Martha Karagianni

Martha Karagianni was born on 6 November 1939, the only child of refugee parents from Pontus, and grew up in Keratsini, near Piraeus; some reports name Piraeus or Athens as her birthplace. At eight, after a year of lessons at the Morianoff dance school, she was accepted into the children’s ballet of the Lyric Stage, and when that programme closed she followed her teacher to a new dance school. Her private secondary school also taught dance and acting. At a school performance the director Orestis Laskos noticed her and invited her to a screen test at Finos Film. Before turning seventeen she played Alekos Alexandrakis’s sweetheart in Η Άγνωστος (The Unknown Woman), released in 1956. She never attended a drama school, but received an actor’s licence as an “exceptional talent”.

Her stage debut followed in 1957 in the revue Ελέφαντες και ψύλλοι (Elephants and Fleas), where she met Giannis Dalianidis, then an actor and dancer. From 1961 her film career was closely tied to Dalianidis and Finos Film, and from 1964 until 1972 she worked for Finos alone. Afterwards she concentrated on the theatre, moving from musicals and comedies in the 1970s and 1980s to straight drama in the 1990s, and appeared in television series from 1977 onwards. Her autobiography, Ο έρωτας μωρό μου είναι γλέντι (Love, Baby, Is a Celebration), appeared in 2001. She died on 18 September 2022.

Karagianni’s screen persona took shape in the Finos Film comedies and musicals of the 1960s. Dalianidis first cast her in Ζητείται ψεύτης (Wanted: A Liar, 1961). Μερικοί το προτιμούν κρύο (Some Like It Cold, 1963), which Finos presents as the first Greek musical, brought her great success as Dinos Iliopoulos’s fiancée. She then became a fixture of Dalianidis’s musicals, including Κάτι να καίει (Something Burning, 1964), Κορίτσια για φίλημα (Girls for Kissing, 1965), Ραντεβού στον αέρα (Rendezvous in the Air, 1966), Μια κυρία στα μπουζούκια (A Lady at the Bouzoukia, 1968), Γοργόνες και μάγκες (Mermaids and Rascals, 1968) and Μαριχουάνα στοπ (Marijuana Stop, 1971). She danced in all of them but sang in only one: Ο άντρας που θα παντρευτώ (The Man I Will Marry), by Mimis Plessas and Lefteris Papadopoulos, in Mermaids and Rascals.

With Kostas Voutsas she formed a much-loved screen pair, above all in Το ανθρωπάκι (The Little Man, 1969). Nikos Foskolos’s Πεθαίνω κάθε ξημέρωμα (I Die Every Dawn, 1969) gave her her only dramatic role at Finos. Finos Film counts twenty of her forty-two films. On stage she mounted an ambitious Cabaret in the winter of 1972, earned praise in Pirandello, Goldoni and Kesselring in the 1990s, and in 2004 played Praxagora in Aristophanes’ Εκκλησιάζουσες (Assemblywomen), touring Greek festivals as far as the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.

Finos Film, which holds the rights to her films, keeps Karagianni’s filmography, three video tributes and a selection of her sayings on its website; when she died, the company bade her farewell as “our mermaid”. She once said that making people laugh cannot be taught: either you have it or you do not. Comic timing may be innate, but comic dialogue is an excellent classroom. Choose a short scene from a credited Finos comedy in Greek, such as Το ανθρωπάκι (The Little Man), and note how the characters make a request, interrupt each other and change tone. Then write a new exchange of four to six lines for the same situation in your own words, rather than copying the script, and perform it with a partner.

• She received an actor’s licence as an “exceptional talent” without ever attending a drama school.
• In Dalianidis’s musicals she danced every time but sang only once, in Mermaids and Rascals (1968).
• In 2002 she returned to the Lyric Stage, in the operetta Το κορίτσι της γειτονιάς (The Girl Next Door), more than fifty years after its children’s ballet.
• Her first ancient comedy came only in 2004, when she played Praxagora in Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen.