Fernandel dead

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32543, 1 March 1971, Page 13

Fernandel dead

(N-Zf-A.-Iteuter—Copyright)

PARIS, Feb. 28.

The French comedian, Fernandel, star of the “Don Camillo” films, has died at his home in Paris, from cancer. He was 67.

. Fernandel appeared in 149 films, and was working on the fifth about Don Camillo—an Italian parish priest engaged in a duel of wits with a Communist mayor—when he became ill last summer.

One of France’s bestloved show business personalities, he was honoured

by the State with membership of the Legion of Honour; his citation described him as “le marchand de bpnheur” (“the pedlar of happiness”).

President Pompidou has cabled his widow, Henrietta, to express his personal sympathy. Fernandel, whose real name was Fernand Contandin, once said of himself: “I am ugly, vindictive and pretentious. I love loud ties and cracking puns. I have the brain of a small bureaucrat in the head of a horse, and I make fun of myself.” That bureaucrat’s brain was, however, shrewd enough to amass him a large fortune.

He sang in a Marseilles music-hall at the age of 10 and made his Paris debut at 25, then became one of the first French actors to appear in a talking film, “Madame Husson’s Rose Bush” in 1931. Among the best known of his later films, beside those about Don Camillo, were “The Sheep with Five Legs,” "The Man in the Raincoat,” and “The Cow and I.”