Yoko Tani

Also Known As: Yôko Tani, 谷洋子, Itani Yōko, 猪谷洋子

Biography: Yoko Tani (谷洋子, Tani Yōko, 2 August 1928 – 19 April 1999) was a French-born Japanese actress and nightclub entertainer. Tani was born in Paris. Her birth name was Itani Yōko (猪谷洋子). She has occasionally been described as 'Eurasian', 'half French', 'half Japanese' and even, in one source, 'Italian Japanese', all of which are incorrect. French records (1958) show that her father and mother—both Japanese—were attached to the Japanese embassy in Paris, with Tani herself conceived en route during a shipboard passage from Japan to Europe in 1927 and subsequently born in Paris the following year, hence given the name Yōko (洋子), one reading of which can mean "ocean-child.". Tani would later play a diplomat's daughter in Piccadilly Third Stop. According to Japanese sources, the family returned to Japan in 1930, when Yoko would still have been a toddler, and she did not return to France until 1950 when her schooling was completed. Given that there were severe restrictions on Japanese travelling outside Japan directly after World War II, this would have been an unusual event; however, it is known that Itani had attended an elite girls' school in Tokyo (Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School, currently Ochanomizu University Senior High School), and then graduated from Tsuda University. She subsequently secured a Catholic scholarship to study aesthetics at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) under Étienne Souriau. Once back in Paris, Tani found little interest in attending university (although by her own account she persevered for two years despite understanding hardly anything that was being said). Instead, she developed a more compelling attraction to the cabaret, the nightclub, and the variety music-hall, where, setting herself up as an exotic oriental beauty, she quickly established a reputation for her provocative "geisha" dances, which generally ended with her slipping out of her kimono. It was here she was spotted by Marcel Carné, who took her into his circle of director and actor-friends, including Roland Lesaffre, whom she was later to marry. As a result, she began to get bit parts in films—starting as (perhaps predictably) a Japanese dancer, in Gréville's Le port du désir (1953–1954, released 1955)—and on the stage, with a role as Lotus Bleu in la Petite Maison de Thé (French adaptation of The Teahouse of the August Moon) at the Théâtre Montparnasse, 1954–1955 season. ... Source: Article "Yoko Tani" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Department: Acting

Place of Birth: Paris, France

Birthday: August 02, 1928

Deathday: April 19, 1999

Adult: No

Gender: Female

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Known For:

F.B.I. Operation Baalbeck
My Geisha
First Spaceship on Venus
The Wind Cannot Read
Mannequins of Paris
The Quiet American
The Savage Innocents
Marco Polo
Seven Golden Chinese
Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World
The Spy Who Loved Flowers
Invasion
Piccadilly Third Stop
The Babes Make the Law
Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?
The Golden Lotus
Yoko Tani in London
OSS 77 - Operazione fior di loto
Pleasures and Vices
Nights of Shame
In the Manner of Sherlock Holmes
To Chase A Million
Koroshi
裸足の青春
Fire in the Flesh
Suicide Mission to Singapore
Ursus and the Tartar Princess
The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse
Vice Dolls
The Ostrich Has Two Eggs
Bianco, rosso, giallo, rosa
Women in Prison
Maid in Paris
Desperate Mission
House on the Waterfront