Eva Bartok; Acted in U.S., Foreign Films

Eva Bartok, colorful Hungarian-born actress who made more than 40 films under several flags in the 1950s and 1960s, including “The Crimson Pirate” opposite Burt Lancaster, has died. She was 69.

Bartok, almost as famous for her romantic liaisons as her acting, died Saturday in a London hospital. She reportedly had heart problems.

Other than the 1952 film with Lancaster, Bartok’s American pictures were “Special Delivery” with Joseph Cotten in 1955 and “Ten Thousand Bedrooms” with Dean Martin in 1957. She also made films in Britain, Germany, Hungary, France and Israel.

The actress also did some writing, publishing a novel, “Fighting Shadows,” in 1955 and an autobiography, “Worth Living For,” in 1959.

The usually brunet, sometimes blond Bartok was married four times--to Hungarian army officer Geza Kovacs at 15, Hungarian producer Alex Paal, British writer William Wordsworth (great-great-grandson of the famous poet) and Austrian actor Curt Jurgens.

She also enjoyed storied relationships, most publicly with the marquess of Milford Haven, David Michael Mountbatten, though the two said they were only friends. Her marriage to Jurgens, from Aug. 13, 1955, to Nov. 6, 1956, was shorter than their 18-month engagement.

On Oct. 7, 1957, Bartok gave birth to her only child, Deana, in London. She initially refused to name the father, but late in life claimed the girl was conceived during a brief affair with Frank Sinatra.

Born Eva Szoke, the future actress was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, resulting in her teenage marriage. The London Daily Telegraph said the marriage to Kovacs was annulled on grounds of coercion of a minor.

After acting on stage in Budapest, Bartok made her film debut in the Hungarian picture “The Prophet of the Fields” in 1947. Paal took her to London and gave her a major break in his 1951 film “A Tale of Five Cities/A Tale of Five Women.”

Bartok retired from the movies in the mid-1960s and moved to Indonesia. She spent her final years in a London hotel. Her daughter and two grandchildren survive her.