Yves Massard(1923-1996)

Yves Massard was born in 1925 in Saarland, a German region close to the French border, occupied at the time by French troops according to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. Drawn to the theater, Massard was trained by Pierre Fresnay and started a fruitful career on the boards in such prestigious plays as 'Une grande fille toute simple' (by André Roussin), 'Les mains sales' (by Jean-Paul Sartre) or 'Un tramway nommé désir' (by Tennessee Williams). In parallel, he began to appear in a few late forties films, but in bit parts. His roles started to grow in 1952 and for ten years he worked regularly in up to three films a year. But nothing much remains of his work, at least in film history. To be fair, it is not by starring for Maurice Cloche, Jean Gourguet or Walter Kapps that you buy yourself a stairway to eternity. One major role in a Spanish masterpiece Bardem's 'Calle Mayor' earned him a handful of roles in Spain, but once again it was in desperately uninteresting films, two of which were directed by Jesus Franco, the king of the Z's! After 1962, this good actor worked only sporadically , sometimes in tiny parts in A films (his scenes were even deleted in the Bronson vehicle 'Le passager de la pluie'), at others in more fleshed-out roles but in bombs by Max Pécas or the like. A sad ending for a thespian who deserved better.