Cecile Aubry was born in Paris in 1928. She achieved cinema fame with the film “Manon” in 1949. She starred opposite Tyrone Power in “The Black Rose”. She retired from acting early and became a very successful children’s writer. She died in 2010.
Her “Guardian” obituary by Ronald Bergan:
In 1950, in a blaze of typical Hollywood publicity, Cécile Aubry, who has died of lung cancer aged 81, was signed up by 20th Century-Fox to co-star with Tyrone Power and Orson Welles in Henry Hathaway’s The Black Rose. It was to be Aubry’s only American film, placing her among several French actresses who had short-lived Hollywood careers after the liberation of France in 1944. The petite, blue-eyed blonde with a seductive pout had appeared previously in only one film, playing the title role in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Manon (1949), which won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival. In this dark updating (to post-second world war Paris) of the Abbé Prévost’s 18th-century novel Manon Lescaut, the 20-year-old Aubry made an immediate and vivid impression. She managed to bring out the duality of the character – both femme fatale and femme enfant – making her a precursor to the sex-kitten Brigitte Bardot
Born Anne-José Madeleine Henriette Bénard into a wealthy family in Paris, she had an English governess and a personal dance teacher. In her late teens, she joined the celebrated acting school run by René Simon, where she was spotted by Clouzot. “To achieve what he wanted, Clouzot pushed the actors to the limit, especially the women,” Aubry said. “But he also declared that he needed to be in love with the leading women he directed. The shoot was very long and very difficult, seven months. Clouzot sacrificed everything and everyone to his creation.” Hathaway also had a reputation as a bully, but in The Black Rose he failed to get good performances from Power, as a 13th-century Saxon nobleman seeking his fortune in the far east, or from Welles, hamming it up hugely as a Mongol warlord, or from Aubry as a half-English, half-Arab captive (with a French accent!) whom Power rescues from Welles. According to the New York Herald Tribune of the day: “The heroine is portrayed by Cécile Aubry with a studied gamin intensity. She bedevils the handsome Englishman with arch gestures when he is in the greatest peril. In a nonsensical role, she pouts prettily and puts on a variety of oriental costumes.” This, more or less, sums up the reaction to Aubry’s irritating performance, and her Fox contract was not renewed.
During the shooting of The Black Rose in Morocco, she met Si Brahim El Glaoui, the oldest son of the pasha of Marrakech. They were married in secret because she thought that a marriage would harm her Hollywood career. On her return to France, Aubry starred in French and German versions of Bluebeard (1951), both directed by Christian-Jaque, with Pierre Brasseur and Hans Albers in the title role respectively. Aubry played Bluebeard’s seventh wife as a sexy teenager, even performing a silhouetted striptease that left little to the imagination. She appeared in a few forgotten movies in Italy and Spain, then retired from acting and lived in Morocco with her husband. After her divorce, she settled in France, where she became a director and writer of children’s television series.
The most notable of these was the hugely successful Belle et Sébastien. Adapted by Aubry from her own novel, it ran for 13 episodes in 1965, with two sequels broadcast in 1968 and 1970. The adventures of a young boy, Sébastien (played by her son, Mehdi El Glaoui), and his large white dog, Belle, in a small village in the Pyrenees, the series continues to be shown on television internationally to each new generation. A dubbed version was broadcast by the BBC from 1967 to 1968. Aubry is survived by Mehdi, who continued as an actor into adulthood.
• Cécile Aubry (Anne-José Madeleine Henriette Bénard), actor, writer and director, born 3 August 1928; died 19 July 2010
Cécile Aubry (1928–2010) remains a singular figure in French cultural history: a “sex kitten” starlet who became the architect of some of the most wholesome and enduring children’s literature of the 20th century.Her career is a rare example of a total, successful professional pivot—from the dark, postwar cynicism of Henri-Georges Clouzot to the snow-capped innocence of the French Alps.
I. Career Overview: The Two Acts
1. Act I: The “Femme-Enfant” of Cinema (1949–1959)
Aubry’s rise was explosive. Discovered by director Henri-Georges Clouzot (the “French Hitchcock”), she became an international sensation at 20.
The Breakout: In Manon (1949), a gritty, modern update of Manon Lescaut, she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
The Hollywood Pivot: Signed by 20th Century Fox, she starred in the Technicolor epic The Black Rose(1950) alongside Tyrone Power and Orson Welles.
The Retirement: After a few more European films (notably Bluebeard), she retired from acting in 1959 following her marriage to a Moroccan prince, Si Brahim El Glaoui. She later remarked that she only ever enjoyed acting for the travel opportunities.
2. Act II: The Architect of Childhood (1960s–2010)
Returning to France after her divorce, Aubry reinvented herself as a novelist, screenwriter, and director.
The Poly Series: She began with the adventures of Poly, a Shetland pony.
The Masterpiece: In 1965, she published Belle et Sébastien, the story of a boy and a Great Pyrenees dog in the Alps. She adapted it into a massive TV hit, casting her own son, Mehdi El Glaoui, as the lead.
The Legacy: The series became a global phenomenon (famously dubbed by the BBC), spawning sequels, an anime in the 80s, and a major film franchise in the 2010s.
II. Detailed Critical Analysis
1. The Precursor to Bardot
Critically, Aubry is analyzed as the stylistic bridge between the “Classical” French actress and the “New Wave” sex kitten.
The Manon Archetype: In Manon, she pioneered the “Femme-Enfant” (woman-child) persona. She possessed a seductive pout and a petite, blonde fragility that felt dangerous because it was wrapped in innocence.
The Clouzot Influence: Critics note that Clouzot used her as a symbol of postwar moral decay—a girl-woman who is both victim and predator. This duality was a direct precursor to Brigitte Bardot’s persona in And God Created Woman.
2. The Visual Storyteller
When Aubry transitioned to writing and directing for children, her “cinematic eye” remained her greatest asset.
Landscape as Character: In both her books and the Belle and Sebastian TV series, the French Alps are not just a setting; they are a character. Analysts point out that she utilized her knowledge of “Grand Cinema” (wide shots, lighting, and pacing) to elevate children’s television above the standard low-budget fare of the 1960s.
The Theme of Outsiderhood: Her writing often centers on “the orphan” and “the stray.” Critics suggest this was a reflection of her own life—a Parisian starlet who felt like an outsider in the Moroccan royal court, eventually finding her “home” in the isolation of the mountains.
3. The Maternal Director
A unique critical aspect of Aubry’s work is her direction of her son, Mehdi.
The “Authentic” Gaze: By directing her own child, Aubry captured a level of intimacy and naturalism rarely seen in 1960s child acting. She utilized Mehdi’s genuine curiosity and his real bond with the dogs to create a documentary-like feel within a fictional narrative.
Iconic Work Comparison
| Work | Role / Function | Year | Critical Legacy |
| Manon | Actress (Manon) | 1949 | Defined the “dark starlet” of postwar Europe. |
| The Black Rose | Actress (Maryam) | 1950 | Her brief, Technicolor peak as a Hollywood “Import.” |
| Belle et Sébastien | Writer / Director | 1965 | Created the definitive “boy and his dog” mythos. |
| Poly | Writer / Creator | 1961 | Revolutionized French children’s television. |
Cécile Aubry was a rare talent who mastered two entirely different languages of art. She began as a visual object of the “male gaze” in cinema and ended as a sovereign creator of literary worlds. Her legacy is found in the silence of the Pyrenees and the enduring friendship of a boy and a white dog—a story of “freedom and mountain air” that she chose over the glamour of the studio lights