Queer Places:
La Coupole, 102 Boulevard du Montparnasse, 75014 Paris
16 Quai d'Orléans, 75004 Paris
Christian Marquand (15 March 1927 – 22 November 2000) was a French actor, screenwriter and film director. Born in Marseille, he was
the son of a Spanish father and an Arab mother, and his sister was film director Nadine Trintignant.[1] He was often cast as a heartthrob in French films of the 1950s.
Marquand was married to French actress Tina Aumont from 1963 to 1966, marrying her when she was 17 and he was 36. In the 1970s, he lived with French actress Dominique Sanda, 21 years his junior, with whom he had a son, Yann. He was a close friend of
Marlon Brando, who named his son Christian after him, as did French director
Roger Vadim.[2] Marlon Brando and Christian Marquand fell in love in the words of Roger Vadim: It was an unconventional love affair that would span the decades, and fidelity to each other had nothing to do with it. I don't think I ever saw a more compatible couple. While Brigitte Bardot and I would be indulged in a terrible fight, Christian and Marlon would be in my bedroom making mad, passionate love, just like I did with Brigitte when she wasn't mad at me.
Marquand's first film appearance was in 1946, as a footman in
Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête). In 1949 Roger Vadim was living in Paris with Christian Marquand. The two were having lunch on the terrace of La Coupole, a former hangout of
Hemingway and Henry Miller in Montparnasse. They noticed a startlingly handsome man seated alone at a nearby table, where he had removed his shoe to massage an aching foot. At the time Marlon Brando was having an affair with one of the waiters,
Jacques Viale. The normally heterosexual Marquand soon became besotted with Brando. Marlon introduced his new friends to his waiter friend, Jacques Viale, who joined their circle. Viale later said that his time with Brando and his friends was the greatest moment of his life. “It was all downhill after Brando.”
When Roger and Christian moved to larger quarters in Paris, they took in another actor,
Daniel Gélin, to help with expenses. Even though Brando and Christian were immersed in a deeply sexual and emotional relationship, Brando set his sights on Gélin, as well. He was an easy, willing target. Ironically, Gélin later had an illegitimate daughter, actress
Maria Schneider, best known for playing Marlon Brando’s young lover in Last Tango in Paris (1972). Schneider met her father only three times, so took her mother’s last name. Two years after Last Tango in Paris was released, she declared her bisexuality; Schneider died of cancer in Paris earlier this year. Late in life Brando said, “I have truly loved only three men in my life: Wally Cox, Christian Marquand and Daniel Gélin. All others were merely ships passing in the night.”
After a few more small parts, Marquand was prominently featured in Christian-Jaque's Lucrèce Borgia (1953) as one of Lucrezia's lovers, and as an Austrian soldier in
Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954).
In 1956, he was directed by Roger Vadim in And God Created Woman (Et Dieu... créa la femme) opposite Brigitte Bardot. That film's success led to starring roles in the movies No Sun in Venice (1957), Temptation (1959), and The Big Show (1960) and leads opposite actresses Maria Schell, Jean Seberg, and Annie Girardot.
In 1962, Marquand appeared as French Naval Commando leader Philippe Kieffer in Darryl F. Zanuck's World War II movie The Longest Day, which led to further roles in international productions such as Behold a Pale Horse (1964), Lord Jim (1965) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).
He appeared in feature films and television throughout the 1970s, and played a French plantation owner in Francis Ford Coppola's re-edited Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now Redux (1979/2001). His last performance was in a 1987 French TV mini-series. He directed two films, Les Grands Chemins (1963) and the all-star sex farce Candy (1968).
Marquand died near Paris of Alzheimer's disease, aged 73.
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