Yves Vincent(1921-2016)
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Tall and handsome,both athletic and aristocratic-looking, brown-haired
(later in life silver-haired), Yves Vincent had everything to charm
dames. And charm them he did, in real life, on the stage, on the big
and little screen, for nearly fifty years. Born in France in 1921, he
was raised and spent his youth in Algeria. Both a sporty type and
literature enthusiast, this multi-talented man excelled at water-polo
(he was a champion water-polo player in the R.U.A. team), was a good
tennis player and a passable horse rider but his love for books finally
led him to Radio-Alger where he started his acting career as a member
of the channel's acting company. He was also an occasional announcer
there. During World War II he was called up to work on the "Camp des
Chênes" Youth Camp. And in 1944 he made his first movie in Cairo with
his mother as partner. After the war, he debuted in France as a leading
man, his good looks and his fine presence boosting his career from the
start. He could be a professional knife-thrower (in Pierre Chenal's
curious "La Foire aux Chimères", with Erich Von Stroheim),a doctor (in
"La Maternelle") or a drug trafficker (in "Méfiez-vous des Blondes",
Hunebelle's amusing noir spoof) with equal ease. The trouble is that
too many of the movies he was in are now old-fashioned (the worst being
"Capitaine Ardant", in which he plays a valiant French officer fighting
back against "nasty native rebels") and have been forgotten. So that,
after a quick start, Yves Vincent got fewer and fewer roles.In the late
sixties and early seventies, for instance, he was reduced to play
second fiddle to Louis de Funès in three of his films or to appear in
two cheesy soft porn flicks concocted by the king of the genre, Max
Pécas. He was luckier at the theater where he appeared - among other
plays - alongside Arletty in the French adaptation of Tennessee
Williams' "A streetcar named Desire"(Un tramway nommé Désir) and with
Edwige Feuillère in "La Dame aux Camélias". He has also done a lot of
work on television where he often embodied figures of authority. Yves
Vincent retired in 1991.
