Albert Préjean

Biography: life and films

In his day, Albert Préjean was one of the biggest stars of French cinema. More popular than Jean Gabin, this insouciant juvenile performer became the emblem of France's working class in the 1930s. Préjean was never a great actor but he worked with some of France's finest filmmakers, appearing in about a hundred films over his forty year career. With Gabin trying and failing to make a name for himself in Hollywood, Préjean was the leading male actor during the Occupation, but he paid a high price for this after the Liberation. His subsequent decline into obscurity was as rapid as it was undeserved. Today, he is all but forgotten, one of those stars that shone brightly for a brief time but soon winked out of existence when the world moved on and embraced new talents.

Originally named Albert Hamond, Préjean was born in Pantin, Seine, France on 27th October 1894. He grew up in Aubervilliers in the northeast suburbs of Paris, where his parents ran a bistro. He had no interest in school and frequently played truant so that he could indulge in his first love: sport. In his youth, encouraged by his good friend Georges Carpentier, he became an active sportsman, fond of cycling, boxing and swimming. His father, however, intended that he should become a businessman, so he was soon on his way to a boarding school in Fribourg in Switzerland. Not long afterwards, Préjean found work at the Paris Bourse. He was rescued by the outbreak of the First World War.

Préjean served with distinction during the war. Enlisting in the French Air Service, he became a pilot in the legendary Groupe de Combat 12 (Les Cigognes), serving alongside Georges Guynemer. Twice wounded, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d'honneur. After the war, Préjean resumed his business career, without much enthusiasm. At the age of 26, he met Augusta Favas, nicknamed Lulu, and they married not long afterwards. The marriage was a turbulent one, and within a few years they divorced, only to remarry a short while later.

By this time, now in his mid-twenties, Préjean had his sights set on becoming an actor. It was whilst attending a course optimistically titled Become a Star in Thirty Lessons that he landed his first film role - a walk-on part as a swordsman in Henri Diamant-Berger's Les Trois mousquetaires (1921). This serial swashbuckler was such a hit that Diamant-Berger became an overnight millionaire and started churning out films at his new studios. Préjean was one of the beneficieries of the director's success, appearing in another four of his films. Raymond Bernard also gave him small parts in several of his early films, including Le Miracle des loups (1924). In his early screen roles, Préjean was cast more for his abilities as a stuntman than his skill as an actor. He didn't get his first real acting job until Pierre Colombier gave him a substantial part in his 1925 film Amour et carburateur.

It was Diamant-Berger who set Albert Préjean on the road to fame and fortune by introducing him to an up-and-coming young filmmaker named René Clair. Clair was looking for someone to play the part of an aviator in his next film, Paris qui dort (1923), and, thanks to his wartime flying experience, Préjean was perfectly suited to the role. After this, Clair cast the young actor in four more of his films, including Le Voyage imaginaire (1925), Un chapeau de paille d'Italie (1928) and Sous les toits de Paris (1930). The success of these latter two films contributed greatly to Préjean's rise to stardom. The actor's career in silent cinema concluded with some notable roles in films such as Verdun vision d'histoire (1928), Léon Poirier's shockingly realist war film, and Jacques Feyder's early masterpiece Les Nouveaux messieurs (1929), in which he appeared with another rising star, Gaby Morlay. Just as the silent era was coming to an end he made a short film, L'Aventure de Luna-Park (1929) with Danièle Parola - this was his one and only directorial outing.

At a time when many screen careers were decimated by the crossover from silent to sound cinema, Albert Préjean profited from the transition, partly because of his capabilities as a singer. In Sous les toits de Paris, he sang the title song and this precipitated his second career, as an immensely popular chansonnier of the 1930s. He was called upon to sing in several films of this period, most notably as the male lead in G.W. Pabst's L'Opéra de quat'sous (1931) and then in partnership with Danielle Darrieux in Robert Siodmak's La Crise est finie (1934). Whilst working on Henri Decoin's Soir de rafle (1931) he first met the actress Annabella. It was love at first sight and Préjean wasted no time divorcing his first wife Lulu. The affair was not to last - the starry couple separated not long after they had completed their second film together, Carmine Gallone's Un fils d'Amérique (1932), and Annabella instead married rival actor Jean Murat.

By the mid-1930s, Albert Préjean was France's most popular screen actor. He partnered Brigitte Helm in Voyages de noces (1932) and Danielle Darrieux in Viktor Tourjansky's Volga en flammes (1934), and he worked with acting legends such as Raimu and Louis Jouvet in Théodore et cie (1933) and L'Alibi (1937). Julien Duvivier gave him a notable part in Le Paquebot Tenacity (1934), he took the male lead in Marcel Carné's first feature, Jenny (1936), and he basked in the reflected glory of Harry Baur in Siodmak's Mollenard (1938). By now Hollywood was starting to send inviting glances in his direction, but he made the decision to stay in France and reap the rewards of his ever-growing success at home.

With France under Nazi occupation, many of Préjean's more talented contemporaries either fled the country or refused to work for the Germans. Préjean was one of the main beneficieries of this dearth of talent and he became the star player at the German-run company Continental Films, featuring in films such as Léo Joannon's Caprices (1941) (again with Danielle Darrieux) and André Cayatte's Au bonheur des dames (1943). It was for Continental that he assumed the role of Jules Maigret in three films - two directed by Richard Pottier (Picpus (1943), Les Caves du Majestic (1945)), the other by Maurice Tourneur (Cécile est morte (1944)). It was around this time that Préjean met the music hall star Lysiane Rey. They married in 1943 and had a son, Patrick Préjean, the following year. The union did not last long. After their divorce, Rey married the actor Luc Barney in 1953.

In March 1942, Préjean was part of a group of prominent French movie stars (Viviane Romance, Suzy Delair, Danielle Darrieux and several others) who accepted an invitation to Nazi Germany to visit the Berlin film studios. The actor paid dearly for this indiscretion after the Liberation. Préjean's Berlin expedition and his association with Continental earned him a short period of incarceration. Like many actors who suffered the same fate, he had difficulty finding decent roles after the war. From the mid 1940s, Préjean's screen career showed a marked decline and he was no longer chosen to play the handsome romantic male lead but instead was often cast as more roguish characters. Notable film appearances of this period include parts in Paul Mesnier's La Kermesse rouge (1946), Louis Daquin's Les Frères Bouquinquant (1948) and Marcello Pagliero's Chéri-Bibi (1954). His last film role was in Jean-Louis Richard's Bonne chance (1962), where he starred with Eddie Constantine.

After retiring from acting, Albert Préjean was free to devote himself to his other great passion, painting. He married his last wife Jeanne Poché in 1977 and worked with his son Patrick (now an established actor) on his book of memories, which was published in 1979. Albert Préjean was 85 when he died in Paris on 1st November 1979. He is now buried near to where he lived, in the cemetery at Auteuil.

Filmography

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