Andrée Brabant: The Wild French Mary Pickford

A daring teen

Andrée Brabant, "raised with Champagne" even since her birth in Reims, France on May 23, 1901, decides to escape from home with her mother when they find out that her father, a train manager, has a mistress. She finds a 30 francs a month gig in Paris as a shorthand typist by lying about her age and her abilities. She soon has to admit in tears to the boss that she does not know the first thing about shorthand. The man, in exchange for a few favors, sends her through Paris to deliver swiss knives. This is how she met Mayol's ballet master, a popular place then, and he advises her to take dancing lesson afterwhich he hires her as a dancer there at age 14, as WWI is starting. "I only wore my hair and tiny panties" she recalls. One of her dancer friends earns extra cash as an extra for Mr. Abel Gance who is only too happy to hire this little blue-eyed ingénue with her long blond Mary-Pickford-like curls (He nicknames her "Poussin" or "Bébé" which means "Chick" or "Baby").

Discovered by Abel Gance

with Léon Mathot in Le droit à la vie

Her first important part is that of the protégée of Léon Mathot in Le droit à la vie (The Right To Live),shot in a mansion in  Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. This makes her a star at only fifteen and Andrée gets a 3 year contract with Le Film d'Art: she shoots another Abel Gance film with a title that resonates as an echo of the first one: The Zone of Death (La zone de la mort), shot in Nice where Andrée Brabant plays the part of a crazy girl.

Her Film d'Art contract earns her 30,000 francs a month the first year, with a 10,000 francs raise every year. In her a new Neuilly mansion, she accommodates anyone of her friends in one of the dozen rooms, all richly decorated and spends all her money to feed them, dress them in what is soon called "the Brabant hotel".

She works with the best French directors of the time: after Abel Gance, it is Charles Burguet who directs her in L'âme de Pierre (Pierre's Soul) and Les yeux qui accusent (Accusing Eyes). Then come La calomnie by Maurice Mariaud and Hier et Aujourd'hui (Yesterday and Today) by Bernard Deschamps. André Antoine makes her work alongside Romuald Joubé in Les travailleurs de la mer (The Sea Workers), then Germaine Dulac gives her the main part of La cigarette with Gabriel Signoret and Henri Pouctal directs her in Travail (Work) with Léon Mathot again, but also the big French star Huguette Duflos.

With Eric Barclay in The Dream

It is Jacques de Baroncelli who directs the three next films: La rose (The Rose) where she plays Lucile Neuillet, then Flipotte, whose star is Gabriel Signoret again, but most importantly her favorite film: Le rêve (The Dream), from author Emile Zola (who also penned Work), whose exterior scenes where shot near the Mount Ventoux, in southern France, in the small village of Malaucène, and the light, already quite intense in silent film studios, renders her temporary blind and she has to stay in bed several days. But the pain is worth it as the critics seem to share her taste: about her acting, Raphaël Bernard writes in Cinémagazine: "Ah Angélique! Delicious Angélique that you were, Mademoiselle Brabant. That was an unforgettable creation you made, that I consider the best of your film career until now. You have been divinely beautiful, exalted, tenderly human, delicate, mystical ; I suffered with you, I understood your hopes, your hesitations, your pains and you moved me to tears in this ending where you disappear in the breath of a kiss precisely when happiness smiles at you."

Her shorthand experience will come handy in the last film of her contract at the Film d'Art, La maison vide (The Empty House), by Raymond Bernard and released in October 1921.

Growing popularity

She then works for Henry de Golen and Georges Laîné in Toute une vie (A Lifetime), and La poupée du milliardaire (The Billionaire's Doll), directed by Henri Fescourt, that they shoot in Turin with Stewart Rome, famous English star of the time. Her popularity is now not limited to France. For this last film though, the male star does not speak English, or Italian, and the French crew does not speak Italian either, which promised a funny shoot. After 15 films in 5 years, she receives proposals from America which she refuses according to Cinémagazine, and takes a well deserved rest at the country.

At the country

Articles describe the star, now a friend (and lover) of former French President of France Paul Deschanel, as leading a peaceful life in a farm in Villarceau where she takes care of chicken, of her two dogs, dressed as a farm hand. She fishes, hunts and rides horses.
When that rest ends, she goes to Marseille to shoot a ten episode serial for Pathé untitled Taô directed by Gaston Ravel.

Her next film is called Réhabilitée (Rehabilitated): in it, her father wants to marry her to an unfaithful man. She then shoots Le secret de Polichinelle (The Bogus Secret) by René Hervil.

Ivan, the passionate lover

in Taô

She then leaves for London to meet Ivan Mozzhukhin and his wife Nathalie Lissenko and shoot with them the first exterior scenes of one of her best movies: Les ombres qui passent (Passing Shadows). She plays the wife in a happy couple that goes horseback riding at the beach in the morning. The husband (Ivan) inherits a fortune and goes to Paris where he meets Jacqueline, a femme fatale he falls in love with. A script all the more interesting considering the fact that the exact opposite happened on the set: Andrée and Ivan became lovers and, with the passion and energy characteristic of Russian actors, he sends her an enormous bouquet of roses every morning at her suite of the Negresco in Nice. Once, an envelope comes with the nosegay that contains a feather dipped in blood: the man had cut his arm to prove his love.

It goes without saying that this situation is not to Nathalie Lissenko's liking, so she bursts out at the beach during the shooting of the scenes at Juan-Les-Pins with a gun to shoot the couple. "Thankfully, she always missed me" sheepishly says Andrée in a 1964 interview. A bodyguard is then hired.

Burn out

When the horse scene is shot, the animal is considered too slow and, practice of another time, the crew decides to have it sniff ammonia. With the two actors full of vodka, the result is dramatic. The horse tries to jump. Ivan pulls the reigns, the horse rears, falls on Andrée and kicks her in the thigh as it tries to get back up : the actress has to stay in bed for 2 months and she has a nervous breakdown. The anecdote is often told in both actors's interviews. The rest of the cast and crew goes to Corsica to shoot the rest of the exteriors (after London, Dover and Nice) and then to Paris for the interiors.

In Egypt

Andrée goes on to make La cible (The Target) with Nicolas Rimsky and Nicolas Koline. But the young actress has overestimated her own strength and takes a two years vacation to rest. She uses that time to travel, her great passion, and discover Greece, and especially Egypt which will grow very important for her. In Greece, she becomes the intimate friend of the nephew of Prime Minister Elefthérios Venizélos, then aged 62, and she gets pregnant. On her request, the Minister has her abort in an institution.

Duvivier and the Farewell to Curls

with Jean Dehelly in Miss Beulemans' Wedding

She comes back to shoot her first collaboration with director Julien Duvivier in Le Mariage de Mademoiselle Beulemans (Miss Beulemans' Wedding), (her souvenirs of the shoot, actually written by Jean Mitry, are edited by "La renaissance du livre" and a copy of the film is still visible at the cinematek of Brussels) and at the time, in Brussels, she replaces Totte, her old fox terrier by a new one named Totti. But her pet is not the only thing she intends to change in her life: like so many artists who started as teenagers to play the parts of naive young girls, Andrée now wants to play more mature roles, more in keeping with her actual age. She has her hair shortened and she tells Marianne Alby during an interview: "I do not wish to fall back to playing the little girl with golden curls. I feel capable of playing roughest parts, intensely dramatic ones... I know despise the ingénue and her smooth smile."

with Max de Rieux & Maurice Guillemin shooting La cousine Bette

in 1927

As you can see, the actress knows that she has to move on from her former parts. But the public has the same feeling. Now the question is: do they want to see her in anything else? Her two year absence from the screen probably had an effect. As a matter of fact, as she nears her thirties, her parts grow less and less important. Alice Tissot is the actual star of La cousine Bette (although Mon Ciné announces Andrée in "the main role"), Claudia Victrix is that of La Princesse Masha, Marie Bell of Madame Récamier, and Rachel Devirys of Maternité...

In this last film, Andrée Brabant plays a mother and even a grandmother at the end of the story. The roles of little girls are indeed very far. For many actresses of the time whose age takes them further away from stardom, the same event pushes their career over the edge: suddenly, movies learn to talk. Surprisingly, she later remembered that Maternité was a small test for talking pictures when the film is in fact silent. Actually, director Jean Benoît-Lévy really did give her an opportunity to shoot a talking picture, but it is a later short called La maison (The House), where she also plays the mother of young Jimmy Gaillard, like in Maternité.
Ladie's Paradise and The Talkies Hell

Dita Parlo & Andrée Brabant in Au bonheur des Dames

Andrée Brabant ends her silent career by a masterpiece by Julien Duvivier, Au bonheur des Dames (Ladies' Paradise), which comes out in a Paris filled with American talkies, as well as a few French ones. Success was not to be. Yet it is her only silent film available on DVD so far. Even in that one, it is Dita Parlo who plays the ingénue, and Andrée is the "old" employee who takes her under her wing. It seems that she is the only model that the director carefully avoided to show in her underwear, as her shapes are not actually those of a twenty year old anymore.

at the Grand Guignol theater

As more talkies keep pouring in, fearing that she would not master the new technique, she decides to quit her career to travel, and stays ten years in Egypt at the court of King Fouad I who was a movie lover but whose sexual habits, according to Andrée, meant to act like a dog and expect the actress to do likewise. She also lives there as King Farouk is still a child.
She is loved there, and only comes back in Paris as WWII is about to start.
She plays at the Grand Guignol theater, one specialized in shockers and over the top plays, like "Crime in a Madhouse" by André de Lorde. She admits that she did not dare call her former friends to start her career again. Yet she does a single film in 1939.

This experience is not her first contact with the stage: a sketch was written especially for her, which she played with Henri Duval during intermission in movie theaters and her partner said "she's a silent star and yet she speaks all the time!"

Without a question by Jacques Chancel about the end of her life during an interview, the modest Andrée Brabant would not have mentioned that she played a part in the French resistance next to Josephine Baker. From that time, she keeps a small capsule of poison that she means to swallow should her health take a turn for the worse.
In 1942, her father, who lived 60 miles away from Paris, dies and the actress has to make the return trip between the matinée and her evening performance.

Selling Washing machines

selling a washing machine

Never married, she lives with her very sick mother, whose doctors advise her to move to Marseille in 1949. She hopes she can work with Pagnol or in the theater. When that does not work, and her mother's cares has drained all of her money, she decides to demonstrate electrical appliances professionally by answering an ad by Brandt at a time when washing machines are becoming all the rage. Other than her financial needs (she earns 7 to 8 millions francs for 11 days work), working as a seller satisfies her need for freedom and for a contact with an audience. She even sells tractors in some fairs. Thanks to that work, she also travels to Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, etc.

In 1955, Ciné Revue publishes an article about her entitled "What became of former movie stars? Star of over 100 films, Andrée Brabant left the film business for love". In 1956, she moves to Toulon, and keeps working for that firm.

One last film

at her home in 1964

In 1964, she writes to Abel Gance: he made her do her first film, would he be interested in making her last? He replies nicely but fails to satisfy her request. Her wish will be very partially granted: it is in fact Jean Gabin and Fernandel who will offer her last role in L'âge ingrat by Gilles Grangier because they needed an actress who lived close by. Her name would probably not have been mentioned on the credits if it had not been for her former glory: she plays a ridiculous lady on board a paddle boat named Titanic who makes a lot of fuss when she realizes that she is sinking: her very few lines are covered by the yells of her screen husband, Noël Roquevert. Her part was originally more consistent. If Fernandel is very charming with her, she finds Jean Gabin cold and distant towards her and she lets him know: vexed, the actor reduced her appearance to practically nothing. It is therefore understandable that she did not return in front of the camera. The film is available on DVD nonetheless.

Andrée Brabant & Noël Roquevert

That same year 1964, French TV finds her in Toulon for the first episode of the show Trente ans de silence (Thirty Years of Silence) by Charles Ford & France Roche, where she gives her souvenirs and says she is happy and has no regrets, even if she is a bit nostalgic.

In 1975, she suffers a stroke from which she recovers courageously.

Such a Young Senior

Her favorite picture

On December 6, 1978, she is invited in Jacques Chancel's radio show: Radioscopie. At the time, she lives in a small house in Belgentier, near Nice, where she says she wishes to be buried. But she is still very active, and says she still has "lovers" with whom she does not limit herself to "love of the heart". "There are no impotent men, only clumsy women" she says. She also occasionally keeps her neighbor's 4 children and takes care of a girl with Down syndrome. She says she never married and did not have children for fear of getting a divorce and making kids unhappy. She always left her boyfriends before she went with another man. Despite the fact that she had many lovers,she only remembers a single man that she was with for 18 years in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat that she thought could have been husband material for her.

In this interview, Jacques Chancel repeats several times that she shot about 150 films. Andrée remembers that she worked in Spain, Italy and Germany, among other countries. Yet in the list of her films, except for Más allá de la muerte (Beyond Death) which was shot at least partly in Paris, and, as mentioned before, The Billionaire's Doll shot in Italy, there are no other foreign titles. Could it be that some films were shot but the very knowledge of their existence vanished (there is a difference of over 100) ? What about Nemrod et Compagnie which appears as her first film even though Andrée and the articles of the time that I found never mention it?
On August 18, 1982, she is one of the guests of another radio show about Russian filmmakers in France.
Her wild life finally ends on November 2, 1989 at the Toulon Hospital.
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That's all for today folks!