She will forever remain the daughter of Ludovic Cruchod, the gendarme of Saint-Tropez played in the cinema by Louis de Funès. The actress Geneviève Grad died at the age of 80 on the night of Thursday to Friday, says her husband, Jean Guillaume.
She died at the Blois Polyclinic, “at the end of a courageous fight against cancer”, writes her husband.
It was as a dancer at the Paris Opera that Geneviève Grad made her debut, before launching into comedy. We were able to see her in 1961 opposite Jean Marais in “Captain Fracasse”, then, randomly, in “The vikings attack” (1962) or even “Sandokan, the tiger of Borneo” (1963).
But it was in the role of Nicole Cruchot that she found fame. The actress will play opposite Louis de Funès in the first three films of the saga: “The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez” (1964), “The Gendarme in New York” (1965) and the extraordinary “Gendarme se marie” (1965). 1968).
In the first feature film, we owe him the interpretation of the famous song “Douliou douliou Saint-Tropez”. She does it again in the second episode, with another refrain, “Boys are nice”.
After that, Geneviève Grad's career will not live up to her ambitions. She said goodbye to the profession at the very beginning of the 1980s. She then worked in the television industry, notably as a production assistant on the show “Temps X”, on TF1, where she met Igor Bogdanoff with whom she will fall in love. The couple will have a son.
She had been married for around thirty years to Jean Guillaume.
