) was a United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 supporting actor

Supporting actor

A supporting actor is an actor who performs roles in a play or film other than that of the leads.These roles range from bit parts to secondary leads. They are sometimes but not necessarily character roles. A supporting actor must also use restraint not to upstage the main actor/actress in the...

 and successful commercial model

Model (person)

A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....

 who appeared in films and on television during a 20 year career. She was a widely known Hollywood celebrity during the 1950s, owing much to publicity about her social life. Luez is most often noted for her supporting role as photographic model Marla Rakubian in Rudolph Maté

Rudolph Maté

Born in Kraków , Maté started in the film business after his graduation from the University of Budapest. He went on to work as an assistant cameraman in Hungary and later throughout Europe, sometimes with noted colleague Karl Freund...

's 1949 film noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

drama

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 D.O.A.

D.O.A. (1950 film)

D.O.A. , a film noir drama film directed by Rudolph Maté, is considered a classic of the genre. The frantically paced plot revolves around a doomed man's quest to find out who has poisoned him – and why – before he dies.Leo C...

.

Early life

Luez was the second of three children born in Honolulu, Hawaii

Honolulu, Hawaii

Honolulu is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii. Honolulu is the southernmost major U.S. city. Although the name "Honolulu" refers to the urban area on the southeastern shore of the island of Oahu, the city and county government are consolidated as the City and...

 to Frank and Francesca Luiz, vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 singers and dancers who performed traditional Hawaiian and Spanish music. Luez's father was Hawaiian with some Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 ancestry. Her mother was Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n, the daughter of an actor. Luez first showed up on stage doing a hula

Hula

Hula is a dance form accompanied by chant or song . It was developed in the Hawaiian Islands by the Polynesians who originally settled there. The hula dramatizes or portrays the words of the oli or mele in a visual dance form....

 dance at age three. In July 1935 the family left Honolulu on the SS Mariposa

SS Mariposa

SS Mariposa was a luxury ocean liner launched in 1931; one of four ships in the Matson Lines "White Fleet" which included , and . It was later renamed the SS Homeric.-Career with Matson Lines:...

 to settle in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. That same year, six year old Loretta performed for Sultan Ibrahim of Johor, who was known as one of the wealthiest men in the world at that time.

Hollywood career

In the late 1930s, as she walked along Hollywood Boulevard

Hollywood Boulevard

-Revitalization:In recent years successful efforts have been made at cleaning up Hollywood Blvd., as the street had gained a reputation for crime and seediness. Central to these efforts was the construction of the Hollywood and Highland shopping center and adjacent Kodak Theatre in 2001...

, a cinema marquee advertising the film Suez

Suez (film)

Suez is a 1938 film account of the building of the Suez Canal by Ferdinand de Lesseps, played by Tyrone Power. It was so highly fictionalized that de Lesseps' descendants sued for libel....

reportedly stirred ten year old Loretta Luiz to change her name to Laurette Luez. In 1944 Cecil B. DeMille

Cecil B. DeMille

Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...

 saw one of her headshots and at age 16 she was cast as a fetching Javanese girl in The Story of Dr. Wassell

The Story of Dr. Wassell

The Story of Dr. Wassell is a Technicolor World War II film set in the Dutch East Indies, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, and starring Gary Cooper, Laraine Day, Signe Hasso, and Dennis O'Keefe. It is based on the wartime activities of US Navy Doctor Corydon M...

. In October of that year, Luez was featured in Esquire magazine. She signed a five-year contract with 20th Century-Fox in 1945, for a weekly salary of $125. In the late 1940s, she became a highly successful model, appearing in photographs and artwork for national brands such as Lux

Lux (soap)

Lux is a global brand developed by Unilever. The range of products includes beauty soaps, shower gels, bath additives, hair shampoos and conditioners. Lux started as “Sunlight Flakes” laundry soap in 1899....

 soap.

In 1949, when she was 21, Luez played the film role for which she is most remembered, the embittered and ruthless Armenia

Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

n model Marla Rakubian in the film noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

drama

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 D.O.A.

D.O.A. (1950 film)

D.O.A. , a film noir drama film directed by Rudolph Maté, is considered a classic of the genre. The frantically paced plot revolves around a doomed man's quest to find out who has poisoned him – and why – before he dies.Leo C...

In 1950 Luez became widely known for supporting roles with Roddy McDowell in Killer Shark and Kim

Kim (film)

Kim is a 1950 adventure film made in Technicolor by MGM. It was directed by Victor Saville and produced by Leon Gordon from a screenplay by Helen Deutsch, Leon Gordon and Richard Schayer, based on the classic novel of the same name by Rudyard Kipling....

with Errol Flynn

Errol Flynn

Errol Leslie Flynn was an Australian-born actor. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films, being a legend and his flamboyant lifestyle.-Early life:...

, which was the first major motion picture filmed in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. About working with Flynn, Luez said, "Errol and I play our love scenes through the window and do not kiss. But we took stills embracing each other. They asked me if I enjoyed working that way with Errol and I told them it was very, very disturbing, to say the least." That year, Hollywood columnist Jimmy Fidler

Jimmy Fidler

Jimmie Fidler was an American columnist, journalist and radio and television personality. He wrote a Hollywood gossip column and was sometimes billed as Jimmy Fidler.Born in St...

 said Luez had beauty, charisma and ambition but lacked experience as an actor, noting she was taking diction lessons after having been asked to do so by her agent. From this time forward she was cast mostly in ethnic and somewhat erotic character roles in films (a few of which were highly profitable if not critically acclaimed) and on television. In 1953 she appeared in Siren of Bagdad

Siren of Bagdad

Siren of Bagdad is a 1953 fantasy Technicolor adventure film produced by Sam Katzman and directed by Richard Quine set in the middle age Persian Empire. It stars Paul Henreid as a travelling Master magician who seeks to recover his troop of beautiful dancing girls who are to be sold into slavery...

 as a dancing slave girl. In 1954 she played a small role in the Bowery Boys

Bowery Boys

The Bowery Boys were a nativist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Irish gang based north of the Five Points district of New York City in the mid-19th century. They were primarily stationed in the Bowery section of New York, which was, at the time, extended north of the Five Points...

 film Jungle Gents

Jungle Gents

Jungle Gents is a 1954 comedy film starring The Bowery Boys. The film was released on September 5, 1954 by Allied Artists and is the thirty-fifth film in the series.-Plot:...

opposite Huntz Hall

Huntz Hall

Henry Richard "Huntz" Hall was an American radio, theatrical, and motion picture performer noted primarily for his roles in the "Dead End Kids" movies, such as Angels with Dirty Faces , which gave way to the "The Bowery Boys" movie franchise, a prolific and highly successful series of comedies in...

's character Sach (her one line was "Kiss, kiss, kiss"). Her last major film credit was in 1963 when she played the cantina girl Felina in Ballad of a Gunfighter with Marty Robbins

Marty Robbins

Martin David Robinson , known professionally as Marty Robbins, was an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...

, drawn from his 1959 hit song "El Paso

El Paso (song)

"El Paso" is a country and western ballad written and originally recorded by Marty Robbins, and first released on Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs in September 1959. It was released as a single the following month, and became a major hit on both the country and pop music charts, reaching number...

." Luez left the film industry in 1965.

Personal life

Throughout the 1950s Luez was more widely noted for her many whirlwind romances and socializing in Hollywood nightspots than for her acting. This began with a highly publicized engagement to producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr

Samuel Goldwyn, Jr.

Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. is an American film producer.Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. was born in Los Angeles, California. He is the son of actress Frances Howard and the pioneer motion picture mogul Samuel Goldwyn...

 from 1949 to 1950. Luez was married four times:

• Actor Philip Sudano (1947, divorced 1948), with whom she had her first son, Alexander Eden in Los Angeles.
• Greek director Gregg Tallas (1950 in Las Vegas, the marriage lasted three months). At the time, Tallas said he hoped to open a production company in Greece featuring Luez as his star.
• Real estate investor Ed Harrison (1951, "secretly" in Tijuana, Mexico, annulled
  Annulment
  Annulment is a legal procedure for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost as if it had never taken place...
  
   in 1952). Luez claimed Harrison had not divorced his former wife and also said he threatened both her life and film career.
• Robert Creel (1956, divorced 1983), with whom she had two children, a son, Craig T. (born 14 September 1962 in Los Angeles) and a daughter, Claudette M. (born 1 May 1968 in Los Angeles).

By 1990 Luez was living in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

with her sister Lei, along with a nephew.

Laurette Luez died on 12 September 1999 in Milton, Florida at the age of 71.