Marchal, Georges

(1920-1997)

   Actor. Born Georges Louis Lucot in Nancy, Georges Marchal became one of the most prominent leading men of the 1940s and 1950s. He was a star on a par with Jean Marais and, like Marais, was in demand as much for his looks as for his acting ability. He had a film career spanning five decades, during the course of which he appeared in more than sixty films.

   Marchal made his screen debut in an uncredited role in Henri Decoin's Premier rendez-vous (1941). He quickly moved to supporting roles and then leading roles, appearing in such films as Roland Tual's Le Lit à colonnes (1942), Jean de Limur's L'Homme qui joue avec le feu (1942), Jean Grémillon's Lumière d'été (1943), Pierre Billon's Vautrin (1944), Jean-Paul Paulin's Échec au roy (1945), Jacques de Baroncelli's Fausse alerte (1945), Yves Allegret's Les Démons de l'aube (1946), Serge de Poligny's Torrents (1947) and La Soif des hommes (1949), Léonide Moguy's Bethsabée (1947), André Zwaboda's La Septième porte (1948), Christian Stengel's La Figure de proue (1948), Jean Stelli's La Voyageuse inattendue (1949) and Dernier amour (1949), Jacques Daroy's La Passagère (1949), and Decoin's Au grand balcon (1949).

   The peak of Marchal's career was the 1950s, during which time he had lead roles in more than twenty films. His forte seemed to be the costume drama and swashbuckling adventure, or at least that was the type of role he primarily played. Among the films in which he starred are Marcel L'Herbier and Paolo Moffa's Les Derniers jours de Pompei (1950), Gilles Grangier's Le Plus joli péché au monde (1951) and Jupiter (1952), Carmine Gallone's Messalina (1951), Henri Calef's Les Amours finissent à l'aube (1953), André Hunébelle's Les Trois mousquetaires (1953), Sacha Guitry's Si Versailles m'était conté (1954), Georges Combray's La Contessa di Castiglione (1955), Raoul André's Cherchez la femme (1955), René Jolivet and Ricardo Munoz Suay's Les Aventures de Gil de Santillane (1956), Maurice Cloche's Marchands de filles (1957) and Les Filles de nuit (1958), Edmont T. Grevilles's Quand sonnera minuit (1958), and Abel Gance's Austerlitz (1960), as well as a number of Spanish and Italian films.

   In addition to his other work, Marchal also starred in several films by Luis Bunuel, who was his close friend. His Bunuel films include Cela s'appelle l'aurore (1955), La Mort en ce jardin (1956), Belle de jour (1967), and La Voie lactée (1969). Apart from the Bunuel films, Marchal only acted in a handful of films in the 1960s, most of them outside of France. By the 1970s, Marchal was working primarily in television, with the notable exception of Nina Companéez's Faustine et le bel été (1972) and Benoît Jacquot's Les Enfants du placard (1977), his final film. Marchal continued acting in television until 1989, at which point he formally retired.