All the world loves a beautiful woman, especially the world of Hollywood.  I suppose we can say that there are actresses…and beautiful women…and sometimes beautiful actresses.  Some of these beautiful women marry beautiful actors, too.  Some of these beautiful women even try their darndest to become serious actresses, but often their looks keep them from breaking into more demanding work.  We can probably safely put the lovely Linda Christian into that later category.  Her biggest Hollywood success was no single screen performance but rather her 1949 marriage to screen idol Tyrone Power.  A role like that pretty much comes along once in a lifetime.

Being the wife of a famous movie star would have come naturally to the graceful and intelligent Linda, born Blanca Rosa Welter on November 13, 1924.  She had a glamorous upbringing as the daughter of an oil company executive, her own parental pedigree — with Spanish, Dutch, French and German influences — almost as varied as the places she lived as her father pursued his career around the world.  The charming young lady wasn’t only attractive but also intelligent, easily picking up fluency in a multitude of languages and thinking seriously about a career in medicine.  Her own ambitions notwithstanding, her beauty was too enticing to keep under wraps, and she was reportedly enticed by no less than Errol Flynn to try her hand at acting.  On little more than her looks she was given an MGM contract, getting small roles in 1946′s Holiday in Mexico and 1947′s Green Dolphin Street.  Soon after, Linda was cast in RKO’s Tarzan and the Mermaids, set to be filmed on location in Mexico.  It was here that she first encountered Tyrone Power, but they didn’t hook up romantically until a few months later when she happened to be in Rome staying at the same hotel as Power, who was coming through the city on a world publicity tour. 

Both were happy to see a familiar face, and their casual friendship blossomed over several weeks into a romance which culminated into a huge wedding in January 1949.  The marriage, which would be Power’s second, catapulted Linda into world prominence.  She had her wedding gown created by one of the most prestigious fashion designers in Rome, and the ceremony was front page news all over the world and movie magazine fodder for months.  After several miscarriages, Tyrone and Linda finally had a daughter, Romina, born in 1951, and two years later she gave birth to another daughter, Taryn. 

Like many Hollywood marriages, the Power-Christian union was not without its tensions.  Power was a serious actor who wanted to branch out into more theater work instead of concentrating on movie roles, while Christian wanted very much to continue her own acting career.  The marriage officially ended in August of 1956.  Tyrone Power wed again in May of 1958, but the marriage was cut horribly short when he died barely six months later, on November 15, 1958, on the set of his movie Solomon and Sheba.  (This Saturday will mark the 50th anniversary of his death.)

Linda, who had on several occasions modeled for Mexican painter Diego Rivera (one of his portraits of her was on the cover of her 1962 biography), later married English actor Edmund Purdom, but they divorced after only a year.  Linda kept up her acting career with sporadic roles, including appearing in a 1954 TV production of James Bond adventure Casino Royale, and later in many TV shows, several movies (including a small role in 1963′s The V.I.P.s) and frequent international productions.   Linda Christian now lives in Southern California, a much-loved matriarch of her family as well as a beautiful survivor of more than sixty years of Hollywood history.  We wish her all the best!

Here’s a short clip from the 1954 production of Casino Royale: