Saturnin Fabre, born April 4, 1884 in Sens (Yonne) and died October 24, 1961 in Montgeron (Essonne), is a French actor.

His paternal family was from the south of France (Var and Bouches-du-Rhône). He lived in Deuil-la-Barre. He won a first prize at the Conservatoire and played dramas, boulevard comedies and operettas as well, setting himself up as the "thundering", out of phase phrasing, of French cinema. He approaches the silent cinema since 1911 with Albert Capellani to whom we owe since 1909 the first French feature film: L'Assommoir. In 1929, he switched to talking with The Road is Beautiful Robert Florey. Known for his strong personality, he is one of the most singular supporting roles of pre-war and post-war French cinema, in the tradition of Jean Tissier and Julien Carette. He occupies the screen with such a presence that he often forget the many turnips in which he participates. He is particularly remembered for his tremendous choppy voice and perfect diction.

In the film Marie-Martine Albert Valentin, he addresses to Bernard Blier, who plays his nephew, his most famous replica: "Hold your candle right! ". It is said that at the third resumption of the repartee, it is the public who answered. He has played in almost 79 talking films, mostly comedies, under the direction of 57 different directors (mostly prestigious). In 1948, he signs, from the anagram Ninrutas Erbaf, perfectly wacky memories, under the title Scottish Shower.

He was also a very good clarinetist, and the author of several songs and sketches he performed on stage early in his career.

For the actress Danièle Delorme, "Saturnin Fabre was a hallucinated comedian". Still according to her, "It was a baroque actor, certainly, there was a grain of madness in him. But he was furiously intelligent, with great lucidity ... He embodied excess. " Saturnin Fabre died in 1961 in his property in Montgeron, overwhelmed by pulmonary edema. He is buried in the Carrières-sous-Poissy cemetery in the Yvelines. He never consoled himself for the death of his wife, Suzanne Marie Benoist, in 1957 with whom he was married on November 26, 1925 in Paris XVIII.

The Cannes Film Festival paid him a late tribute, and posthumously, in 1962.

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