French postcard by S.I.P., no. 1285. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris. Card mailed in 1906.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 1306. Photo: Jean Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 1306. Photo: Jean Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 1308. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris. Sent by mail in 1906.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 1357. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 1357. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
Harmonious features, a proud look and brown curly hair
Marie Nelly Cormon was born in 1877 in Bourges, France to a teacher and his wife.
As Guy Bellinger writes on IMDb, "Tall and elegant, with harmonious features, a proud look and brown curly hair, Nelly Cormon was a French theatre actress of classic beauty who was very successful on stage for three decades and had a brief but honourable career in silent films at the time when cinema was beginning to become more artistic, not just a fairground art."
Nelly Cormon was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire in piano with Professor Raoul Pugno. She graduated at the age of fifteen with several prizes.
In the 1900s she had a rich stage career, first at the Théâtre du Gymnase in plays such as 'L'Épave' (1903) and 'Le Retour de Jérusalem' (1903), then moved to the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, where she acted in plays like 'Le Masque d'amour' (1905) and 'Le Frisson de l'Aigle' (1906).
From 1906 she acted at various Parisian theatres, e.g. in 'Les Nuées' (1906) by Aristophanes, 'Les Deux gosses' (1907) by Pierre Decourcelle, and 'La Maison de danses' (1909) by Nozière and Müller. She also went on tour to Lisbon, London, Nancy, Brussels and other cities. In the early 1910s, she acted at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin in such plays as 'La Flambée' by Kistemaeckers fils, and 'La Chèvrefeuille' by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Cormon continued to act on stage throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.
French postcard. Photo: Le Film d'Art. Nelly Cormon as Milady de Winter in Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (Henry Pouctal, André Calmettes, 1912-1913). The unnumbered cards don't follow the order of the novel.
French postcard. Photo: Le Film d'Art. Marcel Vibert as Athos (Count de Fère) and Nelly Cormon as Milady de Winter in Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (Henry Pouctal, André Calmettes, 1912-1913). Most of the cards follow the order of the novel, with some hesitations about the cards on Milady's past. The cards were not numbered.
French postcard. Photo: Le Film d'Art. Marcel Vibert as Athos (Count de Fère) and Nelly Cormon as Milady de Winter in Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (Henry Pouctal, André Calmettes, 1912-1913).
French postcard. Photo: Le Film d'Art. Emile Dehelly as D'Artagnan, Nelly Cormon as Milady de Winter and Jacques Volnys as Le Comte de Rochefort in Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (Henry Pouctal, André Calmettes, 1912-1913).
French postcard. Photo: Le Film d'Art. Emile Dehelly as D'Artagnan, Nelly Cormon as Milady de Winter, Marcel Vibert as Athos, Adolphe Candé as Porthos and Stellio as Aramis in Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (Henry Pouctal, André Calmettes, 1912-1913).
The evil antagonist Milady De Winter
Parallel to her stage career, Nelly Cormon started a career as a film actress in 1909. After a one-off comedy at Pathé, she initially mostly appeared in Film d'Art films by André Calmettes, such as L'Arrestation de la Duchesse de Berry (André Calmettes, 1910) in which she had the lead.
From 1911, Cormon would perform in a large number of films directed by Henri Pouctal, who had started out his career as an assistant of Calmettes. Their most intense collaboration was in 1912 when Cormon acted in eleven films by Pouctal, all for Le Film d'Art. Often these were period dramas such as Joséphine impératrice/Impératrice et reine, in which Cormon had the title role of Joséphine de Beauharnais.
Under the direction of Calmettes and Pouctal together, Cormon acted as the evil antagonist Milady De Winter in the Film d'Art production Les Trois Mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (1912-1913), based on Alexandre Dumas père's' famous novel. The film starred Emile Dehelly as D'Artagnan, Marguerite Guizelle as Constance Bonacieux, and Philippe Garnier as Richelieu. The sets were by Emile Bertin. The two-part film was a big success, leading to many more film adaptations of Les Trois Mousquetaires, both in France and Hollywood.
While Cormon continued to act with Pouctal in seven more films in 1913, all for Le Film d'Art, afterwards, the wave was over. She still acted in one film by Pouctal in 1914, L'Alibi, and one in 1916, Les Flambeaux, while in 1918 she had the lead in Henry Krauss' Marion Delorme on the famous courtesan. Also in 1918, Cormon had the female lead as Mercedes in Pouctal's serial film Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, with Léon Mathot in the male lead as Edmond Dantès.
After an absence of a decade, Cormon would only return once more to the film sets to play the elder Juliette Recamier in the film Madame Recamier (1928) by Tony Lekain and Gaston Ravel, while Marie Bell had the lead as the young Juliette Recamier. This was the last time Cormon acted in film. Nelly Cormon died in 1942 in Sorel-Moussel (Eure-et-Loir). She was 64. Since 1923 she was married to Gaston Georges Olmer, an industrialist.
Spanish minicard by Chocolate Amatller, Marca Luna, Series 2 of 33 minicards. Photo: Pathé Frères. Nelly Cormon as Mercedes in the film serial Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (Henri Pouctal, 1918).
Spanish minicard by Chocolate Amatller, Marca Luna, Series 2 of 33 minicards. Photo: Pathé Frères. Léon Mathot as Edmond Dantès / The Count of Monte-Cristo and Nelly Cormon as Mercedes in the film serial Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (Henri Pouctal, 1918).
Spanish minicard by Chocolate Amatller, Marca Luna, Series 2 of 33 minicards. Photo: Pathé Frères. Léon Mathot as Edmond Dantès / The Count of Monte-Cristo and Nelly Cormon as Mercedes in the film serial Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (Henri Pouctal, 1918).
Spanish minicard by Chocolate Amatller, Marca Luna, Series 2 of 33 minicards. Photo: Pathé Frères. Léon Mathot as Edmond Dantès / The Count of Monte-Cristo and Nelly Cormon as Mercedes in the film serial Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (Henri Pouctal, 1918).
Spanish minicard by Chocolate Amatller, Marca Luna, Series 2 of 33 minicards. Photo: Pathé Frères. Nelly Cormon as Mercedes and Jacques Robert as Albert, Mercedes'son, in the film serial Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (Henri Pouctal, 1918).
Sources: Guy Bellinger (IMDb), Wikipedia (English and French) and IMDb.
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