French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no, 114. Photo: Roger Carlet.
Vintage card by D.F. Simone Signoret and Frank Villard in Manèges//The Cheat (Yves Allégret, 1950).
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 241. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
A fashionable seducer
Frank Villard (sometimes Franck Villard) was born François Drouineau in 1917 in Saint-Jean-d'Angély, France. He was the son of a finance inspector, François Étienne Drouineau.
During the Second World War, Frank was taken prisoner of war but was released by feigning madness and epilepsy. He ended up in Nice, where he met the film star Viviane Romance. He began working in the film industry as a painter and set decorator.
Romance arranged his film debut in Cartacalha, reine des gitans (Léon Mathot, 1941). She also cast him in more important roles in her next two films, Feu sacré/Carrière (Maurice Cloche, 1942) and La Boîte aux rêves/Box of Dreams (Yves Allégret, Jean Choux, 1945).
From then on, he appeared regularly in films and became a star with Gigi (Jacqueline Audry, 1949) starring Danièle Delorme and Manèges/The Cheat (Yves Allégret, 1949) with Simone Signoret. These two successes made him a fashionable seducer.
Along with Henri Vidal and Daniel Gélin, he was the prototype of the rogue seducer in French cinema in the 1950s, in contrast to romantic seducers such as Gérard Philipe and Jean-Claude Pascal. Villard also worked, but more occasionally, on stage between 1949 and 1964.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès no. 368. Photo: Sam Lévin. Villard is mistakenly written as Villars.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 441. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Apocalypse Now
In 1951, Frank Villard became known throughout Europe. First, he had success with the French-Italian crime film Le Cap de l'Espérance/The Cape of Hope (Raymond Bernard, 1951) starring Edwige Feuillère. His best film was Le Garçon sauvage/Savage Triangle (Jean Delannoy, 1951) with Madeleine Robinson.
He had the opportunity to work alongside actors of the calibre of Jean Gabin, Bernard Blier and Paul Frankeur, achieving perhaps his greatest success in the roles he played under the direction of director Gilles Grangier. Villard made films in Italy such as Wanda la peccatrice/The Shameless Sex (Duilio Coletti, 1952) with Yvonne Sanson, La voce del silenzio/Voice of Silence (G.W. Pabst, 1953) and Le Secret d'Hélène Marimon/The Secret of Helene Marimon (Henri Calef, 1954) starring Isa Miranda.
In Spain, he acted in the Spanish-Italian historical jukebox musical film La Violetera/The Violet Seller (Luis César Amadori, 1958) with Sara Montiel. The Violet Seller received excellent reviews upon its release. It was immensely popular in Spain and it had a wide international release making it the worldwide highest-grossing Spanish-language film made up to that point.
Villard's star began to wane in the early 1960s. After starring in several thrillers including Rapt au Deuxième Bureau/Operation Abduction (Jean Stelli, 1958), with Dalida, he turned to supporting roles in films such as the comedy Le cave se rebiffe/The Counterfeiters of Paris (Gilles Grangier, 1961) and the anthology film Le crime ne paie pas/Gentle Art of Murder (Gérard Oury, 1962).
His last appearance on the big screen was in the American epic war film Apocalypse Now, in the Redux version (2001) and the Final Cut version (2019) directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He also appeared on television and in the theatre. With his wife, a former model, he also ran a restaurant in Saint-Jean-d'Angély, 'Chez Franck Villard'. In the last period of his life, he appeared in some French-produced television series. During a theatre tour in Switzerland, Frank Villard died of a heart attack in 1980 in Geneva. He was 63.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Korès, no. 645. Photo: Teddy Piaz, Paris.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 397. Photo: Teddy Piaz, Paris.
Sources: Wikipedia (French, English and Italian) and IMDb.
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