Claudine Longet, the French-American singer and actress whose soft voice and elegant screen presence made her a familiar figure in 1960s and early 1970s American entertainment, has died in May 2026 at 84. She was known for her recordings, her recurring appearances on The Andy Williams Show and her memorable performance in Blake Edwards’s 1968 film The Party.

Born Claudine Georgette Longet in Paris on Jan. 29, 1942, she came to American entertainment by way of Las Vegas, where she worked as a dancer in the Folies Bergère revue at the Tropicana Resort & Casino. In 1960, Andy Williams met her after stopping to help when her car broke down by the roadside, a chance encounter that led to their marriage in Los Angeles on Dec. 15, 1961. They had three children together, and although they later separated in 1970 and divorced in January 1975, Williams later said they remained “very good friends.”

Her first television acting appearances came in 1963, when she played Yvette Gerard in two episodes of McHale’s Navy, and she returned to the role in the 1964 theatrical feature film version. Through the 1960s she also appeared in series including Twelve O’Clock High, Combat!, The Name of the Game, The Rat Patrol, Hogan’s Heroes, Alias Smith and Jones and Mr. Novak, but her most familiar television home was The Andy Williams Show, where she became a recurring presence on the program and on Williams’s specials throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Longet’s recording career gave her the most durable place in popular memory. Her debut album, Claudine, released in April 1967, reached No. 11 on the Billboard pop albums chart and earned a gold record in the United States. Her second album, The Look of Love, followed with a No. 33 showing, and her single “Good Day Sunshine” reached No. 100 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 36 on the adult contemporary chart in 1967. She recorded for A&M Records during her peak years, and her work remained associated with the soft-pop and easy-listening sound of the late 1960s.

The emotional center of her career came with “Nothing to Lose,” written by Henry Mancini and Don Black and performed by her in Blake Edwards’s The Party, released in the United States on April 4, 1968. In the film, she played Michele Monet opposite Peter Sellers, and the song became one of the best-known musical moments tied to her screen career. It captured what made Longet distinctive: a polished, intimate style that translated easily from records to television to film.

After joining Andy Williams’s Barnaby Records label in 1971, she released We’ve Only Just Begun that year and Let’s Spend the Night Together in 1972. She also appeared in the 1971 television film How to Steal an Airplane, played Michelle Chivot, and received a writing credit with John McGreevey on The Andy Williams Christmas Show, released in 1974. In 1975, she appeared as the Flower in The Little Prince, a children’s album that won the Grammy Award for Best Album for Children in 1976.

Longet largely withdrew from public life after the 1970s, with later screen appearances limited to retrospective programs such as E! True Hollywood Story in 2000 and A&E Biography’s Andy Williams episode in 2003. Her career was not vast, but it was finely tuned to the era that made her. She left behind a small, durable body of work that still evokes the soft-pop glamour of late-1960s American entertainment, and a screen and recording presence that was understated, graceful and unmistakably of its time.