French autograph card. Mehdi El Glaoui in the TV series Le jeune Fabre/The Young Fabre (Cécile Aubry, 1973).
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 6. Photo: RTF / Gaumont. Mehdi El Glaoui as Sebastien with Belle in Sébastien parmi les hommes/Belle, Sebastian and the Horses (Cécile Aubry, 1968).
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris. Photo: RTF, Gaumont Télévision International and Téléclip. Mehdi El Glaoui as Sebastien in the film and TV series Sebastien et la Mary-Morgane (Cécile Aubry, 1970).
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 40/001-11. Photo: RTF / Gaumont / Téléclip. Mehdi El Glaoui and Charles Vanel in Sebastien et le Mary Morgane/Sebastian and the Mary Morgan (Cécile Aubry, 1970).
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 40/001-12. Photo: RTF / Gaumont / Téléclip. Mehdi El Glaoui and Charles Vanel in Sebastien et le Mary Morgane/Sebastian and the Mary Morgan (Cécile Aubry, 1970). Sent by mail in 1970.
Lonely boys abandoned by their fathers
Mehdi El Mazouari El Glaoui was born in Choisy-le-Roi, France in 1956. He is the son of French author and actress Cécile Aubry and Moroccan aristocrat Si Brahim El Glaoui, caïd (local administrator) of Telouet and grandson of Thami El Glaoui, the Pasha of Marrakech. His mother and father had met during location shooting in Morocco for the Hollywood production The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1951) in which Aubry co-starred with Tyrone Power and Orson Welles. In 1954, they secretly married and Mehdi was born at the Prince’s country house, the Blue Mill, some 25 miles from Paris. The name 'Mehdi' means 'guided by God' in Arabic.
At the age of 5, Mehdi made his acting début in the TV series Poly (1961–1973), produced by his mother. Poly is a pony and all other actors in the series were local amateurs, whose voices were dubbed later by professionals. Medhi’s natural acting in the series was acclaimed.
From 1965 on, he became internationally famous as Sébastien, the main character in the French TV series Belle et Sébastien/Belle and Sebastian (1965) also created (novelist, screenwriter, lyricist, narrator and co-director) by his mother. The series about a six-year-old orphan boy and his Pyrenean Mountain dog Belle was a popular success in many European countries. Flanker, the dog who played Belle, was an 18-month-old male. Directing Flanker on location was especially hard because the dog wasn't trained at all. Lots of chocolate was used to handle him on the set. One day he ran away just to drink from a mountain stream twelve miles away, and the cast and crew had to wait for his return.
Cécile Aubry was asked by the production company to write a sequel to the series. So she talked to her son Mehdi El Glaoui if he wanted to do it again. He agreed but requested her to set it during the summer, and include horses. In Sébastien parmi les hommes/Belle, Sebastian and the Horses (1968), Sebastian's father Pierre Maréchal (Claude Giraud) finds out that Sebastian is alive and invites him over to his horse ranch. Things soon get complicated when Pierre's rich fiancée finds out about Sebastian's existence. The theme song ‘L'oiseau’ (The Bird) from the second series sung by the then 8-year-old Bruno Victoire Polius, sold more than 1.6 million times.
In the third series, Sébastien et la Mary-Morgane/Sebastian and the Mary Morgan (1970), Belle has died of old age, but Sébastien falls in love with another dog. During the summer holidays, Sébastien is sent to his great-uncle Louis in Bretagne (Charles Vanel), an eccentric captain of a fishing vessel, named the Mary-Morgane. In contact with the uncle's servants Jonathan and Clarisse, and the daughter of the uncle's associate, Sébastien hears about the uncle's past as a resistance fighter and the loss of his wife and son. In an interview with Cécile Aubry and Mehdi El Glaoui for the DVD release of Belle et Sébastien, she said that the fact that Mehdi hardly knew his father, who she separated from soon after Mehdi's birth, inspired her to write stories for him about lonely boys abandoned by or estranged from their fathers. This is true of this series, and also of the TV series Le jeune Fabre/The Young Fabre (1973). Mehdi played a young teenager who is looking for his real father. He is expelled from his school and travels to Paris to experiment with life and love.
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 1. Photo: RTF / Gaumont. Mehdi El Glaoui as Sébastien in Sébastien parmi les hommes/Belle, Sebastian and the Horses (Cécile Aubry, 1968).
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 2. Photo: RTF / Gaumont. Mehdi El Glaoui as Sébastien in Sébastien parmi les hommes/Belle, Sebastian and the Horses (Cécile Aubry, 1968).
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 7. Photo: RTF / Gaumont. Mehdi El Glaoui as Sébastien in Sébastien parmi les hommes (Cécile Aubry, 1968).
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 81. Photo: RTF / Gaumont. Mehdi El Glaoui as Sébastien in Sébastien parmi les hommes/Belle, Sebastian and the Horses (Cécile Aubry, 1968).
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 8. Photo: RTF / Gaumont. Mehdi El Glaoui as Sébastien in Sébastien parmi les hommes/Belle, Sebastian and the Horses (Cécile Aubry, 1968).
César as director for the Best Short Fiction Film
In real life, the 16-year-old Mehdi El Glaoui also applied for emancipation after a childhood marked by a very present mother and a distant father. With his mother's agreement, he left for the Cantal region where he lived until the age of 35. He pursued a career as a film actor, assistant director and director of dramas, documentaries and commercials.
He appeared opposite Romy Schneider and Nino Castelnuovo in the film Un amour de pluie/Loving in the Rain (Jean-Claude Brialy, 1974) and with Jane Birkin and Patrick Dewaere in the sexy film comedy Catherine et Cie/Catherine & Co (Michel Boisrond, 1975).
During the 1980s and 1990s, he appeared in several TV series such as Kick, Raoul, la moto, les jeunes et les autres (1980) and in a film, the thriller Le cousin/The Informer (Alain Corneau, 1997) starring Patrick Timsit. He also wrote and directed the short film Première classe/First Class (Mehdi El Glaoui,1984) with Francis Huster and André Dussolier. In 1985, he won the César as director for the Best Short Fiction Film for it.
After a decade of absence, he appeared again on screen in the French TV programs 12-14 (2005) and Pour le plaisir (2006). He revealed that he lived near Dax, Les Landes, collected classic cars and ran a musical café. He directed another film, Mao est mort/Mao Is Dead (Mehdi El Glaoui, 2008). In 2013 Mehdi returned to the cinema screens in the remake Belle et Sébastien (Nicolas Vanier, 2013) starring Tchéky Karyo and Félix Bossuet as Sébastien. Mehdi played a supporting part in the film. In the same year, he also published his autobiography, ‘La Belle Histoire de Sébastien’.
Since 2011, Mehdi El Glaoui has been married to actress Virginie Stevenoot. They met on stage and opened a theatre in Biarritz in 2022. A few side notes. Bruno Victoire Polius, who sang ‘L’Oiseau’ for Sébastien parmi les hommes, shot to fame as a teenager. He was the lead singer of Les Poppys's hit single ‘Non non rien n'a changé’ (1971). Harry Trowbridge, also of Les Poppys, recorded ‘La sirène aux longs cheveux’ for the third series, Sébastien en de Mary-Morgane (1970). The TV series Belle et Sébastien had a lasting impact on an entire generation. The Scottish indie pop band Belle and Sebastian took their name from the TV series. The sleeve notes for their album ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap' (1998) state: "Although it is little to do with the eight of us playing music, that is where the name came from, and we are grateful to Madame Cecile Aubry for letting us use the name until now and we pay homage to her work."
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 40/001-14. Photo: RTF / Gaumont / Téléclip. Publicity still for the film Sebastien et la Mary-Morgane (Cécile Aubry, 1970) with Mehdi El Glaoui.
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 40/001-16. Photo: RTF / Gaumont / Téléclip. Publicity still for the film Sebastien et la Mary-Morgane (Cécile Aubry, 1970) with Mehdi El Glaoui.
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 40/001-18. Photo: RTF / Gaumont / Téléclip. Publicity still for the film Sebastien et la Mary-Morgane (Cécile Aubry, 1970) with Mehdi El Glaoui.
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 40/001-19. Photo: RTF / Gaumont / Téléclip. Publicity still for the film Sebastien et la Mary-Morgane (Cécile Aubry, 1970) with Mehdi El Glaoui.
French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 40/001-20. Photo: RTF / Gaumont / Téléclip. Publicity still for the film Sebastien et la Mary-Morgane (Cécile Aubry, 1970) with Mehdi El Glaoui.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, French and English), and IMDb.
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