Actress Geneviève Grad died on Friday at the age of 80 following cancer. She was known to the general public for having played the role of Nicole in the series “Gendarme” and had a love affair with Igor Bogdanoff, becoming the mother of his first child.
Even before being a face, Geneviève Grad was a voice, that of the famous “Douliou douliou Saint-Tropez” (and not “Do you do you St-Tropez”, as too many of us believe), a cult song from the film “The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez”. The actress played Nicole Cruchot, the mischievous daughter of the chief quartermaster, played by Louis de Funès, in the “Gendarmes” series.
The actress died on the night of November 7 to 8 following cancer, in Blois (Loir-et-Cher). She was 80 years old and had retired from cinema since the 1970s in order to work in the world of television production, notably for the show “Temps X” by the Bogdanoff brothers.
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Brothers that she knew well from having been the companion of Igor Bogdanoff, whom she had met during a vacation in Gers, the department where the famous twins come from. In 1976, the couple welcomed a son, Dimitri, Geneviève's only child, who then married the architect Jean Guillaume in the 90s. This Saturday, November 9, no child of the Bogdanoff siblings had publicly reacted to the death of the actress.
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Geneviève Grad surrounded by Igor and Gichka Bogdanoff in 1983.
© Gérard Letellier via Bestimage
A career between opera, stars and antiques
Geneviève Grad's career did not begin in front of the cameras but on the prestigious stages of the Paris Opera, where the future actress began as a little rat, before leaving the ranks of the ballet as a teenager. Her first major role in the cinema then arrived in 1961 with “Captain Fracasse” where the young girl at the time was able to opposite Jean Marais.
After leaving the cinema and the audiovisual world, she worked for many years as an antique dealer in Vendôme (Loir-et-Cher). According to her husband, however, she continued to receive requests for dedications from all over the world, thus saluting the first accomplice of Quartermaster Cruchot.
