Michèle Morgan

Biography: life and films

T'as d'beaux yeux, tu sais... We all remember the line, spoken with such tenderness by Jean Gabin in Marcel Carné's Le Quai des brumes, and how apt it is for, more than anything about her, it is Michèle Morgan's eyes - cool, sensual, mysterious, divine - that dominate our memories of the actress. From the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, she was one of France's most high-profile movie stars, loved by the critics, adored by the public, and her seductive, ethereal presence - first revealed to us in a beret and shiny raincoat designed for her by Coco Chanel in Carné's film - enhances many great films of this period. Like Greta Garbo, the actress she is often compared with, Morgan quit the screen before age began to show on her features, so she remains forever young and vital in our memories - one of the most potent sirens of the big screen.

The actress's original name was Simone Renée Roussel. She was born on 29th February 1920 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France, the eldest of four children. Her father, Louis Roussel, was a manager in a company that exported perfumes. When he lost his job in the economic slump of 1929, Roussel and his family moved to Dieppe in northern France, where he managed a grocer's store, unsuccessfully. It was whilst growing up in Dieppe that Simone realised her future was in show business. She was 14 when she ran away to Paris with her younger brother Paul to make her name as an actress. With her parents' blessing, Simone was allowed to stay with her grandparents in Neuilly as she pursued her dream. It was after she caught the eye of Jean Devalde (an actor of the silent era, best known for his part in Feuillade's Judex) that she landed her first screen role - a walk-on part in Yvan Noé's Mademoiselle Mozart (1935), a comedy starring Danielle Darrieux. Impressed by her enthusiasm, Noé advised the aspiring young actress to take up acting lessons and the next year she enrolled on a drama course run by René Simon.

After appearing in minor roles in five other films (most directed by Yvan Noé), Simone Roussel had her lucky break when continuity girl Jane Witta noticed her and recommended her to Marc Allégret for the female lead in his film Gribouille (1937). Starring with Raimu, one of the biggest stars in French cinema at the time, Simone made an instant impression with critics and audiences, although she was now known by her adopted name: Michèle Morgan. After this Allégret cast her alongside Charles Boyer in Orage (1938) and then came the role that made her an international star: the part of Nelly in Marcel Carné's Le Quai des brumes (1938), co-starring with Jean Gabin. It was in this film that Gabin delivered the immortal line 'T'as d'beaux yeux, tu sais' which stuck to the actress and gave her the title for her 1977 autobiography, Avec ces yeux-là.

Morgan's inspired pairing with Gabin in Carné's film made them both major stars and offers of work from Hollywood were soon heading in their direction. The actress resisted and instead went off to Germany to work with Gabin again, on an inferior film for UFA: Maurice Gleize's Le Récif de corail (1939). Not long after Morgan completed work on her next film with Gabin, Jean Grémillon's Remorques (1940), France came under Nazi occupation and the two star actors were in Hollywood, both failing to make any real impact. Morgan's contract with RKO Pictures proved to be more of a curse than a blessing - most of the films she made in America were lacklustre wartime propaganda pieces that are now largely forgotten. The highlights of her time in Hollywood include Robert Stevenson's Joan of Paris with Paul Henreid and Tim Whelan's Higher and Higher (1943) with Frank Sinatra. The actress's agent turned down the role of Ilsa Lund in Casablanca (1946), which ultimately went to Ingrid Bergman, although she did get to work with Humphrey Bogart on Passage to Marseille (1944). She also missed out on the female lead in Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) because her English was not up to scratch. It was during her stay in the United States that Morgan met the actor-director William Marshall, whom she married in 1942. They had a son, Mike Marshall, but divorced in 1948.

Disillusioned with Hollywood, Michèle Morgan returned to France after the war and immediately picked up her career with Jean Delannoy's La Symphonie pastorale (1946), adapted from an André Gide novella. This was the film that won her the Best Actress Award at the first Festival de Cannes in 1946 for her arresting portrayal of the blind girl Gertrude. Not long afterwards, she was in England playing the female lead in Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948) opposite Ralph Richardson. Whilst working on Alessandro Blasetti's sword and sandals extravaganza Fabiola (1949) she fell in love with the actor Henri Vidal and they married in 1950. The couple stayed together until Vidal's untimely death in 1959, appearing together in a number of films, most memorably Jean Gremillon's L'Étrange Madame X (1950).

Throughout the 1940s and '50s, the actress remained popular with directors and audiences, and distinguished herself in several notable films, including René Clément's Le Château de verre (1950), Jean Delannoy's La Minute de vérité (1952) (her final appearance with Gabin) and Yves Allégret's Les Orgueilleux (1953), in which she starred with Gérard Philipe. She was never out of place in lavish costume dramas, such as Delannoy's Marie-Antoinette reine de France (1955) and René Clair's Les Grandes Manoeuvres (1955). Whilst working on André Cayatte's Le Miroir à deux faces (1958) with Bourvil she met the actor Gérard Oury and soon after began an open relationship with him that would last until his death in 2006.

By the late 1950s, cinema tastes were fast changing and, with the arrival of the French New Wave, Morgan's career began to dwindle. The actress's cool detachment and ethereal beauty were no longer in vogue and her screen image underwent a dramatic transformation - from the fragile wraithlike innocent of her heyday to a more calculating and deadly species of femme fatale. It was in this guise that she lent her talents and her mystique to a series of mediocre thrillers and self-conscious psychological dramas - Retour de manivelle (1957), Les Scélérats (1959) and Les Yeux cernés (1964). Her attempts to depart from this routine - such as Jacques Robin's Les Pas perdus (1964), a Nouvelle Vague-like romantic drama with Jean-Louis Trintignant - were less successful. Her decline was aggravated by the mistakes she made in turning down work offered to her by serious filmmakers, including Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti. Of the New Wave directors, only Claude Chabrol would employ Morgan, in a small role in his poorly received black comedy Landru (1962). By the end of the 1960s, her screen career was effectively over, although she was well-served by Michel Deville in his ebullient period comedy Benjamin ou les Mémoires d'un puceau (1967).

Morgan bowed out of cinema in Claude Lelouch's quirky policier Le Chat et la Souris (1975) and subsequently only showed up infrequently in front of the camera for the odd film and television appearance. In the 1980s she appeared on stage, notably in Jean-Laurent Cochet's production of Colette's Chéri (1981) before announcing her retirement from acting in 2001. From the 1970s, Her main artistic outlet was painting - she put on an exhibition of her work at the Espace Cardin in Paris in 2009. Despite fading from the limelight in her later years, Michèle Morgan remained one of her country's most revered actresses. She was awarded the Légion d'Honneur in 1969, received an honorary César in 1992 and even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. After a long and peaceful retirement, she finally passed away at her home in Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine, France, on 20th December 2016, having arrived at the grand old age of 96. She is now buried in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris but, thanks to the films that have made her one of cinema's most enduring icons, she will stay with us for many years to come, those legendary eyes of hers preserved on celluloid like an eternal flame.

Filmography

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