French singer and actress born in Suresnes on April 23, 1931 and died in Castels et Bézenac in the Dordogne on October 5, 2020, Béatrice Arnac was the daughter of comic strip artist Marcel Arnac. She made a name for herself in 1955 with film roles in Augusto Genina's Frou-frou, Max Ophüls' Lola Montès, André Haguet's Milord l'Arsouille and Claude Autant-Lara's La Traversée de Paris, then in theater, before going on to sing. Affiliated with the Left Bank movement, in 1962 she won the Grand Prix du disque de l'Académie Charles-Cros after the publication of her first EP L'Amour for the Orphée label, followed by three others and an album written by her husband, actor and writer Alain Saury. Interpreting other songs or poems by Pierre Seghers, Pierre Mac Orlan, Marcel Aymé, Boris Vian or Arthur Rimbaud, the singer signed with the Vogue label and recorded an album live at Le Trois Baudets in 1966, two more in the studio in 1966 and 1968 and the EP Les Temps des Amazones, with texts by authors such as Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Paul Eluard, Félix Leclerc or the tandem Jacques Datin and Maurice Vidalin. After roles in José Giovanni's Dernier domicile connu (1970) and Jean-Claude Roy's Les Petites filles modèles (1971), Béatrice Arnac returned to song with a fourth album, Brute, for Galloway Records (1973), followed by En Liberté en public at Le Fanal (1978) and the self-produced Animal (1979). In 2001, she performed songs based on texts by her grandfather, the pamphleteer Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse dit Zo d'Axa (1864-1930).
