Jean Gabin

Jean-Alexis Moncorgé was born in May 1904 and took the stage name Jean Gabin. Between 1937 and 1939, he anchored a run of films — Pépé le Moko, La grande illusion, Le Quai des brumes, La bête humaine, Le jour se lève — that turned him into the archetype of French fatalism on screen. He kept working through the decades, adding Le plaisir in 1952, and collected a Silver Bear and a Volpi Cup along the way. France pinned the Légion d'honneur on him for the weight he carried in its cinema. He died in November 1976.