Before being a key face of the PAF, Patrice Laffont played comedy on the big screen. In the early 1960s, the actor starred in Le Soupirant by Pierre Etaix and Les Vierges by Jean-Pierre Mocky. It was in 1964, at the age of 24, that his acting career gained momentum by playing in Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez, with Louis de Funès and Geneviève Grad.
“I was a student actor at Cours Furet in Paris, when the director Jean Girault came to complete his casting”, confided the interpreter of Jean-Luc in Le Parisien in 2018. “He asked me to pass tests and offered me the role of the lover of Nicole (Geneviève Grad), the daughter of Cruchot (Louis de Funès). I had only shot in two films and for me, it was madness!”.
In this first part of the Saint-Tropez saga, Patrice Laffont did not however touch a huge jackpot unlike the stars of the film. “I had been warned that the stamp would not be huge… And in fact, I only received 2,000 francs in all”, or around 2,731 euros according to our colleagues, citing the converter from Insee. Not enough to disappoint the actor who prefers to keep in memory the memories of this shooting of a month in Saint-Tropez and fifteen days in a studio in Nice.
With the band of actors playing playboys, Patrice Laffont admits that they disobeyed the production manager, notably forbidding them to go to the beach. “He explained to us that, on film, tanned skin turned dirty gray… But, of course, the first thing we did was run for a swim. From the third day, we were hyper-tanned. got yelled at and the make-up artists had to perform feats to find normal heads, “he recalls to the newspaper, also admitting the breakage of two cars loaned by the production to Ramatuelle.
Shooting with Jean Girault was an opportunity for the young actor to meet the sacred monster of cinema Louis de Funès. But, the interpreter of the chief sergeant Cruchot was not kind to him. “He did not like the young actors who played in Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez at all”, before adding further. “He didn’t say hello to us and kept blaming us for not being disciplined enough. While Michel Galabru was adorable and gave us advice,” he admits about Chief Warrant Officer Gerber.
His role as a jet-setter also allowed him to play with the star Geneviève Grad, whom he was madly crazy about. “I found her lovely… But she didn’t look at me and she preferred the first assistant director, Marc Simenon, the son of Georges Simenon. Later, moreover, she married my friend Igor Bogdanoff…”, he explains to the newspaper. Boost of the scenario, he married the daughter of Ludovic Cruchot in the film and had twins (on the right of the photo below).