Catherine Langeais

Catherine Langeais, born Marie-Louise Terrasse, (9 August 1923 in Valence, Drôme – 23 April 1998 in Mantes-la-Jolie, Yvelines), was a French television presenter and actress. Her father was André Terrasse (1890-1951), an economic journalist and secretary to the Alliance démocratique, and her mother was Marthe Brossette, daughter of François Brossette, mayor of Givors. The family lived in Paris from 1933. On 28 January 1938, at the age of fourteen, when Marie-Louise was at a school dance, she was introduced by her brother to the politician and future president of the French Republic François Mitterrand. In March 1940, in spite of her youth, they became engaged, but they separated on 15 January 1942, when the Germans occupied France. During that time he sent her more than 300 letters and poems. Then in 1944 Mitterrand married Danielle Gouze whom he met in a resistance network, and Marie-Louise married a Polish count Antoine Gordowski, with whom they had two children, Jean-Michel and Élisabeth. They separated in 1949 and divorced in 1954. Initially recruited to present the programmes of the new national television network RTF in 1949, Catherine Langeais was probably the most popular lady presenter (speakerine) of French television, from the end of the 1950s through the 1970s. It was she who welcomed BBC viewers in the first international on-line television broadcast, the Franco-British week of July 1952, thanks to the new conversion standard which was to allow, a year later,…