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Gérard Oury
Oury in 1984
Born	Max-Gérard Houry Tannenbaum (1919-04-29)29 April 1919 Paris, France
Died	20 July 2006(2006-07-20) (aged 87) Saint-Tropez, France
Years active	1942–2003
Spouse	Michèle Morgan ​(m. 1960)​

Gérard Oury (French pronunciation: [ʒeʁaʁ uʁi]; born Max-Gérard Houry Tannenbaum; 29 April 1919 – 20 July 2006) was a French film director, actor and writer.

Life and career

Max-Gérard Houry-Tannenbaum was the only son of Serge Tannenbaum, a violinist of Russian-Jewish origin, and French Jewish Marcelle Houry, a journalist and art critic. Tannenbaum was absent from the life of Oury and he was raised in an unobservant house of his mother and maternal grandmother Berthe Goldner. Oury studied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly and then at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art. He became a member of the Comédie-Française before World War II, but fled with all his family (mother, grandmother and unofficial wife, actress Jacqueline Roman [fr]) to Switzerland to escape the anti-Jewish persecutions by the Vichy government. When in 1942 his daughter Danièle Thompson was born, his fatherhood was concealed, to avoid her classification as a Jew.

After 1945 he returned to the liberated Paris and restarted his career as an actor, performing in the theatre and in supporting roles in the cinema. Oury became a movie director in 1959 (The Itchy Palm [fr]) and gained his first success in 1961 with Crime Does Not Pay (Le crime ne paie pas).

Pairing André Bourvil and Louis de Funès as a comic duo, he burst into commercial filmmaking with 1965's The Sucker (Le corniaud). The film was entered into the 4th Moscow International Film Festival. The following year, Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! (La Grande Vadrouille) was even more successful, attracting the largest audiences ever in France (17.27 million admissions). This box-office record stood for decades, only surpassed in 1997 by Titanic from James Cameron.

Oury shot the 1969 comedy Le Cerveau (The Brain) in English, starring David Niven in the lead role as a criminal mastermind.

With actress Jacqueline Roman, he was the father of French writer Danièle Thompson and grandfather of actor/writer Christopher Thompson. He lived together with the French actress Michèle Morgan for the second half of his life. He died aged 87 in Saint-Tropez on 20 July 2006.

Filmography

References

1. "Gérard Oury". 29 April 1919.
2. Laurent Bourdon [fr], Définitivement Belmondo, p. 239
3. ^ Mulvey, Michael. (2017). "What Was So Funny about Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob (1973): A Comedic Film between History and Memory", French Politics, Culture & Society, 35(3), pp. 24-43 JSTOR 26892954, p. 29
4. "4th Moscow International Film Festival (1965)". MIFF. Archived from the original on 16 January 2013. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
5. Schneider, Steven Jay, ed. (2007). 501 Movie Directors. London: Cassell Illustrated. p. 238. ISBN 9781844035731. OCLC 1347156402.
6. "Gérard Oury est décédé" (in French). Le Figaro. 20 July 2006.

External links

• Gérard Oury at IMDb
• Gérard Oury at UniFrance Films

• 1919 births
• 2006 deaths
• French male film actors
• French male stage actors
• French film directors
• French male screenwriters
• 20th-century French screenwriters
• 20th-century French Jews
• French people of Russian-Jewish descent
• Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery
• Lycée Janson-de-Sailly alumni
• 20th-century French male actors
• 21st-century French male actors
• Troupe of the Comédie-Française
• French National Academy of Dramatic Arts alumni
• César Honorary Award recipients
• 20th-century French male writers