Guy Marchand, the most crooning of French actors, is dead

A crooner at heart, he loved above all to sing, the Passionnata and jazz standards. Then he played the tragicomedy by changing himself, a former member of the Foreign Legion, into a beach flirt, a dismaying coward, and for good measure into a total bastard. Guy Marchand died at 86 years old. He “passed away peacefully (...) at Cavaillon hospital,” his children Jules and Ludivine said in a press release. Music, cinema and the general public will remember an acrobat with multiple gifts who knew how to give depth to lightness for half a century.

For this born wanderer it all began on May 22, 1937 in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. It was there in Belleville, still a village at the time as he liked to remind us, that he hung out with the little hoodlums of the neighborhood. His father, a scrap dealer by trade and also crazy about jazz in his spare time, gave him a clarinet at the age of nine. For little Guy, it was a click. In a cupboard - so as not to disturb the neighbors -, without the slightest notion of music theory, he struggles to imitate Sidney Bechet. As a teenager, he also discovered that he had an interesting voice. “To make money” he sang in popular dances, then at Tabou and Riverside, the clubs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Also read: Guy Marchand: “But how wrong were they about me!”

Around the age of 18, he was tickled by the desire to become a professional musician. But military obligations caught up with him. To avoid going directly to Algeria, he decided to attend reserve officer school. He also obtained a parachutist certificate and then found himself assigned, ultimately, to a regiment of the Foreign Legion. The memories of the atrocities of the Algerian War, which will be added to those of the women shorn at the liberation of Paris, will mark him forever.

In the mid-1960s, in “post-military depression” as he himself later admitted, luck knocked at his door. Dalida notices him and helps him by taking him in. Under his aegis, he wrote the pastiche of painful flamenco, La Passionnata. Eddie Barclay, the great impresario of the time, immediately signed him a contract. Guy Marchand found his first job, that of a crooner who was a bit nerdy, but also very talented.

After La Passionnata, a great success, Marchand vegetated a little. The cinema comes to save him: Robert Enrico who hires him in Boulevard du rhum (1971). He asks her to portray a crazy Latin lover of Brigitte Bardot, the star of his film. In this ridiculous flirtatious outfit swooning over B.B. he is perfect. The singer has become an actor who for a good twenty years had the chance to hold in his arms the most important actresses of his generation. Under the direction of François Truffaut (A beautiful girl like me, 1972), he met Bernadette Lafont. In Cousin, Cousine by Jean-Charles Tacchella in 1975, he ends up hugging Marie-France Pisier. In 1980, Maurice Pialat asked him to play the cuckold in Loulou. His wife is called Isabelle Huppert and her lover, Gérard Depardieu.

Cheated husband, inconsistent playboy in L'Hôtel de la plage (1978), gigolo entertainer who is thrown away like an old sock, cooing singer, in the early 1980s, Guy Marchand finally found his favorite composition: the polymorphous bastard. In Garde à vue, by Claude Miller, he beats up Michel Serrault during the absence of a commissioner played by Lino Ventura. This cowardice earned him the César for best supporting role in 1982. He did it again under the direction of Bertrand Tavernier in Coup de ragon, this time in the costume of a police chief of a French colony in Africa. More cynical than nature, he manages to convince Philippe Noiret, who plays a cop who is too good-natured in his eyes, of the effectiveness of his expeditious methods.

Recognized as an actor who never hesitates to take on the worst characters, our hidalgo from Belleville does not neglect his true Passionnata, the song. In 1982, he wrote his biggest hit, Destinée, to a melody by Vladimir Cosma. This marshmallow pochade for Les Sous-Doués en vacances by Claude Zidi is a triumph. By an astonishing paradox, Marchand would later denounce this languorous slow song, arguing for the indigence of the words which he had nevertheless signed.

Jazz, cinema, song, tango, polo, boxing too, this pure Parisian had to rub shoulders with television one day. In 1991, he was given the responsibility of playing Nestor Burma. The detective character created by Léo Malet fits him like a glove. Like him, he is smart and he goes everywhere. He navigates his investigations without ever taking himself seriously. This blessed moment in the actor's career would last more than twenty years, until 2003.

After the time of tango and then the bastards will come the era of gray temples. From the 21st century, Guy Marchand will depict fathers and grandfathers who are often grumpy and sometimes more tender. From 2002 to 2023, he will be showing in more than twenty films directed by filmmakers who understand the spirit of the times such as Tonie Marshall, Jean-Pierre Mocky and Bertrand Blier. He will write his biography and some well-written novels inspired by his lives, his films and his songs. This man who claimed to enjoy playing stupid had invented a nice nickname for himself, The Guignol of Buttes-Chaumont. It’s true, Guy Marchand will have been quite a handsome puppet all his life but with a heart like that.