Jules Dassin was a renowned director, screenwriter, and actor, best known for his iconic films such as Rififi, Never on Sunday, and Topkapi. Born Julius Samuel Dassin on December 18, 1911, in Middletown, Connecticut, he was one of eight children of Russian-Jewish immigrants Samuel Dassin and Berthe Vogel.
Growing up in Harlem, Dassin attended Morris High School in the Bronx, graduating in 1929. He later took acting classes in Europe and returned to New York, where he became an actor with the ARTEF Players, a Yiddish theater troupe. However, he soon discovered that acting was not his forte and shifted his focus to directing and writing.
Dassin joined the Communist Party of the United States, but left the party in 1939, disillusioned by the Soviet Union's pact with Adolf Hitler. He then came to Hollywood in 1940, where he worked as an apprentice to directors Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin.
Dassin made his directorial debut at MGM in 1941, adapting a story by Edgar Allan Poe. He went on to direct several notable films, including Brute Force, The Naked City, and Night and the City. However, his career in Hollywood was cut short when he was accused of being a Communist and was eventually blacklisted.
Dassin left the United States for France in 1953, where he struggled to make a name for himself. However, his low-budget film Rififi, which featured a famous heist sequence with no dialogue, won him the Best Director Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.
Dassin met the Greek actress Melina Mercouri on the set of Rififi and went on to co-star with her in Never on Sunday, which won the Best Film Award at Cannes in 1960. He received two Academy Award-nominations for directing and screen-writing for Topkapi, starring Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, and Peter Ustinov.
Dassin was married twice and had three children with his first wife, violinist Beatrice Launer. His son, Joe Dassin, was a popular French singer in the 1960s and '70s. In 1966, Dassin married Mercouri, an ardent anti-fascist who lost her Greek citizenship for opposing the junta. The couple lived in Manhattan and was active in their efforts to restore democracy in Greece during the dictatorship of the Colonels.
After 1974, the couple returned to Greece, where Mercouri became a member of the Greek Parliament and Culture Minister. Dassin was active in the effort to bring the Elgin marbles of the Parthenon back to Athens from the British Museum in London.
Jules Dassin died on April 1, 2008, at the age of 96, at Hygeia Hospital in Athens, Greece. He is survived by two daughters and grandchildren.
