The French Thomas Mitchell: Marcel Dalio
Well, I'm FINALLY writing that post I promised positively centuries ago! Sheesh! Anyway, this 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!).
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 wild 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?!
(In fact, I think I'm gonna need to ask to borrow Song Without End from Kate....)
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!?
-Millie!
Just guess who happened to be Mrs. Dalio!
-Meg
originally published on ClassicForever on May 16, 2010