Béatrice Bretty

Béatrice Bretty (1893-1982) was a French actress who dedicated her career to the Comédie-Française, often playing soubrette types. She was the TV presenter during the inauguration of the first French TV channel in 1935. Incidentally she also appeared in silent and sound films.


French postcard by Pathé Consortium, no. 67. Bretty as La belle hôtelière in the film Vingt ans après (1922), the sequel of Les trois mousquetaires (1921).

Soubrette types

Béatrice Bretty was born Béatrix Anne-Marie Bolchesi in La Fere, France, in 1893.

In 1915 she went to the Comédie-Française and stayed there for 42 years, becoming a classic interpreter of Molière. In 1917 she debuted on screen in the film Par la vérité/For The Truth (Gaston le Prieur, Maurice de Féraudy, 1917).

In 1922 she played in both the documentary Molière, sa vie, son oeuvre/Molière, His Life, His Work (Maurice de Féraudy, 1922) and in Vingt ans après/Twenty Years Later (Henri Diamant-Berger, 1922), the sequel of Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers, Julien Duvivier's film Le Petit Roi/The Little King (Julien Duvier, 1933) with Arlette Marchal.

In 1935 she was televised at the official inauguration of television in France, which was broadcast in 60 lines. The program of 15 minutes showed Béatrice Bretty in the studio of Radio-PTT Vision in Paris. The broadcast had a range of 100 km.

By then she was an acclaimed actress of the Comédie-Française, often playing soubrette types. In 1938 she played on stage in various comedies such as Un chapeau de paille d'Italie but she also performed as the cashier in the play Cantique des cantiques by Jean Giraudoux, directed by Louis Jouvet for the Comédie-Française.


Louis Jouvet. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 123. Photo: Paramount.

Fernandel

In 1940 Béatrice Bretty was one of the artists who fled France aboard the steamship Massilia, along with left-wing politicians, among whom former prime minister Daladier and Minister Georges Mandel. They thought of raising a government in exile in Casablanca. Once they arrived in Casablanca, though, the armistice in France had been signed. By order of the pro-Nazi admiral Darlan, all were interned and the politicians were sent back to France, where some were trialled for desertion or defeat.

After the war, Bretty went back to play at the Comédie-française, playing e.g. in André Gide's Les Caves du Vatican (1950). In 1957 she shifted to the Theatre Antoine, sometimes alternated with the Theatre de la Madeleine. In the 1950s Bretty also played parts in films, such as in the Fernandel comedies Le Chomeur de Clochemerle/Easiest Profession (Jean Boyer, 1957), and Le Vigne du Seigneur/Vines of the Lord (Jean Boyer, 1958).

About Le Chomeur de Clochemerle, James Travers writes at French Films: "With its colourful characters, sunny rural setting and distinctive lead actors (Fernandel, Ginette Leclerc and Rellys), Le Chômeur de Clochemerle is immediately evocative of the films of Marcel Pagnol." Bretty also played in La Sentence/The Sentence (Jean Valère, 1959) starring Marina Vlady, and Arrêtez les tambours/Women and War (Georges Lautner, 1960) with Bernard Blier, her last film role.

In her last years, Bretty played often with the stage company Pitoëff, in plays by André Roussin (Les Glorieuses, 1960) and Françoise Dorin (Un sale égoïste, 1970). In the 1960s, she occasionally played parts in French television plays as the Charles Dickens adaptation Le magasin d'antiquités/The Old Curiosity Shop (René Lucot, 1964) and Les glorieuses/The Glorious Ones (Pierre Sabbagh, 1968). Her last role on television was the lead in the TV play La terrasse des Bernardini/The Terrace of the Bernardini's (1976).

Béatrice Bretty died in 1982 in Paris. She was 88. Bretty lies buried at the Cimetière de Passy, together with aviation pioneer and writer Louis Castex. Catherine Frot interpreted Beatrice Bretty in the TV film Le Dernier Été/The Last Summer (Claude Goretta, 1997) about the Jewish-French politician Georges Mandal who warned everybody in the 1930s that the Nazis would make a terrible war. Nobody listened to him, because he was a Jew. When the Germans entered France, Mandal refused to collaborate with the Petain government and was sent to jail. Mandel would be shot in 1944.


French postcard. Photo: Pathé. Publicity still for Vingt ans après/The Return of the Musketeers (Henri Diamant-Berger, 1922) with Béatrice Bretty as La belle hôtelière, Jean Yonnel as D'Artagnan, and Armand Bernard as Planchet.

Sources: James Travers (French Films), Wikipedia (French), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 9 August 2023.