With eye-catching good looks, blond Lithuanian-born actor Jacques
Sernas (aka Jack Sernas) is best known for cutting a fine figure in
European costumers and spectacles in the 1950s and 1960s. Born on July
30, 1925, his father died when he was a year old and the boy would be
raised by his mother in Paris. After schooling there he joined up as a
French Resistance fighter during W.W.II. Captured by German forces and
imprisoned for over a year in Buchenwald, he was eventually freed.
Sernas originally studied medicine in the early postwar years but
acting soon caught his fancy. He made an unbilled movie debut in the
French film
Miroir (1947) starring
Jean Gabin. In the years to come
Italian/European action films would dominate his screen time. Audience
attention grew in proportion with a variety of comedies, dramas,
costumers and adventures including
Lost Youth (1948) [Lost
Youth];
Stolen Affections (1948) [Stolen
Affections];
Il falco rosso (1949)
[The Red Falcon] in which he played the title role;
Bluebeard (1951); the costumed romancer
Anita Garibaldi (1952) [Anita
Garibaldi]; and
Lulù (1953) co-starring with
Valentina Cortese.
The actor hit major international attention after being cast as Paris
opposite sex sirens
Rossana Podestà and
Brigitte Bardot in
Helen of Troy (1956) and Hollywood
itself took brief notice, handing him a starring role in the Warner
Bros. war film
Jump Into Hell (1955) and a few TV
guest parts. When nothing came of it, he returned to Italy and was for
the most part relegated to supporting characters, making one lasting
impression as a fading matinée idol in Fellini's masterpiece
La Dolce Vita (1960).
Other Italian/European films in and around this decade included
Goddess of Love (1957)
co-starring
Belinda Lee;
The Nights of Lucretia Borgia (1959);
Duel of Champions (1961) starring
Alan Ladd;
The Centurion (1961)
in which he co-starred with
John Drew Barrymore;
Duel of the Titans (1961) starring
musclemen
Steve Reeves and
Gordon Scott;
55 Days at Peking (1963)
starring
Charlton Heston and
Ava Gardner, which filmed in Spain;
The Secret Agents (1965) [aka The
Dirty Game] starring
Henry Fonda, which
filmed in Germany; the "spaghetti western"
Fort Yuma Gold (1966),
Midas Run (1969) starring
Fred Astaire and
Richard Crenna, which filmed in Italy and
England; and the Italian/US co-production
Hornets' Nest (1970), a war drama
starring
Rock Hudson.
As the years rolled by Sernas was seen less and less on film and more
and more on Italian TV. Into the millennium he appeared in a few
elderly roles, one being a 2003 TV movie about Pope John XXIII. Jacques died at age 89 on July 3, 2015 in Rome.