Taina Elg, the Finland-born actress and dancer who starred opposite Gene Kelly in the colorful 1957 George Cukor musical Les Girls and with Kenneth More in the 1959 remake of the spy thriller The 39 Steps, has died. She was 95.
Elg died May 15 in an assisted care facility in her native Helsinki, her family told the Helsinki Times.
On Broadway, Elg worked alongside Raul Julia in the 1974-75 revival of Frank Loesser’s Where’s Charley? — she earned a Tony nomination for best featured actress in a musical for that — and in the 1982-84 original production of Tommy Tune’s Nine, where she played the mother of his character, Guido.
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Her breakthrough in Hollywood came with her turn as cabaret dancer Angèle Ducros in MGM’s Les Girls, which also starred Mitzi Gaynor and Kay Kendall and featured music from Cole Porter. She and Kendall shared the Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy for their work.
In the Rank Organisation’s remake of The 39 Steps, Elg portrayed the schoolteacher Miss Fisher, who inadvertently gets involved with a British diplomat (More’s Richard Hannay) out to decipher and break up a sinister plot against England. (The 1935 original, of course, was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starred Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll.)
The daughter of pianists, Taina Elisabeth Elg was born in Helsinki on March 9, 1930. She appeared in her first film at age 10, danced with the Finnish National Ballet in Helsinki and went on to study ballet in Sweden in Stockholm and Gothenburg and in London with the Royal Ballet.
She was discovered in London by American film producer Edwin H. Knopf and, in the wake of the Hollywood success enjoyed by fellow Scandinavian Anita Ekberg, signed to a seven-year contract by MGM.
Elg appeared alongside Lana Turner in The Prodigal (1955) and Diane (1956), then received a Golden Globe for best female foreign newcomer for her performance in Gaby (1956), starring Leslie Caron.
In her follow-up to Les Girls, she starred as a Frenchwoman who owns a farm in the war comedy Imitation General (1958), starring Glenn Ford and Red Buttons. Her last movie under contract at MGM was the African adventure Watusi (1959), starring George Montgomery.
With her film career waning, Elg moved to the stage and starred as the title character in a touring production of Irma La Douce in 1962. In 1970, she made the first of her seven Broadway appearances, portraying a nun in Josh Logan’s Look to the Lillies, based on the 1963 Sidney Poitier film Lilies of the Field.
Later, she toured with Gigi in 1984-85 and with Titanic in 1999-2000.
In 1980-81, Elg stood out as Olympia Buchanan, the banished first wife of Texas tycoon Asa Buchanan (Philip Carey), on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. Her character memorably falls over a balcony at a costume party to her death.
Her résumé included the films The Bacchantes (1961), Hercules in New York (1970), Liebestraum (1991) and Barbra Streisand’s The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) and the soap operas The Doctors, Guiding Light, The Edge of Night and Loving.
Her son is jazz guitarist Raoul Björkenheim.
Elg was married to economist and importer Carl “Poku” Björkenheim from 1953 until their 1958 divorce and to educator Rocco Caporale from 1982 until his death in 2008, when she left New York after more than three decades to return to her home country. Four years earlier, she received the prestigious Order of the Lion from Finland.
