Jacques Dumesnil

Jacques Dumesnil was born as Marie Émile Eugène André Joly on 9 November 1903, in Paris, France. Before becoming an actor, he received training as a mechanical engineer. After starting as a secretary at the aviation school, he became an industrial designer, a profession he left to devote himself to the theater.

He adopted the pseudonym Dumesnil because of the admiration he had to French actor Camille Dumény.^[1]

He started out as a fanciful singer in a café located in Paris Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, he was paid in sandwiches and glasses of beer.

Dumesnil started on stage in 1927 and divided his career between theater and cinema. Having spent two years at the Comédie-Française, he played among other things in Les Tontons flingueurs and provided the French voice of Charlie Chaplin in Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and A King in New York (1957).

His role as Duke of Plessis-Vaudreuil in the television series Au plaisir de Dieu, earned him a resurgence of popularity and the 7 d'Or for best actor.

Jacques Dumesnil had a son, Pierre Joly dit Dumesnil, who was a French swimming champion and participated in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland.^[2]

 

Dumesnil died on 8 May 1998 in Bron, Rhône. He was buried three days later in the Miribel Cemetery in Miribel, Ain, the town where his sister Odette Joly had been a teacher and where he had chosen to study. install at the end of its life. Since then, a rue de Miribel has also been called “rue Jacques-Dumesnil”.

• Crisp, C.G. The classic French cinema, 1930-1960. Indiana University Press, 1993.
• Hayward, Susan. Simone Signoret: The Star as Cultural Sign. Continuum, 2004.

• Jacques Dumesnil at IMDb

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