Fernand Ledoux

Biography: life and films

Fernand Ledoux was born in Tirlemont, Belgium, on 24th January 1897. Christened Jacques Joseph Félix Fernand Ledoux, he was the son of a wholesaler in wine and sugar, the youngest of five siblings. He was his mother's favourite and it was thanks to her that he was placed in a religious boarding school in her hometown of Sint-Truiden, in the Flemish province of Limburg. It was here that young Fernand acquired an interest in the theatre, but he was also drawn to a monastic life and may well have taken Holy Orders if his father hadn't sharpishly withdrawn him from the school at the age of 15. It was then that the young Fernand found his true vocation and opted to become an actor. He started out with an amateur theatre company in Tirlemont.

At the outset of WWI, Ledoux was too young to follow his older brothers into the armed services, so he enrolled with the Red Cross. Later, he enlisted in the Belgian army, and towards the end of the war he came into contact with Jacques Feyder and his wife Françoise Rosay. Following the latter's advice, he took drama lessons under Eugène Larcher once the war had ended, so he could prepare for entry into the Paris Conservatoire. Mentored by Raphaël Duflos, Fernand left the elite drama school with a second prize and started appearing on stage, initially in small roles. Jacques Feyder gave him his first screen role in La Faute d'orthographe (1918), although throughout the silent era Ledoux gave cinema a wide berth. The year after he gained French nationality in 1920, Ledoux began performing with the Comédie-Française, becoming a full member in 1931. Between 1921 and 1941, the actor appeared in over eighty stage productions.

Fernand Ledoux's first foray into sound cinema - in Louis Valray's L'Homme à la barbiche (1931) and Henry Wulschleger's Le Train de 8 heures 47 (1934) - can hardly be described as auspicious. However, better parts soon came his way - in Anatole Litvak's Mayerling (1936) and Alexis Granowsky's Tarass Boulba (1936), before he landed his first important role as the murderous station master in Jean Renoir's La Bête humaine (1938). This was followed by memorable roles in Jean Grémillon's Remorques (1941), Maurice Tourneur's Volpone (1941) and Marcel Carné's Les Visiteurs du soir (1942).

By now, France was under Nazi Occupation. Refusing to perform on stage in front of German soldiers, Ledoux resigned from Comédie-Française. By this time he had already lent his talents to the German-run film company Continental, on Premier Rendez-vous (1941) and L'Assassinat du Père Noël (1941) - for which he would be taken to task by the Resistance after the Liberation in 1944. It was during the Occupation that Ledoux took on his most memorable screen role, as the morose title character of Jacques Becker's Goupi Mains Rouges (1943). With his flat cap and drooping moustache, standing alone with his dog in a rural wilderness, Ledoux cuts an imposing figure in the film's iconic poster. This was the high point of his screen career.

Other made-to-measure roles that aligned perfectly with Ledoux's dour persona followed - the solemn innkeeper in Jean Grémillon's Pattes blanches (1949), the doctor in Henri Decoin's La Fille du diable (1946), the kingmaker in Roger Richebé's Monseigneur (1949) and the man who gets to silence Jules Berry forever in Jean Faurez's Histoires extraordinaires (1949). After returning to the Comédie-Française in 1950, Ledoux alternated his stage and screen work. On stage, he played Molière, Beaumarchais and Paul Claudel. On the screen, he owned up to being the father of Robert Lamoureux, Gérard Philipe and Romy Schneider respectively in Papa, maman, ma femme et moi (1954), Les Aventures de Till l'espiègle (1956) and Pierre Gaspard-Huit's Christine (1958).

In the 1960s, Fernand Ledoux showed up in two big budget American war films - The Longest Day (1961) and Up from the beach (1965) - and worked with directors as diverse as H.G. Clouzot (La Vérité), Orson Welles (The Trial), André Cayatte (Le Glaive et la balance) and Gilles Grangier (Sous le Signe du taureau). He was the Red King to Micheline Presle's Red Queen in Jacques Demy's kitsch fantasy extravaganza Peau d'âne (1970), and, as a mysterious doctor, he got to examine Emmanuelle star Sylvia Krystel in Claude Chabrol's Alice ou la Dernière fugue (1977). His final film roles were in Henri Verneuil's Mille milliards de dollars (1982) and Robert Hossein's Les Misérables (1982). He retired from acting in 1984 and devoted the rest of his life to his other great passion: painting. Fernand Ledoux died in his home town of Villerville, Calvados in northern France, on 21st September 1993, aged 96. He was survived by his wife Fernande Thabuy and their four children.

Filmography

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