Gérard Philipe

Gérard Philipe surfaced in 1944 and rode the tail end of poetic realism into the late 1940s, a movement already fading when he arrived. He worked fast: Such a Pretty Little Beach in 1949, Beauty and the Devil in 1950, then Fanfan the Tulip in 1953 opposite some of the era's most magnetic women - Moreau, Morgan, Lollobrigida, Félix. Offscreen he let his communist views ring out, which made him both beloved and watched. Meanwhile he kept a second life onstage, joining Jean Vilar's Théâtre national populaire and tackling the French classical repertoire with enough skill to be called one of the great stage actors of his generation. Montparnasse 19 came in 1958, Les liaisons dangereuses in 1959. He died that November, thirty-six years old, and stayed that way forever in the culture's memory - young, ardent, untouched by middle age.