Marcel Pagnol

Marcel Paul Pagnol 28 February 1895 18 April 1974 was a French novelist playwright and filmmaker Regarded as an auteur in 1946 he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française Although his work is less fashionable than it once was Pagnol is still generally regarded as one of Frances greatest 20thcentury writers and is notable for the fact that he excelled in almost every mediummemoir novel drama and film Pagnol was born on 28 February 1895 in Aubagne BouchesduRhône department in southern France near Marseille the eldest son of schoolteacher Joseph PagnolA and seamstress Augustine Lansot Marcel Pagnol grew up in Marseille with his younger brothers Paul and René and younger sister Germaine In July 1904 the family rented the Bastide Neuve a house in the sleepy Provençal village of La Treille for the summer holidays the first of many spent in the hilly countryside between Aubagne and Marseille About the same time Augustines health which had never been robust began to noticeably decline and on 16 June 1910 she succumbed to a chest infection mal de poitrine and died aged 36 Joseph remarried in 1912 In 1913 at the age of 18 Marcel passed his baccalaureate in philosophy and started studying literature at the University in AixenProvence When World War I broke out he was called up into the infantry at Nice but in January 1915 he was discharged because of his poor constitution faiblesse de constitution On 2 March 1916 he married Simone Colin in Marseille and in November graduated in English He became an English teacher teaching in various local colleges and at a lycée in Marseille In 1922 he moved to Paris where he taught English until 1927 when he decided instead to devote his life to playwriting During this time he belonged to a group of young writers in collaboration with one of whom Paul Nivoix he wrote the play Merchants of Glory which was produced in 1924 This was followed in 1928 by Topaze a satire based on ambition Exiled in Paris he returned nostalgically to his Provençal roots taking this as his setting for his play Marius which later became the first of his works to be adapted into a film in 1931 Separated from Simone Collin since 1926 though not divorced until 1941 he formed a relationship with the young English dancer Kitty Murphy Their son Jacques Pagnol was born on 24 September 1930 Jacques later became his fathers assistant and subsequently a cameraman for France 3 Marseille In 1929 on a visit to London Pagnol attended a screening of one of the first talking films and he was so impressed that he decided to devote his efforts to cinema He contacted Paramount Picture studios and suggested adapting his play Marius for cinema This was directed by Alexander Korda and released on 10 October 1931 It became one of the first successful Frenchlanguage talking films Source Article Marcel Pagnol from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30