The Hottest Icicle

Her name is Germaine Lefebvre, but she calls herself Capucine. "Just Capucine," she insists. "Nothing in front and nothing behind." What is true of her name is even truer of her person: she is as angular as a heron, as cold and remote as an icicle. Yet she starred in two of the '60s' biggest farces (What's New, Pussycat? and The Pink Panther). Her new comedy, Joseph Mankiewicz' Any one for Venice?, may be even bigger.

Purebred Siamese. Capucine's secret is that she carries over to the screen the grand hauteur she learned as a haute couture model, then plays her glacial poise for laughs. Not even the antics of Peter O'Toole and Woody Allen could persuade the Pussycat to purr, but fanciers, fatigued with Ursula Andress as an alley cat and Romy Schneider as a kitten, applauded Capucine's purebred Siamese and gave her a bigger share of laughs in a Sellers market. In Panther, she kept a straight face while she slammed the door on the nose of her cuckolded husband. When he asked how she could save enough from her house keeping money to buy mink coats, she replied airily: "It isn't easy." Her hus band bought the explanation, and so did happy Panther fans.

As an actress, Capucine is a late starter. Her petit bourgeois French family wanted her to be a schoolteacher.

"When I balked at that," she recalls indignantly, "they suggested I work in a bank adding figures all day long." Capucine had other ideas. Instead of examining other people's figures, she thought other people ought to examine hers. The Nefertiti profile, the lean hungry look, quickly made her a mannequin for Givenchy and a top fashion model.

Sheep Eyes. At the height of her modeling career, she met Movie Producer Charles Feldman (A Streetcar Named Desire, Seven Year Itch), who offered to give her a screen test. "They were paying expenses, and I was curious to see Hollywood," she says. "I memorized a few lines of English, hardly understanding a word I was saying. Somehow, I passed."

She played a Russian princess in her first film, Song Without End. "I got ripped to pieces by the critics," she remembers. "So I changed the pace a bit. In my next film I played a call girl. In the following one, a prostitute." In 1962 the pace change included a role as William Holden's co-star in The Lion. She became his lioness for two years, finally broke away when Holden returned to his wife and cubs last year.

Since then, she has withdrawn to her home in Lausanne, submerged herself in her two favorite occupations, eating and working. A gourmet with exotic tastes, Capucine has been known to consume anything that has flavor. She has eaten chicken-entrail stew in Cambodia, honey bats in Mauritius, and sheep eyes in North Africa. Despite her exotic intake, she remains a model of gauntness. "I only gain weight when I am terribly depressed," she maintains. Apparently, there is nothing depressing Capucine at present, except the gnawing feeling that the pussycat may be keeping so cool that as a comedienne she is growing cold. As she views the progress of the sex kittens in Hollywood, she sometimes broods about her icicle style. "I don't know," she says. "Sometimes I feel that I would like to cut loose and start throwing pies."

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