Valerie Varda

Blonde Valerie Varda was born in Budapest, Hungary, as Zsuzsanna Eva Vayda (or Vajda), daughter of a textile manufacturer and his wife. After escaping from communist Hungary in 1957, the family made their way via Austria to Canada and settled in Toronto, where Miss Vayda went on to attend high school. Before long, in order to support her family, she accepted an offer from the expat French producer Marc Gaudart to participate in a commercial film for Canadian Airlines, shot in Mexico. She remained in Mexico and made further advertising films until the mysterious death of her benefactor Gaudart in 1959.

In 1961, she got in touch with the Austrian-American producer and talent agent Paul Kohner who arranged her a screen test with director Henry Koster for the role of bikini girl Marika in the James Stewart comedy Monsieur Hobbs prend des vacances (1962). Having passed the audition, 20th Century Fox changed her stage moniker to Valerie Varda. She later made a couple of TV guest appearances (La grande caravane (1957), 77 Sunset Strip (1958)) and had the female lead in an independently produced wartime comedy, before ending her brief sojourn in show biz. In 1971, she married Erwin Sobel, a trial attorney, and then worked for some time as an interior designer. After the untimely death of her son from a brain tumour in 1995, Valerie Varda Sobel set up the charitable André Sobel River of Life Foundation.