Fernandel - biography

One of the all-time giants of French cinema, Fernandel is still regarded with great affection in his native France.  His distinctive horse-like features and warm, larger-than-life persona made him a natural screen icon and an unbeatable comic performer.  In an acting career that spanned four decades and well over a hundred films, Fernandel had a significant impact on mainstream French cinema in the decade that preceded the Second World War and the decades that followed. 

Like so many great screen talents, Fernandel came from a modest background and achieved success through a combination of hard work and good fortune.   His real name was Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin and he was born on 8th May 1903 in Marseilles, a town with which he had a strong association throughout his life.   He had two brothers and a sister.  Both of his parents had a passion for the music hall and would often perform, in an amateur capacity, comedy and musical numbers at concerts, although his father was an accountant by profession.  On leaving school, the young Fernand was given a job in a bank, but soon managed to get himself fired. 

Realising that a conventional middle-class life was not to his liking, Fernand began to forge a career as a performer, appearing in café-concerts as a comic singer.  To make ends meet, he found work by doing odd jobs around Marseilles, including short stints as a docker and employee in a texile house.  In 1925, aged 22, he married Henriette Manse, the sister of his best friend. They would have three children: Josette, Janine and Franck.  Fernand was so attentive to his wife that his mother-in-law referred to him in amusement as Fernand d’elle.  The term so appealed to the young comic that he decided to adopt it as his stage name, Fernandel.

Having completed his military service in 1926, Fernandel resumed his precarious career in comic theatre.   In 1928, he went to Paris and made his mark at the Bobino, in a performance that led him to win a series of contracts that rapidly established him as a music hall comic.  Watching one of Fernandel’s shows was Marc Allégret, a film director who, impressed by what he saw, offered him his first screen role, in Le Blanc et le Noir (1931).  The great French cineaste Jean Renoir then offered Fernandel a more substantial role in On purge bébé (1931).

Appearing in a series of lacklustre low budget comedies (including many shorts), Fernandel soon made a successful transition from music hall to the big screen.  His talent as an actor became apparent when Marcel Pagnol, an independent filmmaker of great standing, cast him in several of his films, Angèle (1934), Regain (1937), Le Schpountz (1938) and La Fille du puisatier (1940).  He soon established himself as one of France’s best loved comedians, through his appearances in films such as Le Rosier de Madame Husson (1932), Les Gaietés de l’escadron (1932), Un de la légion (1936) and François Premier (1937).  In several of his comedies, Fernandel was able to put his vocal talents to good use, and many of the numbers he sang in these films were released as hit records, including Barnabé and Ignace.

When war broke out in 1939, Fernandel enlisted in the French army, although he managed to provoke a riot on his first tour of duty.  He resumed his film career once France had signed an armistice with Germany in 1940.  Over the following decade, Fernandel continued to draw large audiences, although virtually all of his films from this period were mediocre and are now largely forgotten.  It was during this period that Fernandel took to directing his own films.  He directed just three films: Simplet (1942), Adrien (1943) and Adhémar ou le jouet de la fatalité (1951).

It was not until the 1950s that Fernandel attained his full potential and found international fame, thanks to his portrayal of Don Camillo in a series of films based on the novels of Giovannino Guareschi.  The series began with Julien Duvivier’s Le Petit Monde de Don Camillo (1951) and ended with Don Camillo en Russie (1965).  The success of the Don Camillo films provided a welcome boost to Fernandel’s career and led him to be used by more serious filmmakers.  Jean Becker cast him in Ali Baba et les Quarante voleurs (1954), Claude Autant-Lara extracted what is widely considered his best performance in L'Auberge rouge (1951).  And Henri Verneuil made good use of his abilities as a straight and comedic actor in several films, including the fondly remembered La Vache et le Prisonnier (1959). 

In 1963, Fernandel went into partnership with another icon of French cinema, Jean Gabin, forming the film production company Gafer.   Fernandel made four films for Gafer, appearing just once with Gabin, in  L'Age ingrat (1964).  By the 1960s, Fernandel’s career was on the decline and virtually all of the films he appeared in throughout his last decade were mediocre and ill-received, often shunned by the critics and cinema-going public alike.   It was whilst filming Don Camillo et les contestataires in 1970 that the comic actor succumbed to a cancer-related illness that would force him into an immediate retirement at the age of 66.  After an extensive and exhausting period of medical treatment, he died from a heart attack on 28th February 1971, in his Paris apartment.  

Fernandel was a unique talent, a man with an unerring ability to make people laugh, who was as loved by adults as he was by children, across the world.  He was publicly recognised for his work, receiving such honours as the Knight of the Legion of Honour (in 1953) and the Grand prix de l'Académie du disque for his narration of Les Lettres de mon moulin (in 1968).  The director and writer Marcel Pagnol summed it up best when he described Fernandel as the man who knew how to make people laugh, even those who have more reason to cry.

To find out more about Fernandel visit:
fernandel.online.fr

Fernandel directed the following films:
Simplet (1942)
Adrien (1943)
Adhémar ou le jouet de la fatalité (1951)

Fernandel has appeared in the following films:
La Meilleure bobone (1930)
Pas un mot à ma femme (1931)
Paris-Beguin (1931)
J’ai quelque chose à vous dire (1931)
La Fine combine (1931)
Bric à Brac et compagnie (1931)
Attaque nocturne (1931)
Le Blanc et le noir (1931)
On purge bébé (1931)
Coeur de lilas (1932)
Vive la classe (1932)
Une brune piquante (1932)
Un homme sans nom (1932)
Un beau jour de noces (1932)
La Terreur de la pampa (1932)
Le Rosier de Madame Husson (1932)
Quand tu nous tiens, amour (1932)
Pas de femmes (1932)
Par habitude (1932)
Ordonnance malgré lui (1932)
Le Jugement de minuit (1932)
Les Gaietés de l’escadron (1932)
Comme une carpe (1932)
La Claque (1932)
Ça colle (1933)
L’Ordonnance (1933)
Lidoire (1933)
Le Gros lot (1933)
D’amour et d’eau fraîche (1933)
Le Coq du régiment (1933)
Adémaï aviateur (1933)
La Garnison amoureuse (1934)
Une nuit de folies (1934)
Le Train de huit heures quarante-sept (1934)
La Porteuse de pain (1934)
L’Hôtel du libre échange (1934)
Le Chéri de sa concierge (1934)
Le Cavalier Lafleur (1934)
Les Bleus de la marine (1934)
Angèle (1934)
Jim la houlette (1935)
Les Gaîtés de la finance (1935)
Ferdinand le noceur (1935)
Un de la légion (1936)
Josette (1936)
Un carnet de bal (1937)
Les Rois du sport (1937)
Regain (1937)
Ignace (1937)
Hercule (1937)
François Premier (1937)
Les Dégourdis de la 11ème (1937)
Tricoche et Cacolet (1938)
Le Schpountz (1938)
Ernest le rebelle (1938)
Barnabé (1938)
Raphaël le tatoué (1939)
Fric-Frac (1939)
Les Cinq sous de Lavarède (1939)
Berlingot et compagnie (1939)
L’Héritier des Mondésir (1940)
Monsieur Hector (1940)
La Fille du puisatier (1940)
La Nuit merveilleuse (1940)
Le Club des soupirants (1941)
L’Acrobate (1941)
Les Petits riens (1942)
Simplet (1942)
Une vie de chien (1943)
Ne le criez pas sur les toits (1943)
La Bonne étoile (1943)
La Cavalcade des heures (1943)
Adrien (1943)
Un chapeau de paille d’Italie (1944)
Naïs (1945)
Le Mystère Saint-Val (1945)
Les Gueux au paradis (1946)
Pétrus (1946)
L’Aventure de Cabassou (1946)
Escale au soleil (1947)
Coeur de coq (1947)
Émile l’Africain (1948)
Si ça peut vous faire plaisir (1948)
L’Armoire volante (1948)
On demande un assassin (1949)
L’Héroïque Monsieur Boniface (1949)
Botta e risposta (1950)
Meurtres (1950)
Casimir (1950)
Uniformes et grandes manoeuvres (1950)
Tu m’as sauvé la vie (1951)
Topaze (1951)
Boniface somnambule (1951)
L’Auberge rouge (1951)
Adhémar ou le jouet de la fatalité (1951)
Le Petit monde de Don Camillo (1952)
La Table aux crevés (1952)
Coiffeur pour dames (1952)
Le Fruit défendu (1952)
Le Boulanger de Valorgue (1953)
Le Retour de Don Camillo (1953)
L’Ennemi public no 1 (1953)
Carnaval (1953)
Le Mouton à cinq pattes (1954)
Mam’zelle Nitouche (1954)
Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs (1954)
La Grande bagarre de Don Camillo (1955)
Le Printemps, l’automne et l’amour (1955)
Le Couturier de ces dames (1956)
Don Juan (1956)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
Honoré de Marseille (1956)
Sous le ciel de Provence (1956)
L’Homme à l’imperméable (1957)
Sénéchal le magnifique (1957)
Le Chômeur de Clochemerle (1957)
Paris Holiday (1958)
La Loi c’est la loi (1958)
La Vie à deux (1958)
Les Vignes du seigneur (1958)
Le Grand chef (1959)
Le Confident de ces dames (1959)
La Vache et le prisonnier (1959)
Crésus (1960)
Le Caïd (1960)
Cocagne (1961)
Dynamite Jack (1961)
Don Camillo Monsignor (1961)
Il Giudizio universale (1961)
L’Assassin est dans l’annuaire (1962)
Il Cambio della guardia (1962)
Le Diable et les dix commandements (1962)
Le Voyage à Biarritz (1963)
Le Bon roi Dagobert (1963)
Blague dans le coin (1963)
La Cuisine au beurre (1963)
Relaxe-toi chérie (1964)
L’Âge ingrat (1964)
Don Camillo en Russie (1965)
Le Voyage du père (1966)
La Bourse et la vie (1966)
L’Homme à la Buick (1968)
Heureux qui comme Ulysse (1970)