Claudine Longet

Claudine Georgette Longet was born in Paris on January 29, 1942, during the German occupation of France. Her father was a businessman who specialised in X-ray technology and her mother was a doctor. She showed an early talent for singing and dancing and, according to the Los Angeles Times, imagined her name on a marquee.

She acted from childhood, appearing in a production of The Turn of the Screw at about the age of 10, and later worked on French television and in plays in Milan and Venice. Around the age of 18 she was hired by the American impresario Lou Walters, father of the broadcaster Barbara Walters, to dance in the Folies Bergere revue at the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas.

Published obituaries do not name any formal schools or conservatories. Longet trained on the job, as a child stage performer in France, in Italian theatre in Milan and Venice, and as a dancer in the Folies Bergere revue in Las Vegas, before becoming a recording artist in the United States.

Longet first sang on The Andy Williams Show in 1963 and became a regular on her husband's NBC variety series and Christmas specials. That year she also began acting, with two episodes of McHale's Navy and a role in the 1964 McHale's Navy film. She went on to guest roles in Combat!, 12 O'Clock High, Mr. Novak, The Rat Patrol, Hogan's Heroes, Dr. Kildare, The F.B.I., The Bold Ones, The Name of the Game, Love, American Style, Alias Smith and Jones and The Streets of San Francisco.

Her recording career began with the first-season finale of Run for Your Life, broadcast in May 1966, in which she sang a bilingual version of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Meditation". Herb Alpert signed her to A&M Records, which released "Meditation" as her first single. Her debut album, Claudine (1967), produced by Tommy LiPuma with arrangements by Nick DeCaro, reached number 11 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold. The Look of Love (1967), Love Is Blue (1968), Colours (1968) and Run Wild, Run Free (1970) followed. Her charting singles included "Hello, Hello", which reached number 8 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart, "Small Talk", "Here, There and Everywhere", "Good Day Sunshine" and "Love Is Blue".

In 1968 she co-starred opposite Peter Sellers in Blake Edwards's The Party, playing the aspiring actress Michele Monet and singing Henry Mancini and Don Black's "Nothing to Lose". She later recorded for Williams's Barnaby Records, releasing We've Only Just Begun (1971) and Let's Spend the Night Together (1972). In 1975 she voiced the Flower on a recording of The Little Prince that won the Grammy Award for Best Album for Children. Her entertainment career effectively ended after the 1976 shooting of Spider Sabich.

Longet met Andy Williams in Las Vegas in 1960, when he stopped to help her and a friend push a stalled car. They married in Bel Air, Los Angeles, on December 15, 1961, and had three children: Noelle, Christian and Robert, known as Bobby, named after Robert F. Kennedy. The couple were close friends of Robert and Ethel Kennedy and were at the Ambassador Hotel on the night Kennedy was shot in June 1968. Longet and Williams separated around 1970 and divorced in January 1975, but remained friends until his death in 2012.

In 1972 she met the ski racer Vladimir "Spider" Sabich at a celebrity skiing event in Bear Valley, California, and later lived with him near Aspen. After his death and her trial, she began a relationship with one of her defence lawyers, Ronald D. Austin, and they married in June 1985. They lived for decades on a Red Mountain estate in Aspen, which was sold after being listed in 2023. Her son Christian died in 2019 and her daughter Noelle reportedly died in 2023.

Longet rarely spoke publicly about her views, and after the civil settlement with the Sabich family she reportedly agreed never to discuss the case. After her sentencing in 1977 she told reporters she was not bitter, saying the cards, letters and prayers she had received left her feeling good about everybody. Her friendship with Robert and Ethel Kennedy, including travel with the family and her presence on the 1968 funeral train, is the clearest public record of her political circle.

Longet is remembered both as a defining voice of late 1960s soft pop and bossa nova crossover and as the central figure of one of the most publicised celebrity trials of the 1970s. Her A&M albums have been reissued many times and remain especially popular in Japan. "Nothing to Lose" from The Party and her versions of "Meditation" and "Love Is Blue" continue to circulate widely, and her recordings were used in Gilmore Girls. The Sabich case remains a staple of true-crime television and podcasts, and is regularly cited in discussions of how evidence errors and celebrity can shape a verdict.

Her debut album Claudine (1967) was certified gold by the RIAA. She voiced the Flower on The Little Prince (1975), which won the Grammy Award for Best Album for Children at the 1976 ceremony; the award went to the production rather than to her personally. Several of her singles reached the Billboard adult contemporary top 40, with "Hello, Hello" peaking at number 8.

In April 1976 Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update aired a sketch about "The Claudine Longet Invitational", in which skiers were "accidentally shot" on the slopes. Her lawyers objected and the show broadcast an apology the following week. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote "Claudine" about the case for the Rolling Stones; it was left off their 1978 album Some Girls and only officially released on the 2011 deluxe reissue. The Geraldine Fibbers recorded an instrumental titled "Claudine" in 1997. Gilmore Girls referenced her in a 2001 episode, City Confidential covered the case in 2003, and the Revue Starlight character Saijou Claudine (2018) was named after her.

On March 21, 1976, Longet shot Vladimir "Spider" Sabich, 31, a former U.S. Olympic skier and professional ski champion, in the bathroom of his chalet at Starwood, near Aspen, Colorado. He died from a single gunshot wound to the abdomen in the ambulance, with Longet beside him. She said the .22-calibre pistol went off accidentally while he was showing her how it worked.

She was charged with reckless manslaughter. The Pitkin County authorities took a blood sample and seized her diary without warrants, so prosecutors could not use them; they argued instead from the autopsy that Sabich had been bent over and facing away from her. Jury selection began on January 3, 1977, with Andy Williams escorting her to court each day and paying for her defence. In January 1977 the jury convicted her of criminally negligent homicide, a misdemeanour. Judge George E. Lohr sentenced her to two years' probation, a $250 fine and 30 days in jail, allowing her to choose the dates, and she served mostly on weekends. The leniency of the outcome, and her later relationship with her married defence lawyer Ronald Austin, drew widespread criticism. The Sabich family's civil suit was settled out of court, reportedly on condition that she never discuss the case publicly or write about it.

Claudine Longet's death at the age of 84 was announced on Thursday, May 14, 2026, by her nephew Bryan Longet in a social media post, and he confirmed it to the Associated Press. Some reports give May 14 as the date of death, but the exact date and place were not confirmed in the earliest coverage, and no cause of death was made public. She had lived in the Aspen area for decades with her husband, Ronald Austin. "You have been a true inspiration in my life and you will always be," her nephew wrote. "Another star in the sky. Thank you for everything, my aunt."