MoviesObituaryJean Desailly
French stage and screen actor famous for La Peau DouceIn 2001, Jean Desailly, who has died aged 87, and Simone Valère, three years his junior, celebrated their 60 years together on stage in Ernest Thompson's On Golden Pond at the Théâtre de la Madeleine in Paris. If one wanted to find an equivalent of the French husband-and-wife acting team of Desailly and Valère, then Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray in England or Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontane in the US would serve, though the French couple had a much wider range.
In 1952, they had both become members of the stage company of another celebrated married theatrical couple, Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud. Strictly speaking, Desailly and Valère got married only as late as 1998. "We travelled together, we worked together, we lived together. Thank God, we were never unemployed. That's why we could afford to live in sin," Desailly once remarked jokingly.
Desailly was already married with two daughters when he joined the miraculous Renaud-Barrault company. In the 1952 season, Desailly played Horatio in Hamlet (with Valère as Ophelia) and Jupiter in Molière's Amphitryon, as well as appearing in Claudel (Christopher Columbus), Marivaux (Les Fausses Confidences) and Feydeau (Occupe-Toi Amélie), previously having played in Claude Autant-Lara's 1949 film adaptation of the latter.
Born in Paris - his father was the composer Reynaldo Hahn's secretary - Desailly studied at the École des Beaux Arts with the intention of becoming a commercial artist, while at the same time acting in an itinerant theatre company, La Roulette. He was then taken on by the Comédie-Française, but they let him go in 1946 because they felt that too much of his time was being taken up by the cinema. It was also being taken up by Valère, whom he had met while appearing in his first film, Le Voyageur de la Toussaint (1943), based on a novel by Georges Simenon, his favourite writer.
In his 20s and early 30s, Desailly made an ideal juvenile lead such as the shy suitor of Odette Joyeux, who is enamoured by the spirit of a dead nobleman (Jacques Tati) in Autant-Lara's Sylvie and the Ghost (1946); as the son of a pastor who falls in love with a blind girl (Michèle Morgan) in Jean Delannoy's La Symphonie Pastorale (also 1946), based on André Gide; and in the title role of Colette's inexperienced gigolo in Chéri (1950). The following year, in Jocelyn, he played the eponymous 16th-century divinity student who befriends a young boy who turns out to be a girl (Valère), a situation that tests his religious vows.
In 1958, Desailly had two dramatic confrontations with the powerful Jean Gabin, first as his weak son in Les Grandes Familles and in Maigret Tend un Piège (Maigret Sets a Trap), which he adapted from the Simenon novel himself. In the latter, as a neurotic, mother-fixated artist, he is told by Gabin as Inspector Maigret, to "be a man". In another excellent Simenon adaptation (by Jean Anouilh), La Mort de Belle (1961), Desailly, now moving into middle age with a spread to go with it, was effective as a teacher accused of murder.
But his most famous film portrayal, in which he displayed his discreet bourgeois charm, was in François Truffaut's La Peau Douce (The Soft Skin, 1964). In it he portrayed a married literature professor who falls in love with an air-hostess (Françoise Dorléac) and leaves home for her. Truffaut described the character as "having something childish about him ... a man who is strong in social life but weak in love," which is exactly what Desailly depicts.
Meanwhile, he and Valère continued to appear with Renaud-Barrault in a variety of classics - Desailly was a particularly notable Mosca in Volpone - until the company was dissolved in 1968. In 1972, the company Valère-Desailly was formed to continue the Renaud-Barrault tradition, though they mixed more modern boulevard comedies with the likes of Giraudoux and Anouilh. The pair complemented each other on stage because, according to Desailly, she was "vivacious, spontaneous and audacious" while he was "calm, reserved and thoughtful". This was beautifully displayed in their favourite piece, L'Amour Fou by André Roussin, which they played 450 times.
Desailly is survived by Simone, and two daughters from a previous marriage.
· Jean Desailly, actor, born August 24 1920; died June 11 2008
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