Michel Lemoine(1922-2013)

Actor, writer, director, and producer Michel Charles Lemoine was born on September 30, 1922 in Pantin, Seine-Saint-Denis, France. Michel trained under Rene Alexandre of the Comedie Francaise in the 1940's and toured extensively playing a wide variety of roles in student theater productions. His first major part was as Lenny in a stage adaptation of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." Michel continued to work steadily on stage throughout the 1950's and began acting in movies initially in small parts in the late 1940's. However, it wasn't until the 1960's that Lemoine's film career really took off with his meaty role as Marco in La vengeance du masque de fer (1961). In the wake of this cinematic breakthrough Michel went on to act in a diverse array of Italian pictures that encompassed such genres as Westerns, thrillers, science fiction, spy movies, and costume dramas. Among the notable directors that Lemoine acted in movies for are Mario Bava, Sacha Guitry, Jesús Franco, Julien Duvivier, Antonio Margheriti, and José Bénazéraf. Michel directed his first film Comme il est court le temps d'aimer (1970) in 1970 and caused a huge stir at Cannes with his racy follow-up feature Les désaxées (1972). Moreover, Lemoine's offbeat La Chasse du comte Zaroff (1932) variant Les week ends maléfiques du Comte Zaroff (1976) proved to be so controversial that it wound being banned in its native France after the government censor gave the film an X certificate which in turn limited its theatrical distribution to sex cinemas that didn't allow anyone under 18 to patronize. Michel eventually made the leap from soft-core erotica to more explicit hardcore fare in the late 1970's that were done using various pseudonyms and frequently starred French porn starlet Olinka Hardiman. Lemoine died at age 90 on July 27, 2013 at his home in Vinon, Cher, France.