LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Jean Seberg
built 630 days ago
Jean Seberg is a musical biography with a book by Julian Barry, lyrics by Christopher Adler, and music by Marvin Hamlisch. It is based on the life of the late American actress.
Source:
Born and raised in Marshalltown Iowa, Jean Seberg was only 17 in 1955 when she was chosen from thousands of hopeful young actresses by film director Otto Preminger to star as Joan of Arc in George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. In Seberg’s next film, Bonjour Tristesse... directed by Preminger, her role as a spoiled pixyish adolescent vacationing with her playboy father in the French Riviera inspired a young Godard to invite her to co-star with Jean-Paul Belmondo in his New Wave sensation Breathless, 1959. Seberg went on to star in a total of 34 films that also included The MouseThat Roared, Lilith, Paint your Wagon and Airport. But it was Seberg’s empathy and sexual relationship with Hakim Abdullah Jamal, a charismatic player in the Black Power Movement, as well as her financial support of the Black Panther Party that lead the FBI in 1969 to monitor her activities. In 1970 the FBI in an effort to smear Seberg’s reputation planted a false story with a gossip columnist for the Los Angeles Times that she was expecting a baby fathered by a “prominent Black Panther.” Both Seberg and Roman Gary, Jean’s husband at that time, claimed Gary had fathered the child. The infant girl was born prematurely and died two days later.
Source:
A brilliant, witty mockumentary of Jean Seberg, that puts words in her mouth that she might have approved of but did not actually say -- these are Mark Rappaport's words. Proving once again that she is being exploited, though in a benevolent way this time, by a film that rails against her exploitation. She was exploited by the director, Otto Preminger, who discovered this 17-year-old in a nationwide star search for an unknown to play the juicy part in his Saint Joan. The irrepressible Preminger who is always the charming party guest, the publicity hound, the tyrannical director, and the woman's director, all rolled into one. She was ... exploited by her second husband, Romaine Gary, who poked fun at her political views and humiliated her in his films. There was also the brief affair she had with the future Hollywood star, Clint Eastwood, which meant nothing to him and everything to her.
Source:
Context: Because of her support for the Black Panther Party, actress Jean Seberg was targeted for 'neutralization' by the FBI's COINTELPRO effort. SAC Richard W. Held, the author of the request, went on to become SAC San Francisco at the time of the bombing of Earth First activist Judi Bari. He subsequently retired from the Bureau to become Head of Security for Visa International.
Source:
Jean Seberg was always more icon than actress. From her disastrous appearance as the title character in Preminger's Saint Joan (1958), to Godard's immortalizing of her face in Breathless, to her status as fashion maven in the 1960s, to her extracurricular work with the Black Panthers, Seberg's acting career seemed secondary to her cultural presence from the beginning. Her transition from prestige pictures like Bonjour Tristesse to Eurotrash epics like her husband Romain Gary's Birds in Peru and empty-headed blockbusters like Airport did nothing to alter the public perception of Seberg as a beautiful, troubled, "empty vessel" into which various men and male groups — the sadistic Preminger, Godard, novelist Romain Gary, the Panthers — poured their often misogynist obsessions.
Source:
The message of the Jean Seberg story is multileveled. The government entered her private life, rescinding her civil liberties justification. In a deliberate way, the FBI overlay one false image of Jean Seberg, that of a dangerous and immoral revolutionary, upon the star image manufactured by Hollywood. Hollywood’s image was that of the provocative virgin whose sexual daring and social nonconformity has tragic consequences. Only by understanding and unmasking these codes of contradictory meaning can the artist effectively demystify, derail, and combat the hegemonic social and political manipulation of information and culture. Artistic expression opposing repression and "collapse of-meaning" is severely hampered by visible and invisible obstructions to information access, interpretation, and circulation.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Jean Seberg