Jules Berry

Biography: life and films

Jules Berry wasn't just one of the greatest French actors of all time, he was also one of the most colourful - the kind of charismatic smoothy who only had to walk into a scene for it to suddenly light up and grab your attention. 'Understated' is not a word you could legitimately use in describing Berry's performances. They were grand, expressive, sometimes excessive, but the actor was never less than compelling and he always knew how to moderate his charming flamboyancy and grandiloquence to the requirements of any role. His colourful performances were a reflection of his own colourful character. He was as extravagant off the stage as he was on it, and the reason he worked on so many films (over ninety in just twenty years) was because he had a fatal addiction to gambling - an addiction that caused him to lose his shirt at many a casino or race course and ultimately led him to end his days a virtual pauper. This was a man who never did anything by halves if he could help it.

Jules Berry's real name was Marie Louis Jules Paufichet. He was born on 9th February 1883, in Poitiers, France, the second of two sons. His father was an ironmonger by trade and was nicknamed Le Président Berry (after a local personage, the Duc de Berry) on account of the airs he gave himself. The Paufichet family moved to Paris in 1888, where Jules and his brothers attended the Lycée Louis Le Grand. It was here that the young Jules struck up a friendship with Paul Lefèvre (later to become the distinguished poet and playwright Paul Géraldy), with whom he wrote a short play entitled Le Biniou. Whilst he was studying for a degree in architecture at the École des Beaux Arts Berry acquired an interest in the theatre and learned how to play the piano.

It was purely by chance that Berry managed to gatecrash his way into the world of theatre in 1903. The story goes that he was running an errand for an architect when, suddenly caught in the rain, he took shelter in the entrance to the Théâtre Antoine in Paris and discovered that auditions were being held. He couldn't resist presenting himself for an audition and he made such an impression that he was immediately offered a role in a production of Léon Hennique's La Mort du duc d'Enghien. The engagement only lasted a few weeks, but with this experience Berry was able to gain employment at other theatres in Paris - L'Ambigu and L'Athénée. Whilst he was on tour in Lyon, he attracted the attention of Jean-François Ponson, who gave him a twelve year contract at the Théâtre des Galeries Saint-Hubert in Brussels. This was the point at which the actor's stage career took off.

At the outset of WWI, Berry wasted no time enlisting in the French army and ended up as a chauffeur to no less a person than André Maginot (the instigator of the famous Maginot Line). After risking his own neck to save the life of an officer, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Demobilised, he returned to Paris and resumed his stage career without delay. Over the next decade and a half he would become one of the leading lights of the Parisian stage, delighting audiences with his vivid performances in around thirty productions of play by authors as diverse as Tristan Bernard, Marcel Achard, Georges Feydeau, Louis Verneuil and Roger Ferdinand. At this time, cinema was still in its silent phase and it held little interest for Berry, although he had appeared in a few films - debuting in Henri Desfontaines's short Olivier Cromwell (1911) and showing up briefly in Marcel L'Herbier's L'Argent (1928).

It was only when cinema had made the transition to sound that Berry was lured away from the stage, towards the studio set. His screen career began proper with a leading role in André Berthomieu's Mon coeur et ses millions (1931). This was the first of a number of films in which he worked with the actress Suzy Prim, with whom he lived for three years after separating from his wife Jane Marken. After breaking up with Prim, Berry began an affair with an actress who was thirty years his junior, Josseline Gaël - his co-star on Jean Vallée's Jeunes filles à marier (1935). The couple married and worked together on seven films. Gaël gave birth to Berry's daughter, Michèle, in 1939, but got herself into trouble during the Occupation by taking as her lover a notorious crook who was in the employ of the Gestapo. The actor's testimony at his wife's trial after the Liberation saved her from execution but by this time their marriage was over.

By the mid-1930s, Berry's popular screen persona - an oily but likeable cad, as slippery as he was elegant - had been well and truly established, through such films as Marc Allégret's Aventure à Paris (1936) and Christian-Jaque's Monsieur Personne (1936). He formed a bizarre double act with Michel Simon in the eccentric comedy Le Mort en fuite (1936) and, in Jean Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936), he took on one of his best-known roles, as the loathsome capitalist Batala. When asked, in this film, who will miss him after he is gone, the actor immediately replies: 'Les femmes!'

The director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert supplied Berry with two of his most memorable roles, first as the sly dog trainer Monsieur Valentin in Le Jour se lève (1939), then as the Devil himself in Les Visiteurs du soir (1942). the actor is slimy nastiness personified in Louis Daquin's Le Voyageur de la Toussaint (1943), and he then turned in one of his finest dramatic performances as a shady man of mystery in Henri Decoin's moody Simenon adaptation, L'Homme de Londres (1943). The actor showed a much lighter side in the comedies that alternated with these more serious cinematic offerings, often partnered with established comedy performers. He appeared with Fernandel on several occasions (Hercule, Les Rois du sport, Les Petits riens), and worked well with Noël-Noël in La Famille Duraton (1939), adapted from a popular radio show of the time. Berry's comedic and dramatic skills are both put to excellent use in Maurice Cam's black comedy Tête blonde (1949), and as the unfortunate reveller Fortunato in Jean Faurez's Histoires extraordinaires (1949), we can only weep for him as Fernand Ledoux cruelly bricks him up in his wine cellar. Shortly after completing what was to be his final film, Henri Lepage's Les Maîtres nageurs (1951), the actor recorded a number of poems by Jacques Prévert for the radio.

By this time, now in his late sixties, Berry was in a poor state of health and was struggling to make ends meet - the result of his chronic addiction to gambling and alcohol. It was whilst being treated in hospital for rheumatism that the actor suffered the heart attack which killed him, most likely because he had been drinking before the operation. He died, penniless and alone, on 23rd April 1951, aged 68. It seems scarcely credible that such a flamboyant extrovert, a force of nature that had brought enjoyment to so many, could quit the world's stage in such a wretched manner. His mortal remains lie in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, but his larger-than life-personality, his joie de vivre and infectious sense of fun are still very much with us - generously pouring from the celluloid in the remarkable body of film work he has left behind. Who will miss Jules Berry? Anyone who has seen him act.

Filmography

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