Jean Seberg was an American actress and activist. She was one of the best-known targets of the FBI COINTELPRO project.
So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about the actress.
- Her full name is Jean Dorothy Seberg
- She was born on November 13, 1938
- She died on August 30, 1979
- She was an American actress
- She lived half her life in France
- Her performance in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film Breathless immortalized her as an icon of French New Wave cinema
- She appeared in 34 films in Hollywood and in Europe
- Including Saint Joan, Bonjour Tristesse, Lilith, The Mouse That Roared, Moment to Moment, A Fine Madness, Paint Your Wagon, Airport, Macho Callahan, and Gang War in Naples
- She was also one of the best-known targets of the FBI COINTELPRO project
- Her targeting was a well-documented retaliation for her support of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s
- Seberg died at the age of 40 in Paris
- With police ruling her death a probable suicide
- Romain Gary, Seberg’s second husband, called a press conference shortly after her death
- There he publicly blamed the FBI’s campaign against Seberg for her deteriorating mental health
- Gary claimed that Seberg “became psychotic” after the media reported a false story that the FBI planted about her pregnancy in 1970 being with a Black Panther’s child
- Romain Gary stated that Seberg had attempted suicide on numerous anniversaries of the child’s death, August 25
- Jean Dorothy Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa
- She was the daughter of Dorothy Arline, a substitute teacher, and Edward Waldemar Seberg a pharmacist
- Her family was Lutheran and of Swedish, English, and German ancestry
- Her paternal grandfather, Edward Carlson, arrived in the U.S. in 1882 and observed, “there are too many Carlsons in the New World”
- He decided to change the family’s last name to Seberg in memory of the water and mountains of Sweden
- Jean had a sister Mary-Ann
- And two brothers: Kurt and David
- The latter was killed in a car accident at the age of eighteen
- In Marshalltown, Seberg babysat Mary Supinger, some eight years her junior, who would later become the stage and film actress known as Mary Beth Hurt
- After high school, Seberg enrolled at the University of Iowa to study dramatic arts
- But took up movie making instead
- During the late 1960s, Seberg provided financial support to various groups supporting civil rights such as the NAACP
- As well as Native American school groups such as the Meskwaki Bucks at the Tama settlement near her home town of Marshalltown
- For whom she purchased US$500 worth of basketball uniforms
- The FBI became aware of several gifts to the Black Panther Party totaling US$10,500 (estimated) in contributions
- These were noted among a list of other celebrities in FBI internal documents later declassified and released to the public under FOIA requests
- The financial support and alleged interracial love affairs or friendships are thought to have been triggers to an FBI investigation
- At the peak of her career, Seberg suddenly stopped acting in Hollywood films
- Reportedly, she was not pleased with the roles she had been offered
- Some of which, she said, bordered on pornography
- Conversely, she was not offered any great Hollywood roles, regardless of their size
- Experts in the FBI’s actions in the COINTELPRO project suggest that Seberg was “effectively blacklisted” from Hollywood films
- As was Jane Fonda, for a period of time
- On September 5, 1958, aged 19, Seberg married François Moreuil, a French lawyer (aged 23) in her native Marshalltown
- They met in France 15 months earlier
- They divorced in 1960
- Moreuil had ambitions in movies and directed his estranged wife in La récréation
- Despite extended stays in the United States, she remained Paris-based for the rest of her life
- In 1962, she married French aviator, resistant, novelist and diplomat Romain Gary, who was 24 years her senior
- He had been married to Lesley Blanch
- Gary’s divorce took place on September 5, 1962
- And he married Seberg on October 6
- The marriage in Corsica was secret and used accommodations with the law
- Their sole child together, Alexandre Diego Gary, was born in Barcelona on July 24, 1962
- The child’s birth and first years of life were hidden from even close friends and relatives
- Thanks to his contacts in the diplomat services, Gary later “established” Diego’s birth at the French village of Charquemont on October 26, 1963, after his parents’ marriage
- During her marriage to Gary, Seberg lived in Paris, Greece, Southern France and Majorca
- Diego married and as of 2009 resides in Spain
- There he runs a bookstore and oversees his father’s literary and real estate holdings
- While filming Macho Callahan in Mexico in 1969-70, Seberg became romantically involved with a student revolutionary named Carlos Ornelas Navarra
- She gave birth to Navarra’s daughter, Nina Hart Gary, on August 23, 1970
- The baby died two days later, on August 25, 1970
- And is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Marshalltown
- Estranged husband Romain Gary had publicly claimed to have been the father during Seberg’s pregnancy
- But she acknowledged that Navarra was actually the father
- In 1972, she was married for the third time, to aspiring film director Dennis Berry
- In 1979, while separated from her husband, Seberg went through “a form of marriage” to an Algerian, Ahmed Hasni
- Hasni persuaded her to sell her second apartment on the Rue du Bac, and he kept the proceeds announcing that he would use the money to open a Barcelona restaurant
- The couple departed for Spain, but she was soon back in Paris alone and went into hiding from Hasni, who she said had grievously abused her
- On the night of August 30, 1979, Seberg disappeared
- Hasni told police that they had gone to a movie that night and when he awoke the next morning, Seberg was gone
- After Seberg went missing, Hasni told police that he had known she was suicidal for some time
- He claimed that she had attempted suicide in July 1979 by jumping in front of a Paris subway train
- On September 8, nine days after her disappearance, her decomposing body was found wrapped in a blanket in the back seat of her Renault, parked close to her Paris apartment in the 16th arrondissement
- Police found a bottle of barbiturates, an empty mineral water bottle and a note written in French from Seberg addressed to her son
- It read, in part, “Forgive me. I can no longer live with my nerves”
- In 1979, her death was ruled a probable suicide by Paris police
- But the following year additional charges were filed against persons unknown for “non-assistance of a person in danger”
- Romain Gary, Seberg’s second husband, called a press conference shortly after her death where he publicly blamed the FBI’s campaign against Seberg for her deteriorating mental health
- Gary claimed that Seberg “became psychotic” after the media reported a false story that the FBI planted about her becoming pregnant with a Black Panther’s child in 1970
- Romain Gary stated that Seberg had repeatedly attempted suicide on the anniversary of the child’s death, August 25
- Seberg is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris
- Six days after the discovery of Seberg’s body, the FBI released documents under FOIA admitting the defamation of Seberg
- While making statements attempting to distance themselves from practices of the Hoover era
- The FBI’s campaign against Seberg was further explored at this time by Time magazine in a front-page article, “The FBI vs. Jean Seberg”
- Media attention surrounding the abuse Seberg had undergone at FBI hands led to examination of the case by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a.k.a. “the Church Committee”
- Which noted that notwithstanding FBI claims of reform, “COINTELPRO activities may continue today under the rubric of investigation”
- In his autobiography, Los Angeles Times editor Jim Bellows described events leading up to the Seberg articles, in which he expressed regret that he had not vetted the Seberg articles sufficiently
- He echoed this sentiment in subsequent interviews
- In June 1980, Paris police filed charges against “persons unknown” in connection with Seberg’s death
- Police stated that Seberg had such a high amount of alcohol in her system at the time of her death, that it would have rendered her comatose and unable to get into her car without assistance
- Police noted there was no alcohol in the car where Seberg’s body was found
- Police theorized that someone was present at the time of her death and failed to get her medical care
- In December 1980, Seberg’s former husband Romain Gary committed suicide
- Gary’s suicide note, which was addressed to his publisher, indicated that he had not killed himself over the loss of Seberg but over the fact that he felt he could no longer produce literary works
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