André Maranne

Beleaguered-looking Anglo-French character actor, born André Gaston Maillol in Toulouse. Active in Britain and billed as André Maranne from 1956, he provided a cultivated presence as stereotypical French gendarmes, inspecteurs, commissaires, customs officers, waiters or maitre d's. Perhaps his most popular role was that of Herbert Lom's bespectacled offsider, Sergeant François Chevalier, in six of the earlier Pink Panther movies. He also appeared in an episode of Fawlty Towers (1975) as a culinary aide to Basil with a penchant for duck. While TV appearances were undoubtedly his forte, André also on occasion graced the big screen. Notable among those performances are a deft comic turn in Darling Lili (1970) (alongside the equally hilarious Jacques Marin) and as Admiral Pierre-Charles de Villeneuve, the ill-fated commander of the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in The Nelson Affair (1973). For BBC radio, André worked as presenter of Bonjour Francoise (1968), a French language course for beginners. He also acted in La Chasse au Trésor (1968), a BBC drama series for young children, designed to teach the basics of French. It was set in France and featured an all-French cast. André Maranne left acting in 1991. He purportedly retired to Brighton in 2017 and passed away in April 2021 at the respectable age of 94.