Singer-Actress, Andy Williams Wife Was 84

Claudine Longet, the French-born singer, actress and ex-wife of Andy Williams who was on the middle of a scandalous 1976 trial and media circus after she fatally shot her boyfriend, Olympic skier Spider Sabich, has died. She was 84.

Her dying was reported Thursday by her nephew Bryan Longet. No particulars of his dying have been instantly accessible.

The enchanting, doe-eyed Longet recorded albums of breathy pop for A&M Records earlier than she sang the Henry Mancini-Don Black music “Nothing to Lose” in Blake Edwards‘ The Party (1968), wherein she portrayed an aspiring actress alongside Peter Sellers.

A onetime Las Vegas showgirl, Longet had married “Moon River” crooner Williams in December 1961 and appeared on her long-running NBC selection present and Christmas specials, typically with their three youngsters.

After she and Williams divorced in 1975, Longet and the kids have been dwelling with the California-born Sabich at his chalet in Starwood, Colorado, when she shot him on March 21, 1976, in his rest room with a .22-caliber German-made gun that had been bought by his father. She chosen the gun by accident discharged as he was exhibiting her the way it labored.

Longet was with the 31-year-old Sabich within the ambulance when he died on the way in which to the hospital from a single gunshot wound to the stomach. A month later, she was charged with reckless manslaughter and confronted as many as 10 years in jail.

At her Aspen trial, Williams escorted her to and from the courtroom, testified on her behalf and offered authorized help. “I thought it was unfair, I thought she was innocent, I thought it was an accident,” he informed Cynthia Bowers in a 2009 interview for CBS Sunday Morning.

With the prosecution going through important hurdles due to mishandled proof and unlawful search practices, a jury after 4 days of testimony and three 1/2 hours of deliberations convicted Longet, 36, of criminally negligent murder, a misdemeanor, in January 1977. She was given two years’ probation, fined $250 and sentenced to 30 days in jail (she was in a position to serve most of her sentence on weekends).

The Sabich household later filed a civil swimsuit towards Longet for $1.3 million, however the case was settled out of court docket. Longet agreed to not converse publicly about Sabich or the homicide and to by no means publish a e-book about her life and the trial, and her profession as a singer and actress was carried out.

Claudine Georgette Longet was born in Paris on Jan. 29, 1942. Her father was a businessman specializing in X-ray expertise; her mom was a health care provider. She was in a manufacturing of The Turn of the Screw when she was 10, then she appeared on French tv and in performs in Milan and Venice.

Hired by nightclub businessman Lou Walters (Barbara Walters‘father), Longet had moved to Las Vegas and was dancing in a Folies Bergère revue on the Tropicana in 1960 when she first met Williams alongside a freeway on the town.

“My manager and I were driving down there and we saw this lovely girl and her girlfriend, who was also quite pretty, pushing this car,” Bowers informed. “And so, being gallant — and also because they looked pretty good — we stopped to see if we could help them.”

They began courting, and after Williams proposed to her in Paris — she had returned dwelling to her dad and mom, who have been alarmed that she was courting an older man — they wed at a church in Bel-Air on Dec. 15, 1961 (she was 19, he was 34).

In 1963, Longet appeared for the primary time on The Andy Williams Show and acted on episodes of McHale’s Navy and Dr Kildare. She later guest-starred on installments of Combat!, 12 O’Clock High, Mr. Novak and Hogan’s Heroes earlier than taking part in a novelist named Nicole who has a romance with Ben Gazzara’s character on the first-season finale of NBC’s Run for Your Life.

On the May 1966 episode, Longet mimicked taking part in the guitar and sang an English-French model of the bossa nova music “Meditation.” That received her a contract at Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss‘new A&M label, which launched “Meditation” as a single. Her first album, 1967’s Claudiaproduced by Tommy LiPuma, offered greater than 1,000,000 copies.

She would report three extra LPs for A&M earlier than leaping to Williams’ new Barnaby imprint for 1969’s We’ve Only Just Begun. She and her husband separated round that point — “We just sort of grew apart, I was never home… it was all my fault, I just didn’t take care of my marriage,” he mentioned — though she would proceed to look on his TV exhibits by 1974. (Her final album was 1972’s Let’s Spend the Night collectively.)

Meanwhile, Longet additionally confirmed up within the 1965 McHale’s Navy options and Massacre Harbor (1968) and on TV in The Name of the Game, The F.B.I., The Bold Ones, Love, American Style, Alias ​​Smith and Jones and The Streets of San Francisco.

Longet and Williams have been shut associates of Robert F. Kennedy and his spouse, Ethel, and so they have been watching his televised main victory speech on the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles upstairs within the senator’s suite on June 4, 1968.

After Kennedy was shot shortly after midnight within the resort by Sirhan Sirhan, the couple joined RFK’s household and different associates at Good Samaritan Hospital, and so they have been there when he was pronounced lifeless on June 6, practically 26 hours after the capturing.

Longet and Williams attended Kennedy’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on June 8 — Williams and a choir carried out “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” — and have been on the funeral prepare that took his physique to the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington for burial.

She and charismatic Vladimir “Spider” Sabich, who was the mannequin for Robert Redford‘s character in Downhill Racer (1969), first met in 1972 at a well-known snowboarding exhibition in Bear Valley, California.

At the time of the capturing, that they had been dwelling collectively for a few years however their relationship was on the rocks, as she wrote in her diary. (Since officers failed to realize a search warrant, that proof was inadmissible in court docket.)

After her sentencing, Longet informed reporters she was not bitter. “Because of the many cards and letters I’ve received, the prayers, I feel very good about everyone,” she mentioned.

Her case was spoofed on Saturday Night Live in April 1976 when sportscasters performed by Chevy Chase and Jane Curtin provided play-by-play of skiers being “accidentally shot” by Longet whereas competing in “The Claudine Longet Invitational” in Vail, Colorado. Announcer Don Pardo I’d learn an apology on the air subsequent week.

The Rolling Stones additionally recorded a derisive song called “Claudine” for Some Girls that did not make it on their 1978 album, apparently for authorized causes.

Longet and one in every of her protection attorneys, Ronald Austin, moved collectively shortly after her sentencing — he was married with two youngsters on the time — and so they married in June 1985, remaining within the Aspen space on a 5.4-acre property for years earlier than shifting to Hawaii.

She had three youngsters with Williams, sons Christian and Bobby (who was named for RFK) and daughter Noelle, who reportedly died in 2023.