Her life and her artistic career were full of glory, contradictions, paradoxes, legendary loves, lost loves, human trials and a painful long drawn out finale. Elli Lambeti died prematurely, 40 years ago, on September 3, 1983, aged just 57, after a long battle with cancer – the disease that killed all three of her four sisters!

The legacy

Breast cancer had plagued her since 1969 and returned more aggressively in 1980, with aggression and metastases, while chemotherapy and radiation burned her liver and damaged her vocal chords. And yet in her last appearance on the theater board she will play the deaf and mute Sara in the play “Children of an Inferior God” in 1981, before her strength completely left her. It was the legacy of a great performer and at the same time a brave woman, who, contrary to the image that the general public had, lived her life to the extremes and with her well-known Arvanite stubbornness will be recognized in the demanding theater of the time and in the cinema, despite her few appearances, disproving the “experts”, when she was rejected in the exams at the Dramatic School of the National Theater and at the Kotopoulis School.

If it wasn’t for Marika Kotopoulis, with her sharp eye and experience, to take her personally by her side and give her a place at the School and after a year a main role in the play “Hanele goes to Paradise”, maybe and to lose one of the greatest actresses of our country.

Stubborn from birth

Life’s difficulties began for Elli Lampeti before she even came out of her mother’s womb. The obstetrician, after delivering Taki’s twin brother, a healthy four-kilogram baby, believed that it would be difficult to save the coughing little girl who followed. The nurse standing next to the doctor whispered that he was “going to die.” However, the will of the mother and the stubbornness of the newborn after several minutes of agony will belie the sad prognosis. The baby’s cry will bring tears of emotion and relief to the mother and father. It was April 13, 1926.

Helen and Astrapogiannos

He was born in Vilia, Attica. Her real name was Eleni Loukou – Lambeti will adopt it from the heroes of Astrapogiannos in Valaoritis’ poem of the same name. Kostas Loukos’ father owned a tavern in Vilia and her mother was Anastasia Stamatis. She had four sisters and her much-loved twin brother, who died of tuberculosis in 1941.

Lambeti will grow up in a happy but humble home in Villa Attica. In 1928, Kostas Loukos’ father would become a timber merchant and in the same year he would move with his family to Athens.

Horn’s rejection and Marika

In 1941, the young Elli will be faced with two hard failures. She will be rejected outright by the National Drama School and the Kotopoulis School, with the young zen premier of the time, Dimitris Horn, ruling that she “doesn’t say it”, “killing” the dreams of her future co-star and great love. However, she will be given a second chance, when Spyros Melas, Elli’s uncle, convinces Marika Kotopoulis to accept her in her school with the argument “the world is not lost for one more compara”. When the leading theater actress of the time heard little Elli recite the first lines from “Antigone” she will say, in her familiar way, “well done, my little bird”, ensuring the best passport for the journey into the theatrical universe.

Young crazy love

Her first youthful, crazy love affair with a rich Greek man who lived in Paris and was excluded by the war in Greece, almost interrupted her artistic career once again. The influence that the intellectual from Paris had on her reaches the limits of magic. Elli gives up everything to be with him. The unborn baby girl became a woman within a few days.

Michalis Kakogiannis, who knew this story firsthand, once said that “it was a passionate story. They lived in their own world, they made love in the fields, they didn’t count for anything”, while she herself had said about her first love “he gave me heaven, that’s what matters”. The persistence of Kotopoulis, who knew from love affairs, would bring her back to the board and during the period 1946-1948, Lambeti established herself as a fan-quality rising actress. The next two years will be followed by her collaboration with the Kyrias Katerina troupe, with the National Theater and the Kostas Mousouri troupe.

The marriage with Ploritis

In 1949, she will fall madly in love with Alekos Alexandrakis, with whom at that time she co-starred in the theater. Their love, one of the hottest ever in the art scene, as they said at the time, would end in ingloriousness in a few months, due to their artistic anti-jealousy. Almost immediately, in 1950, Lambeti will marry Marios Ploritis – again the result of love at first sight. They will live together with her family in the house on Asklipiou Street and he will constantly photograph her in an unprecedented romantic mood. However, the marriage would end after three years – although they remained friends forever.

In her prime with Horn

In 1952, he will form a troupe with Giorgos Pappa and Horne, putting on excellent performances (“Nora – the Doll’s House”, “Blue Moon”, “The Man with the Umbrella”). Immediately after the divorce with Ploritis, she will again fall madly in love with Horn, creating a legendary romantic as well as stormy relationship.

In addition to their collaboration in the theater, they will shoot important films together with Horn. Her appearances in the cinema were few and far between. She will make her debut in 1946 in the drama “Enslaved Slaves”, while her first leading role will be in the romantic comedy “Diagogi Miden” by Gaziadis, with Lambros Konstandara and Dino Iliopoulos next to her. With Horn, they will star in the romantic comedy “Sunday Awakening” and in the drama “The Girl in Black”, directed by Kakogiannis, while they will have two great and unforgettable roles in Giorgos Tzavella’s classic drama “The Kalpiki Lira”.

The Last Lie

In the end, Lambeti will not even act in ten films, leaving a significant mark on Greek cinema, especially for Kakogiannis’ masterpiece drama “The Last Lie”, with which she will be among the nominees for the best foreign actress at the BAFTA awards. A sensational film, with Giorgos Pappas, Eleni Zafeiriou, Athina Michailidou, Michalis Nikolinakos, Dimitris Papamichail, Mina Christidis, etc., about the downfall of a wealthy family, hypocrisy, the shaky foundations of the infamous middle class, neo-wealth and the need of believing in something higher than money and worldly salons.

Cancer and the drama of adoption

The turbulent love affair with Horn will finally end in 1959, when Lambeti will meet the American writer Frederick Wakeman, whom she married, but divorced in 1976 and while they had been estranged for years, despite the luxurious life he offered her. The cancer, which appeared in 1969, will force her to undergo a total mastectomy in the US, which will deeply hurt her. But the worst will come, since the adoption of little Eliza, together with Wakeman, created many problems for her, while the final blow will come four years later, when, by court order, the child had to return to the natural parents of. This adventure will throw her into melancholy, will take her away from the theater, until she finds the last courage to go back on stage.

The painful finale

On September 3, 1983, after exhausting treatments, she will lose one of the many battles she fought in her life, the decisive one, and will take her last breath in a US hospital. On September 5, 1983, her body was taken to Athens and the next day she was buried at public expense in the First Cemetery of Athens, while a huge crowd, including all the theater people, will accompany her to her final residence. But her melancholic look, her loving voice, with the charming fakeness, the drive of a passionate woman, a huge actress, will accompany us forever.