Paul Meurisse

Paul Meurisse was the son of a bank manager and it first looked as if he would follow in his father’s footsteps when he became a solicitor’s clerk in Aix-en-Provence. But his passion was elsewhere and he soon did the splits appearing as a chorus boy in music-hall revues. Leaving Aix for Paris, with a letter of recommendation signed by Huguette Duflos, he found work at once, at the Trianon first, and then at the ABC in a show by realistic singer Marie Dubas. He also appeared in Pigalle nightclubs. In 1939, Édith Piaf fell in love with him and both spent long months together. As “la Môme Piaf” did not think much of his singing talent (he had specialized in singing cheerful songs in a gloomy tone) she urged him to become an actor, which he did in being her partner in Jean Cocteau’s play “Le bel Indifférent”, even if it was in … a silent role. From then on, his activity on stage as well as in films never ceased until his untimely death at age 66, following an acute attack of asthma. In the theater he played either in very successful light comedies by Marcel Achard, André Roussin, Françoise Dorin or Jean Anouilh or in classics by Shakespeare or Shaw. He belonged to the Comédie Française company for 27 months. On the night before he passed away, he was still triumphing in Sacha Guitry’s “Mon Père avait Raison”. Most of the first films he made were mediocre but things improved in the 1950Henri-Georges Clouzot to star in Diabolique (1955), in which he played to perfection a cruel, obnoxious husband. An unforgettable interpretation indeed, but Meurisse also appeared in a fistful of interesting movies directed by Duvivier (Marie-Octobre (1959)), Renoir (Picnic on the Grass (1959)) and Melville (Second Wind (1966) and Army of Shadows (1969)). On the other hand, Meurisse proved unique and irreplaceable in a series of parodic spy movies hemmed by Georges Lautner (The Black Monocle (1961), The Eye of the Monocle (1962) and The Monocle (1964)) as Commandant Theobald Dromard aka “Le Monocle”, gracing these unpretentious films with distinction, composure and irony. The quintessence of Paul Meurisse’s art.