Morlay, Gaby

(1893-1964)

   Actress. Born Blanche Fumoleau, Gaby Morlay began her career during the silent-film era and established herself as an actress with staying power, building a career that lasted five decades. In 1915, she was hired on at Pathé, where she made her name starring opposite Max Linder in his Max films. She appeared in such Linder films as Le Vacance de Max (1913), Le 2 août, 1914 (1914), and Max dans les airs (1914). Morlay was such a hit that she was granted her own eponymous series, including such films as Gaby en auto (1917), Pour épouser Gaby (1917), and Le Chevalier de Gaby (1920), all directed by Charles Burguet. She also went on to appear in more than twenty other silent films including René Le Somptier's Les Épaves de l'amour (1917), Burguet's Au paradis des enfants (1918), La Mendiante de Saint-Sulpice (1922), and Faubourg Montmartre (1924), Bernard-Deschamps's L'Agonie des aigles (1922), Louis Feuillade's Le Fils du flibustier (1922), Pierre Colombier and Roger Lion's Jim la houlette, roi des voleurs (1926), and Jacques Feyder's Les Nouveaux messieurs (1929).

   Morlay easily made the transition from silent to sound cinema. In fact, the peak of her career was the period dating from the beginning of sound cinema to the Liberation. Her first speaking roles were in films such as Maurice Tourneur's Accusée, levez-vous (1930) and Maison de danses (1931), Léonce Perret's Après l'amour (1931), and Raymond Bernard's sound remake of Faubourg Montmartre (1931). She appeared in nearly fifty other films during the period, including Perret's Il était une fois (1933), Abel Gance and Fernand Rivers's Le Maître de forges (1933), Marc Didier's Le Billet de mille (1934), Marcel L'Herbier's Le Scandale (1934), Le Bonheur (1934), Nuits de feu (1937), La Mode rêvée (1939), and Entente cordiale (1939), Tourneur's Samson (1936), Colombier's Le Roi (1936), Viktor Tourjansky's La Peur (1936), Félix Gandéra's Les Grands (1936), Marc Allegret's Les Amants terribles (1936) and L'Arlésienne (1942), Jean Dréville's Les Nuits blanches de Saint-Petersbourg (1937), Sacha Guitry's Quadrille (1938) and Le Destin fabuleux de Désirée Clary (1942), Georges Lacombe and Yves Mirande's Derrière la façade (1939), Léon Mathot's Le Bois sacrée (1939), Lacombe's Elles étaient douze femmes (1940), Mirande's Paris-New York (1940), Jean Delannoy's Le Diamant noir (1941), Jean Stelli's Le Voile bleu (1942) and L'Enfant de l'amour (1944), René Le Henaff's Des jeunes filles dans la nuit (1943), and Yvan Noé's La Cavalcade des heures (1943).

   After the Liberation, Morlay was investigated for collaboration with the Nazis. This was less from anything she may have personally done than for the fact that she had long been involved with the politician Max Bonnafous, who served in the Vichy government. Morlay and Bonnafous later married, and her career survived the scandal. She remained an important actress for the remainder of the 1940s and much of the 1950s. Among the films in which she appeared are André Zwaboda's Farandole (1945), Maurice de Canonge's Dernier métro (1945), Allegret's Lunegarde (1946), Stelli's Mensonges (1946), Henri Decoin's Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean (1947), Jacqueline Audry's Gigi (1949) and Mitsou (1956), Charles Félix-Tavano's Ève et le serpent (1949), André Hunébelle's Millionnaires d'un jour (1949) and Les Collégiennes (1957), Max Ophuls's Le Plaisir (1952), Guitry's Si Versailles m'était conté (1954), Jean Grémillon's L'Amour d'une femme (1954), Jean-Paul Le Chanois's Papa, maman, la bonne et moi . . . (1954) and Papa, maman, ma femme et moi . . . (1956), Robert Vernay's Les Lumières du soir (1956), Georges Lampin's Crime et châtiment (1956), Léonide Moguy's Donnez-moi ma chance (1957), André Berthomieu's Sacrée jeunesse (1958), and Pierre Schoendoerffer's Ramuntcho (1959).

   In addition to her work in France, Morlay spent a good deal of time, particularly during the 1950s, in Italy, where she made a number of films. Her career did not extend much beyond the 1950s in either country, however. She appeared in only two films in the 1960s, Alex Joffé's Fortunat (1960) and Le Chanois's Monsieur (1964), which was her final film before dying of cancer.