Jacques Duby

Who was Jacques Duby?

Jacques Duby (7 May 1922 – 15 February 2012) was a French stage, film and television actor. He was born in Toulouse in 1922. As a boy, his main handicap was shyness and after experiencing serious difficulties at oral exams, his father, a physician (and dramatic critic - noblesse oblige) advised him to take elocution lessons. A nice move indeed as not only did that help him to solve his problems (he finally managed to graduate from high school) but it made Jacques discover his vocation (treading the boards) too. Following a period of high class training (Conservatoire de Toulouse, Centre du Spectacle and Conservatoire de Paris), Jacques Duby started a long career spanning five decades, primarily devoted to the theater but also to television (over forty roles in films, series or filmed plays) and, to a lesser extent, to the big screen. His stage roles includes plays by Marcel Aymé ("Clérambard"), Marcel Achard ("L'Idiote"), Jacques Audiberti ("La logeuse"), Christine Arnothy ("La Peau de Singe") or Félicien Marceau ("L'Oeuf", "Les Oiseaux de Lune"). Not forgetting his home town, he founded his own company "Le Grenier de Toulouse" as early as 1945. Not very tall, looking youthful (even now that he is over eighty), he developed the type of the naive, fragile, moon-faced dreamer. But wary of the dangers of typecasting, he varied his roles, never shying away from playing shabby,mean or despicable creatures ranging from the pathetic cuckolded husband in Marcel Carné's 1953 "Thérèse Raquin" to the homosexual artist in Duvivier's "Boulevard" (1960) to the ultimate monster (Joseph Goebbels in Lazare Iglesis's 1972 TV film "Le Bunker"). Ever a workaholic, Jaques Duby has devoted the bulk of his lifetime to his passion, acting, shooting movie or TV films in the daytime before running the theater where he would play at night. The only regret film fans can feel about him is that Jacques Duby privileged theater and TV over the cinema. For after a promising decade of fine roles in the fifties before the cameras of Carné, Cayatte, Decoin and Duvivier, his appearances became scarce, limited to (sometimes insignificant)supporting roles in uninteresting works. He could have been one of the major figures of French cinema without giving up theater for all that. But, to paraphrase "Some like it hot", nobody is perfect!