Gigi Darlene was born Heli Leonore Weinreich on March 4, 1943 in
Berlin, Germany. Of mixed French and German descent, Gigi had a
repressive relationship with her strict mother and uncaring stepfather.
Gigi entered and won regional beauty pageants as a teenager growing up
in Germany. After threatening to run away from home at age sixteen,
Gigi in 1959 was allowed by her mother to immigrate to Flushing,
Queens, New York City, where she lived with a couple of family friends.
Darlene did a fair amount of commercial print and magazine layout work
as well as was hired for industrial shows. In 1963 Gigi got a short
contract as a Wilson Girl working for the tennis clothing company.
Darlene eventually moved to Manhattan; she lived on West 43rd Street
and began posing for photo shoots for various men's magazines. Gigi
branched out as an exotic dancer making the rounds at clubs in New
York, New Jersey, and Long Island. While dancing at clubs Darlene met
and befriended future soft-core movie actress
Darlene Bennett.
After crossing paths with exploitation picture director
Barry Mahon, Darlene started acting in
assorted low-budget sexploitation features that were made throughout
the early to mid
1960's. Among the notable maverick East Coast exploitation filmmakers Gigi appeared in movies for were Doris Wishman,
Joseph P. Mawra,
David E. Durston, and
Joseph W. Sarno. She often co-starred
with Darlene Bennett in these films.
Gigi was working as a featured dancer at a club in New Jersey when she
first met her future husband Edwin Greal, who did a stage show as a
hypnotist using the pseudonym Charles Lamont. Darlene and Greal got
married on August 29, 1966. Gigi moved to Fort Lee, New Jersey after
marrying Greal and agreed to stop acting in movies. Greal and Darlene
eventually formed a stage act together and went on the road. The couple
moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1975. They resided in Vegas for five
years and continued to do stage shows before eventually moving to South
Florida in 1980. Alas, shortly after moving to South Florida Greal died
at age 56 on December 18, 1980.
In the wake of Greal's untimely passing Gigi in 1981 went on to obtain
a Real Estate license in Fort Lauderdale and sold time-share apartments
on and off for twenty years. Moreover, Darlene was a member of the
Screen Actors Guild and worked as an extra in movies that were shot in
South Florida. Gigi died from stomach cancer at a hospice in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida on New Year's Day in 2002. She was 58 years old.
Her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered off the pier in
Deerfield Beach, Florida into the Atlantic Ocean.
