Pierre Fresnay

Pierre Fresnay (; 4 April 1897 – 9 January 1975) was a French stage and film actor.

Biography Born Pierre Jules Louis Laudenbach, he was encouraged by his uncle, actor Claude Garry, to pursue a career in theater and film. Before his departure from the Comédie-Française in 1926 Fresnay had played 80 parts in Paris, excelling especially in the works of Alfred de Musset.

Alongside contemporary creations, his Comédie-Française career continued with Chatterton (Vigny), becoming a valued member of the troupe due to his intelligent acting, the flexibility of his talent, and quality of his diction ("l'intelligence de son jeu, la souplesse de son talent et l'excellence de sa diction"). Upon leaving the Comédie-Française his stage work was found at the Variétés in Guitry plays, then as Marius in the Pagnol trilogy.

He took the title role of Marcel Pagnol's Marius (1929), which ran for over 500 performances, also taking this role in the 1931 film adaptation of the play. He reprised the character in the next two parts of Marcel Pagnol's Marseilles Trilogy, Fanny (1932) and César (1936).

In 1932, Yvonne Printemps's marriage to Sacha Guitry broke up, and Printemps became Fresnay's personal and professional partner.

He took over the lead role in Noël Coward's Conversation Piece when the author moved on in April 1934. Fresnay won excellent reviews, and his stage partnership with Printemps was greatly admired. In the same year Printemps and Fresnay had a screen hit in Abel Gance's La dame aux camélias. Between then and 1951 they appeared together in eight films.

In 1934, he appeared briefly in Alfred Hitchcock's first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. In 1937, he portrayed the aristocratic French military officer Captain de Boeldieu in Jean Renoir's masterpiece La Grande Illusion. He also portrayed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer in Il est minuit, Docteur Schweitzer (1952). La Valse de Paris gave Fresnay the chance to play in a "stylised musical" as a "delightful, lightly caricatured portrayal of Offenbach", alongside Printemps.

Soldier A soldier in the French Army during World War I, he returned to his career a hero. However, under the German occupation of World War II, he worked for the Franco-German film company Continental, making Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau and other films.

Later years Printemps and Fresnay starred in Oscar Straus's Drei Walzer, given in French as Trois valses on the Parisian stage and on film (Les trois valses). The critic Richard Traubner commented in 2006 that because of the performances of Printemps and Fresnay the film still "hangs over anyone who dares revive the operetta on stage".

As well as theatre work covering 130 plays, he appeared in over 70 films, some still classics, and at the end of his life on television such as Le Neveu de Rameau.

Other Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest "I think my name is to be pronounced fray-nay. At least, it is the way I pronounce it." (Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936).

Filmography