Claude Dauphin

Biography

In 1930, Claude, who was a stage-struck set designer at the Oden Theater, a repertory house in Paris, learned an ailing actor's part in two hours and took it over without a rehearsal. Tristan Bernard, the famous French playwright and producer took notice of this feat. He engaged Dauphin for the leading role of his next play "La fortune" was was also made into a film the next year. Dauphin's next break came when Charles Boyer left for American movies. As Boyer left for America, Dauphin succeeded in the Henri Bernstein organization, outstanding stage producers in Paris. Before the outbreak of World War II, Dauphin starred in several plays as well as 65 French-made pictures. Dauphin received his elementary education at Ecole Fenelon and high school at Lycee Condorcet. he also graduated from Lycee Louis de Grand in literature and philosophy, all of these schools located in Paris. Between 1940 and 1945, he was a soldier in the French and Allied armies. He was a lieutenant in the French tank service and would shudder later in life at his memories of that kind of grisly warfare. After the fall of France, he organized his own stock company and toured non-occupied cities and small towns. he was also serving in the French underground movement. Threatened with exposure, he escaped by buying a small fishing boat in the south of France and sailing to Gibraltar. After reaching London in 1942, he first served with the British Secret Service and then joined the Free French forces of DeGaulle. Claude quickly learned English, of which he was unfamiliar, and became a liaison officer between the French LeClerc division and the press corps of the American Army and General Patton. Because of this association, he was one of the first to enter Paris on Liberation Day. Dauphin's American film debut was in the movie "Deported", produced primarily in Italy. He later appeared in many stage productions on Broadway including "No Exit" and "Happy Time". He later had a screen test with Warner Bros. and then returned to France. Having almost forgotten about the test, he was summoned to Hollywood for "April in Paris" starring Doris Day and Ray Bolger.