Illa Meery

Illa Meery (16 May 1915 – October 2010) was a Russian-born French adventuress, singer, film actress and possibly Soviet spy who became involved in the French black market under German occupation.

Émigrée
She was the daughter of count Alexandre Alexandrovitch Tchernychev-Bezobrazov and Marie Nicolaïevna née Chtcherbatova. She arrived in France in 1919 with her parents and older brother as refugees from the October Revolution, first in Marseille, then Paris. She attended the Russian school in rue Daru.

Film actress and Chanel model
She appeared in several early French films in the 1920s, notably in Zouzou as Barbara, the topless foil for Années folles sensation Josephine Baker, who in that film became the first black woman to star in a French feature film. She later became a model for Chanel, then Schiaparelli. At that time she was living with the painter, a friend of Philippe de Rothschild. She became his mistress and he got her a part in the  film Lac aux dames (Lake of Ladies), a film he financed, based on a screenplay by Colette and directed by André Gide's former lover Marc Allégret.

Later she met professional crook Joseph Goldstein a.k.a. Dorélis. They became a couple and she was soon threatened with expulsion as a stateless person holding a Nansen passport. On 19 July 1939 she married the actor Henri Garat. In 1940, the couple took refuge in Brazil and lounged on the beach there ith the exiled Carol I of Romania.

Mobsters and Nazis
On her return to France in 1942, she developed ties with the Occupation authorities and black market figures, and was associated with various scandals under the name of Madame Garat. She became the mistress of Henri Lafont, head of the French Gestapo, and was one of the women known as the Countesses of the Gestapo. She had many affairs with German officers, notably with members of the SD.

As the mistress of Hans Leimer, an SS officer tasked with shipping requisitioned artwork and other goods to Germany, she was arrested in July 1944 by the Gestapo, and her lover was sent to the Russian front. She herself was sent to Germany to be judged in Berlin.

Fourth Republic criminal justice
Arrested by the Americans in May 1945, she was returned to French authorities and imprisoned in Fresnes on 6 September. On 5 June 1945, she was sentenced by the tribunal de la Seine to two years in prison and the confiscation of one third of her assets. She was also sued in the civil courts by someone who said she had appropriated assets, in litigation that went on for years.

She claimed to have been a Soviet agent since 1935 and to have penetrated German counterintelligence around 1942, but no evidence was found to support this.

Selected filmography

 * Princess Olala (1928) as Hedy
 * The Abduction of the Sabine Women (1928) as Ria, a showgirl
 * Cagliostro (1929) as Jeanne de la Motte
 * Lake of Ladies (1934) as Anika
 * Zouzou as Barbara (1934)