British actress
Daughter of actress Xenia Desni.
Mother of two daughters with her fifth husband Albert Lavagna.
After four short marriages that all ended in divorce, Desni finally found happiness with builder Albert Lavagna. This marriage lasted over half a century. Initially, she did not wish to marry him, (given her track record), but he insisted due to his strong religious faith as she was pregnant. It was his first marriage.
Took her mothers surname as her stage-name. Her father, James Brodsky, left his family to settle in the United States.
Of Russian parentage.
On her move to the South of France in the early 1950s, she became romantically involved with Albert Lavagna, a builder, and she developed an inn with a restaurant and bar called LAuberge Chez Tamara, which became a great attraction around Grasse in the Alpes Maritimes.
Her first husband, Hans Wilhelm, was a German dentist. They married while she was a teenager but divorced before she moved to England in 1931. Her third husband, Roland Gillett , a film producer, served in WWII as a naval flyer but the strains of that ended the marriage.
Ex-stepmother of Simone Lovell.
Her greatest success was on the London stage during the early 1930s. Her operetta, "The White Horse Inn" (from the original German production "Im weissen Roessl"), ran for 500 performances at the Coliseum Theatre in 1931.
Studied ballet as a child.
