Demazis, Orane

(1904-1991)

   Actress. Orane Demazis was born Burgard Demazis in Oran, Algeria, to a family of Alsacian immigrants. The name Orane Demazis is a stage name, after Oran, where she was born. Demazis studied at the Paris Conservatoire d'art dramatique before starting her career on the stage. She made her debut at the Théâtre de l'Atélier, where she was discovered by Marcel Pagnol in 1928.

   Demazis left the Théâtre de l'Atélier to join Pagnol at the Théâtre des Arts, where he worked with actors such as Harry Baur and Pierre Blanchar. Demazis got her start in cinema in 1931, when Pagnol decided to bring his play Marins, in which she had starred, to the screen. Demazis starred in the film, opposite Pierre Fresnay. She would go on to make several other films with Pagnol, most notably Fanny (1932), Angèle (1934), César (1936), and Regain (1937). The two also had a son together. However, they never married, and in 1939, they parted ways.

   Demazis went on to make films with other directors. She worked with Raymond Bernard in Les Misérables (1934), Marc Didier on Le Moulin dans le soleil (1938), with Jean Benoît-Lévy in Le Feu de paille (1940), with Jacques Houssin in Le Mistral (1943), with Henri Calef in Bagarres (1948), and with Jacqueline Audry in La Caraque blonde (1954), among others. Her film career seemed more or less over in the 1960s, although it had a short renaissance in the 1970s, when Demazis appeared in Rene Allio's Rude Journée pour la reine (1973), Luis Bunuel's Le Fantôme de la liberté (1974), André Téchiné's Souvenirs d'en France (1975), and Michel Andrieu's Bastien, Bastienne (1979). Demazis remains for many in France forever Fanny, the star of Pagnol's Fanny (1932) and Marius (1931), and she once said that for many years after the films were released, people would stop her in the streets and ask her what news she had of Marius.

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins