Achard, Marcel

(July 5, 1899, Sainte-Foy-les-Lyon, France - September 4, 1974, Paris, France)

   A former teacher and journalist, he wrote his first play in 1922 and soon became one of the most re­nowned French Boulevard playwrights.Jean de la Lune, Domino, Noix de Coco, and Patate are probably his most known and successful works. From 1931 (Jean de la Lune; Jean Choux and Michel Simon) to 1964 (Patate; Robert Thomas), he wrote or co-wrote screenplays and dialogues of about forty films (including La Veuve Joyeuse, the French version of Ernst Lubitsch's The Merry Widow, 1934, and Max Ophuls's Madame de ... / Gioielli di Madame de . . . / UK: Diamond Earrings / USA: The Earrings of Madame de . . . , France / Italy, 1953). A long time before being elected at the French Acad­emy (1959) and appearing as himself in Goodbye Again / Aimez-vous Brahms? (Anatole Litvak, USA / France, 1961), he played in two "avant-garde" films (Entr'acte, René Clair, 1924, and Traité de Bave et d'Eternité / USA: Venom and Eternity, Isidore Isou, 1951).

 Filmography

1935 ◘ Folies-Bergère (also screenwriter, adapter, di-alogist; French-language version of Roy Del Ruth's Folies-Bergeres)

1943 ◘ Les Deux Timides (uncredited; co-director with Yves Allégret; shot in 1941)

        ◘ Jean de la Lune (also screenwriter, dialogist)

        ◘ La Valse de Paris (also screenwriter, dialogist)