Noël-Noël

A beloved, warmly popular French character player and screenwriter in his heyday, Noël Noël was born Lucien Édouard Noël on August 9, 1897 in Paris. He initially developed his celebrity in music halls and the cabaret venue, where he created his Adémaï Joseph comic character, a blundering, oafish French soldier. He eventually took this character successfully to film in the early 30s and remained in movies as both actor and sometime writer and director in both his own vehicles and those of others top comedians. A leftist cartoonist at one time not to mention a skillful songwriter, many of his ideals seeped into his work.

Noël Noël began immediately in starring roles with the comedy La prison en folie (1931) (Prison Madness); as a buffoonish lover in the more dramatic Mistigri (1931) opposite Madeleine Renaud; as a fiancé torn between two women in the comedy Papa sans le savoir (1932); as the title comic role in Monsieur Albert (1932); and as a snubbed lover in [the social comedy Mam'zelle Spahi (1934). He took his popular protagonist, the naive, unassuming, bewildered-looking Adémaï soldier, to cinematic life first in the short films Adémaï et la nation armée (1932) and Backbench (2014), then to feature films with Adémaï aviateur (1934) co-starring Fernandel, Passing Glory (1999) co-starring Michel Simon and the war time picture Adémaï bandit d'honneur (1943).

Noël Noël became just as popular during the WWII years starring in such escapist film vehicles as La famille Duraton (1939), Sur le plancher des vaches (1939) and A Cage of Nightingales (1945). He continued sporadically as a character lead or support in the 1950's and 1960's with such delights as the musical comedy La vie chantée (1951), which he also wrote and directed; La fugue de Monsieur Perle (1952), in the title role; the Preston Sturges comedy The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955); the political comedy La terreur des dames (1956); The Gangsters (1957); the mystery comedy Le septième ciel (1958) with Danielle Darrieux; the comic farce Sputnik (1958); Messieurs les ronds de cuir (1959); The Old Guard (1960); and the sex comedy Jessica (1962) starring Maurice Chevalier and Angie Dickinson.

He left films after starring in the farcical comedy La sentinelle endormie (1966), which he also wrote, in which he portrays a doctor who conspires with the royalists against Napoleon. Married twice, he died in France on October 4, 1989, age 92.



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