Josette Day

Josette Day in the late 1920s on a photograph by Alexander Binder

Josette Day (born July 31, 1914 in Paris , † June 27, 1978 ibid; actually Josette Noëlle Andrée Claire Dagory ) was a French film actress .

Life

Josette Day was born in Paris in 1914 as Josette Noëlle Andrée Claire Dagory into a theater family. At the age of three, she performed as a little dancer on the stage of the Paris Opera . She first stood in front of the film camera when she was five. During the 1920s she returned to the stage as a dancer. It was not until 1931 that she continued her film career under the stage name Josette Day.

In 1933 she starred alongside Emil Jannings in the film The Adventures of King Pausole , directed by Alexei Michailowitsch Granowski , based on the operetta of the same name (1930) by Arthur Honegger . During the 1930s and 1940s she played numerous leading roles in French films. Mostly she appeared as a naive lover who, after many mistakes, ends up happily getting married. Her internationally best-known role is that of beautiful Bella at the side of Jean Marais in Jean Cocteau's classic fairy tale film Once Upon a Time (1946), which is also known in Germany under the title Beauty and the Beast . Cocteau also cast her in 1948, The Horrible Parents , a film adaptation of his own 1929 novel.

In 1939 Josette Day met the French filmmaker Marcel Pagnol , in whose successful war drama La Fille du puisatier (1940) she played the leading female role alongside Raimu and Fernandel . They became a couple, but went their separate ways in 1943. In the late 1940s, Day married the Belgian industrialist Maurice Solvay, whereupon she ended her career in 1950 at the age of only 36 and from then on devoted herself to her private life and charity work.

Josette Day died in 1978 in her hometown at the age of 63. She was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery ( columbarium ) in Paris.

Filmography (selection)

1919: Âmes d'orient
1932: Hello hello! This is Berlin speaking! ( Allo Berlin? Ici Paris! )
1933: Le Barbier de Séville
1933: The Merry Monarch
1933: King Pausole
1935: Antonia, romance hongroise
1935: Lucrezia Borgia ( Lucrèce Borgia )
1936: The man of the day ( L'Homme du jour )
1937: Messieurs les ronds de cuir
1938: It should be the tenth girl ( Accord final )
1939: Monsieur Brotonneau
1940: The daughter of the well builder ( La Fille du puisatier )
1943: Arlette et l'amour
1946: Once upon a time ( La Belle et la Bête )

1948: La Révoltée

1948: Parents terribles ( Les Parents Terribles )

1950: A sailor is not a snowman ( Swiss Tour )

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Daniel Vita Casaglione: The Literature of Provence: An Introduction . McFarland & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-7864-0843-X , p. 98.

personal data
SURNAME	Day, Josette
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Dagory, Josette Noëlle Andrée Claire (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	french actress
DATE OF BIRTH	July 31, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH	Paris
DATE OF DEATH	June 27, 1978
Place of death	Paris

[1] Daniel Vita Casaglione: The Literature of Provence: An Introduction . McFarland & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-7864-0843-X , p. 98.