Fifi D'Orsay (April 16, 1904 – December 2, 1983) was a Canadian-born actress.

Biography

Born Marie-Rose Angelina Yvonne Lussier in Montreal, as a young typist, filled with the desire to become an actress, she went to New York City. There, she found work in the Greenwich Village Follies after an audition in which she sang the song "Yes! We Have No Bananas' in French. In a burst of creativity, she told the play's director she was from Paris, France where she had worked in the Folies Bergère. The show's impressed director hired her, billing her as "Mademoiselle Fifi".

While working in the show, she became involved with Ed Gallagher, a veteran actor who joined her in putting together a vaudeville act. Gallagher was half of the successful Broadway comedy team of Gallagher and Shean, and coached his protegee in the ways of show business.

After touring in vaudeville, she headed west to Hollywood. There, she adopted the surname "D'Orsay" (after a favorite perfume) and began a career in movies, often cast as the naughty French girl from "gay Paris".

While never a superstar, she worked hard at her craft, headlining with the likes of Bing Crosby and Buster Crabbe. For years, she kept alternating her appearances in film with continued performances in vaudeville and when age put an end to the glamour roles, she readily took jobs in television, including two appearances each on ABC's Adventures in Paradise (including as a Mother Superior in the 1960 episode "Castaways"), the CBS legal drama, Perry Mason, and on the CBS sitcom, Pete and Gladys. She was a contestant in the February 23, 1956 television edition of Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life. At the age of sixty-seven, she returned to the stage in the Tony Award winning Broadway musical, Follies.

Fifi D'Orsay died from cancer on December 2, 1983 at the age of seventy-nine at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. She was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.