The French Thomas Mitchell: Marcel Dalio

Well, I'm FINALLY writing that post I promised positively centuries ago! Sheesh! Anyway, for those of you hoping for a post on Audrey or Sabrina...I pulled a cruel trick on you! ;-D The post is going to be about Marcel Dalio. The little old French-man who made a perfect souffle, when Audrey forgot to even turn the oven on! Haha!



When I used to be on the TCM Message Boards (From early '08-early '09) there was always a joke about Thomas Mitchell being the actor everyone could recognize, but hardly anyone could name. It was brought up so often that it was almost a catchphrase. "Well, he's very Thomas Mitchellian"; "It was such a Thomas Mitchell moment". (Well, actually, *I* was the only one using his name as a catch-phrase, but everyone else was CLOSE to doing that! ;-D).

ANWAY, all this brings me to the fact, that Marcel Dalio is the French Thomas Mitchell. The man was in every stinkin' movie ever made. SERIOUSLY. Yet, I doubt more than a few can recall his name to his face.

My favorite Marcel film is Pillow Talk; it's one of his larger supporting roles in an American film. He plays Doris Day's interior designer boss. When I first saw Pillow Talk a few years ago, I loved it so much that I watched it continually for about six months. Marcel's "That woman has the taste of a water buffalo" is permanently ingrained in my memory. This is also the film where I started my "Marcel Sightings". It's really crazy just how many movies I have seen that also contain Marcel Dalio. Sometimes it's just a blink and you'll miss him bit part, and other times it a more substantial supporting part, but he's ALWAYS amazing!

I took a few screen-shots from the movies I personally own that Marcel happened along in!

Pillow Talk

Casablanca

How to Steal a Million

Sabrina

Gentleman Prefer Blondes

And those are just a FEW of his many film appearances; others include:

Pepe le Moko
La grande illusion
The Constant Nymph
The Desert Song
The Song of Bernedette
Pin-Up Girl
Wilson
To Have and Have Not
On the Riviera
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Lovely to Look At
Lucky Me
Anything Goes
The Sun Also Rises
Can-Can
Song Without End
Donovan's Reef
Lady L
Catch-22

And of course there are a zillion others as well. You can see them all here.

So many "famous" bit-character actors were famous for portraying one type of character in many films. That was a reason why they were in so many films, because they played the same character each time in a different setting. Not so, with Marcel! I think the most fascinating thing about Marcel, is that he was in so many different types of films. Even as a bit-character player...he was NEVER TYPE-CAST! And in each one he was distinctively Marcel-- and distinctively interesting and original. He was also "in the business" for quite a while. He appeared in his first film in 1931 and his last in 1982, stopping only shortly to escape from Hitler.

I love Marcel Dalio so much, that I will actually go out of my way to see a film, just because I know he's going to be in it...even if it's just for three seconds. Is that strange?! ;-D

(In fact, I think I'm gonna need to ask to borrow Song Without End from Kate....haha!)

I guess this is actually a rather dull and uneventful post, but I just REALLY felt the need to post of my love for THE Cool Marcel. And, I wanted to try and see if there were any other Marcelites out there!?

And I PROMISE MORE POSTS COMING CRAZY-CRAZY-CRAZY-CRAZY-SOON! All those series I never post new installments for...will be getting a new installment. And also start getting excited to find out a new favorite actor of mine! It's gonna be a shocker (not really)!

-Millie!

Just guess who happened to be Mrs. Dalio!