Person Details

Birthday:

Aliases: Max-Gérard Houry Tannenbaum , Gerard Oury , Жерар Ури

Gender: Male

Place of birth: Paris, France

Homepage:

Movie Involvements: 67

TV Involvements: 5


Most Famous Work

Biography

Gérard Oury (born Max-Gérard Houry Tannenbaum; 29 April 1919 – 20 July 2006) was a French film director, actor and writer. He is best known for a number of comedies he directed and co-wrote between the 1960s and 1980s, most notably The Sucker (1965), Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! (1966), The Brain (1969), The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (1973), and Ace of Aces (1982). Max-Gérard Houry-Tannenbaum was the only son of Serge Tannenbaum, a violinist of Russian-Jewish origin, and French Jewish Marcelle Houry, a journalist and art critic. Tannenbaum was absent from the life of Oury and he was raised in an unobservant house of his mother and maternal grandmother Berthe Goldner. Oury studied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly and then at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art. He became a member of the Comédie-Française before World War II, but fled with all his family (mother, grandmother and unofficial wife, actress Jacqueline Roman) to Switzerland to escape the anti-Jewish persecutions by the Vichy government. When in 1942 his daughter Danièle Thompson was born, his fatherhood was concealed, to avoid her classification as a Jew. After 1945 he returned to the liberated Paris and restarted his career as an actor, performing in the theatre and in supporting roles in the cinema. Oury became a movie director in 1959 (The Itchy Palm) and gained his first success in 1961 with Crime Does Not Pay (Le crime ne paie pas). Pairing André Bourvil and Louis de Funès as a comic duo, he burst into commercial filmmaking with 1965's The Sucker (Le corniaud). The film was entered into the 4th Moscow International Film Festival. The following year, Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! (La Grande Vadrouille) was even more successful, attracting the largest audiences ever in France (17.27 million admissions). This box-office record stood for decades, only surpassed in 1997 by Titanic from James Cameron. Oury shot the 1969 comedy Le Cerveau (The Brain) in English, starring David Niven in the lead role as a criminal mastermind. With actress Jacqueline Roman, he was the father of French writer Danièle Thompson and grandfather of actor/writer Christopher Thompson. He lived together with the French actress Michèle Morgan for the second half of his life. He died aged 87 in Saint-Tropez on 20 July 2006. Source: Article "Gérard Oury" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.

Most Famous Work

Le Grand Échiquier
Average
8

Le Grand Échiquier

(1972) Self - Main Guest
Système 2
Average
0

Système 2

(1975) Self
À bout portant
Average
8

À bout portant

(1968) Self
The Prize
Average
7

The Prize

(1963) Claude Marceau
The Heart of the Matter
Average
7
They Who Dare
Average
6

They Who Dare

(1954) Captain George Two
A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later
Average
6

A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later

(1986) Un spectateur de '40 ans déjà'
The Sword and the Rose
Average
6

The Sword and the Rose

(1953) Dauphin of France

Acting

Year Character Movie/Tv
2023 Lui-même (archives)
2017 Acteur, réalisateur, producteur (Images d'archives)
Self
2002 Self
1998 Self
1987 Self
1986 Un spectateur de '40 ans déjà'
1982 Self
1975 Self
Self
Self
1974 Self
1972 Self
Self - Main Guest
1971 Self
1968 Self
1963 Claude Marceau
1961 The Doctor
1959 Teklel Hafouli
1958 docteur Bosc
Jacques Decrey
Maurice Portal
1957 Marcel Palmer
Récitant (voice)
1956 Julius Pindar
Grégory Black
Self
1955 Gérard Bailly
Villeterre
1954 Enzo Cinti
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte (segment: Napoleon and Josephine)
Inspector Dubois
Captain George Two
1953 Yusef
Dauphin of France
(voice)
Napoleon
1952 Narrator (voice)
1951 Lionel Moreau
Maurice
Un journaliste
1950 Bruno
(uncredited)
1949 Le Dauphin
(uncredited)
Roland Grenier
1947 Le client galant
1942 Philinte
Year Character Movie/Tv

Directing

Writing


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