Julie Ege

May 5 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

SHE was the sort of long- limbed Nordic blonde who for millions of British working men in the 1970s, was the very embodiment of the fantasy foreign au pair or saucy nurse.

Film makers capitalised on it and Julie Ege, who has died, aged 64, added voluptuous Scandinavian glamour to a host of low-budget, but fondly remembered English farces, and was the sex bomb girlfriend to a successful Beatles’ record promoter.

In fact Julie, having worked as a model and being crowned Miss Norway, did come to England as an au pair.

Two months after her arrival in Britain, in 1967, Julie, who had graduated in history and English at Oslo University, was snapped up as a model in the May edition of Penthouse. It led to a part in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with George Lazenby as one of 10 girls of different nationalities in arch villain Blofeld’s Alpine retreat.

Ege’s first leading role came as Inge Giltenburg, a lusty Swedish au pair employed by porridge salesman Marty Feldman in Every Home Should Have One (1970).

This was followed by Up Pompeii (1971), the film version of the TV series. Her curvaceous charms were the selling points of Creatures The World Forgot (1971) where she played a sexy cavewoman clad in revealing leather bikinis and skimpy furs. She was tipped to fill Raquel Welch’s bikini for a while and in 1971 released a pop song.

Her final film in England was The Amorous Milkman (1975), in which bored housewives are served more than their daily pinta. She also starred in a number of mad scientist’s victim roles in Mutations, in 1972, with Donald Pleasance, and in Hammer production The Legend of Seven Golden Vampires (1974).

During most of her eight years in England, she lived with Tony Bramwell, who went to the same youth club as the Beatles in Halewood, and early on used to carry their equip- ment to get into clubs for free, before working as office man- ager at NEMS. He went to Lon- don with Epstein and formed Apple with his four friends and managed Apple Films. But he confessed for much of the time he felt like “Mr Julie Ege”.

When she returned to Norway, she trained as a care worker and then, after a three- year course, qualified as a registered nurse, fulfilling a childhood dream. She continued to work in a hospital in Oslo even after she was diagnosed with both breast and lung cancer.

Ege, who is survived by daughters, said once: “To be honest, I was never really that proud of my performance in films, but I gave it my best and enjoyed the work very much.”

Julie Ege, actor and model; born Nov 12 1943, died April 29, 2008.