Pauline Carton

Pauline Carton was an actress and singer who distinguished herself in film, theater, music hall and operetta. Born in Biarritz on July 4, 1884, her real name was Pauline Aimée Biarez, she began acting at an early age, appearing in Pierre Wolff's play Le Ruisseau in 1904, a role that gave her her stage name. Known for playing maids, she began her film career in 1907, appearing in numerous supporting roles. She appeared in Marcel L'Herbier's Feu Mathias Pascal (1926), Jean Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poète (1930), then in Sacha Guitry's talkies Bonne chance (1935), Mon père avait raison and Le Roman d'un tricheur (1936), Désiré and Le Mot de Cambronne (1937) and Quadrille (1938), right up to Assassins et voleurs (1957). In addition to a filmography including 250 roles for Abel Gance, Max Ophüls and Henri-Georges Clouzot, Pauline Carton turned to song. She scored a hit in 1934 with the operetta Toi, c'est moi by Moyses Simons and Henri Duvernois, in which she sang "Sous les palétuviers" with René Koval at the Bouffes-Parisiens, a classic of the interwar period. Pauline Carton went on to sing in Reynaldo Hahn's Ciboulette (1955), Oscar Straus's Trois Valses and Louis Varney's Les Mousquetaires au couvent (1963). In 1972, she recorded the first song released under her own name, "J'ai un faible pour les forts". Married to Swiss poet and writer Jean Violette, whom she had met in 1914, until his death in 1964, Pauline Carton made few film appearances in the 1960s, until Fred Annakin's Le Jour le plus long (1962), to devote herself to boulevard theater in the following decade. Aged 89, she was still working when she died in Paris on June 17, 1974.