Recent Obituaries, Classic Films Only

[Auggie]

105. Fran Jeffries, 79

December 15, 2016

Fran Jeffries, a lithe, silky-voiced singer and dancer who performed a showstopping samba in the 1963 film “The Pink Panther” and tantalized Tony Curtis with a seductive performance of the title song in “Sex and the Single Girl” a year later, died on Thursday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 79.

The cause was multiple myeloma, her granddaughter Zoë Sandler said on Tuesday.

Ms. Jeffries was well known on the cabaret and Las Vegas circuit as the singing partner of Dick Haymes, her husband, when the director Blake Edwards added a scene in “The Pink Panther” to showcase her talents.

Dressed in a black cat-suit and singing in Italian, she slithered her way around an Alpine ski chalet performing the Henry Mancini song “Meglio Stasera” (English title: “It Had Better Be Tonight”), as the bewitched cast looked on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/movies/fran-jeffries-an-actress-who-performed-a-sexy-samba-in-the-pink-panther-dies-at-79.html?_r=0

Nobody owns Meglio Stasera like Jeffries.