Trivia

Distinguished French playwright, novelist, screenwriter and director. He began as a teacher at the Lycee Condorcet in Paris in 1922. The success of his first two plays helped him to set up his own film production and distribution company near Marseilles. Pagnol founded the influential cinema magazine 'Les Cahier du Film' in 1931. He became best known for his comedic depiction of provincial life in the South of France, marked by witty dialogue and well observed local custom. Many of his actors were well-established stars of the theatre. Pagnol's most significant achievement is considered to be the Marius trilogy (Marius, Fanny and Cesar), filmed between 1931 and 1936.

First filmmaker to be elected to the French academy (1946-1974).

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 865-870. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Fathered three children out of wedlock: Jacques, b. 1932, to Kitty Murphy; Jean-Pierre, b. 1933, to Orane Demazis; and, Francine, b. 1935, to Yvonne Pouperon. Frédéric (1946) and Estelle (1951) were born to Jacqueline Bouvier Pagnol.

Pictured on a EUR2.00 Monaco commemorative postage stamp issued 28 February 2020.

President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955 and member in 1957 and 1966.

Pagnol adapted his own film Manon des Sources, with his wife Jacqueline in the title role, into two novels, Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, collectively titled L'Eau des Collines.

Friend from high school with writer Albert Cohen.

Although his work is less fashionable than it once was, Pagnol is still generally regarded as one of France's greatest 20th-century writers and is notable for the fact that he excelled in almost every medium-memoir, novel, drama and film.

He was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker.