Paris, France, at age of 16, wanting to become a dancer. She met Victor-Etienne Légitimus, son of the government deputy, Hegesippe Jean Légitimus, and went on to become his lifelong companion and bear him five children.
Known for a long time as Miss Darling, she later chose to go by the name of Darling Legitimus. She performed as a dancer in La Revue Nègre (1925) with Josephine Baker, and posed for Picasso as well as for sculptor Paul Belmondo, father of Jean-Paul Belmondo, the actor.
During the 1930s, Darling wrote, composed and sang numerous Caribbean songs such as Biguine and Mazurka. She often performed alongside known musicians of the era, including “Pe En Kin Sosso” and his band.
She also performed in plays by Jean Genet (Les Nègres) and Aimé Césaire. She was directed on the big screen by Raymond Rouleau in Les Sorcieres de Salem (The Crucible) alongside Simone Signoret and Yves Montand, and Le Salaire de la Peur (Wages of Fear) by Henri Georges Clouzot, with Sacha Guitry, Jean-Claude Brialy and Bernardo Bertolucci.
In 1983, at the age of 76, she won the Volpi Cup for the best female interpretation of “The Mostra of Venise”, also for her role in La Rue Cases-Nègres (Sugar Cane Alley), directed by her compatriot Euzhan Palcy. During her long life, she was acquainted with a great number of famous actors, among them Arletty, Fernandel, Marlon Brando and Pierre Brasseur. She also took part in numerous ORTF (Office de Radio-diffusion de la Television Française) productions, of which a telefilm by Jean-Christophe Averty, Les verts Paturages (The Green Pastures, written by Marc Connelly), was produced.
She died on 7 December 1999 at Kremlin-Bicetre in the Val de Marne near Paris, in France, without any more acting roles after Sugar Cane Alley in spite of hopes of her nomination and rewards.
The writer, Calixthe Beyala and Caribbean actor Luc Saint-Eloy, representatives of “Liberté” collective came up on stage at the César ceremony in 2000, to claim one of the largest presence on French television screens and to pay her a public tribute, since the organizers had “forgotten” to name Darling as one of the previous year’s great losses.
Source: Article “Darling Légitimus” from Wikipedia in english, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Darling Légitimus Biography / Wiki
| Name | Darling Légitimus |
| Also Know | Miss Darling, Darling-Légitimus, Mathilde Paruta, Marie Berthilde Paruta |
| Gender | Female |
| Known For | Acting |
| Place of Birth | Le Carbet, Martinique |
| Date of Birth | 1907-11-21 |
| Age(as in 2022) | 92 |
| Deathday | 1999-12-07 |
Darling Légitimus Acting Movies
| Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
| Sugar Cane Alley | M’Man Tine | 1983-09-21 | Martinique, in the early 1930s. Young José and his grandmother live in a small village. Nearly everyone works cutting cane and barely earning a livin… |
| Les Verts Pâturages | Madame Noé | 1964-12-31 | A French TV movie directed by Jean-Christophe Averty , broadcast on December 24, 1964 . The Old Testament set in Louisiana with an all black cast…. |
| The Ghostly Rental | Belinda | 1965-04-17 | At the end of the 19th Century, young Fanning finishes his studies in theology at the University of Cambridge. During a walk through the countryside, … |
| Tourbillon | 1953-10-02 | Taking advantage of the shooting of a film, gangsters stage a hold -up. A black man, Selim, is unfairly accused…. | |
| Women Are Like That | Palmyre | 1960-09-20 | American FBI agent Lemmy Caution arrives in France to track down a dangerous spy…. |
| The Wages of Fear | Rosa | 1953-04-22 | In the South American jungle, supplies of nitroglycerine are needed at a remote oil field. The oil company pays four men to deliver the supplies in tw… |
| Three Feet in a Bed | Caroline | 1950-04-19 | In spite of his failures as a peddler, Casimir guaranteed his fiance that this time the vacuum cleaners will work for good. But he’s still unsuccessfu… |
| The Toilets Were Closed from the Inside | Rose | 1976-01-07 | A bus conductor gets dressed for work in the morning, goes to the toilet, where he is killed by a bomb. The Commissioner and his fat, bumbling assista… |
| Flesh and the Woman | (uncredited) | 1954-06-08 | In this romance, a jilted lawyer joins the French Foreign Legion to help him forget his faithless love. While in the desert he espies a village beauty… |
| The Witches of Salem | Tituba | 1957-04-26 | Salem, 1692. Industrious farmer, John Proctor, has twice made love to 17-year-old Abigail, a youth he and his wife have taken in. (His wife Elisabeth … |
| Les trois cousines | 1947-12-10 | To receive the inheritance of his uncle, who died in Brazil, Claude, who has no money, must absolutely marry one of his three cousins…. | |
| The Fire Within | (uncredited) | 1963-10-15 | Although his alcoholism has been treated, Alain still feels he is deeply unwell and does not feel he can leave the detoxification clinic once and for … |
| A Friend Will Come Tonight | (uncredited) | 1946-04-09 | Commander Gerard and his band of guerrillas have found the ideal hideout: a nursing home in the Alps where, along with the mentally ill, are also hidi… |
| The Road to Damascus | (uncredited) | 1952-12-05 | Saul De Tarse is a Roman soldier who is making rough all over. He arrives at the Golgotha when the apostles remove the cross. He ruthlessly persecutes… |
| Le bateau à soupe | (uncredited) | 1947-02-19 | Hervé is a tough sea captain in command of the “Duchesse Anne”, a rum-trading ship. But the sea dog hides a tender heart and he allows Marie-Douce, a… |
Credit: TMDB
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