The real reason why Michèle Morgan had rejected her granddaughter Sarah Marshall

On December 20, 96-year-old Michèle Morgan died. Her elegance hid wounds that explain why she was a tough, intransigent grandmother with her granddaughter Sarah Marshall.

It was Papa’s death that brought Mimi and me together. “” Mimi “is Michèle Morgan, and one that speaks is called Sarah Marshall . We are in 2009, and the actress’s granddaughter has just come out of hell. For two years, Sarah had slipped, sinking. It was enough of a meeting, that of Alexander Anthony, son of singer star sixties Richard Anthony , a dark passion that had tripped into drugs, wandering, violence, to the point that Zoltan, small little one born of this sulfur love, had been placed by social services . Michèle Morgan had, it seems, taken the drift of this granddaughter who resembled him so much, with his eyes horizon in almond, like an insult to his modesty. She had closed the door. But what, at first, could pass for cold, hid something else. This false step of the young girl had resurrected an old wound in the eldest. Of those that never close. Michèle Morgan was not only that great bourgeois, that elegant French woman whom America envied us. Free, audacious, she too had taken many ways of crossing and loved passionately, loved badly, losing the guard of her only son …
Eldest of four children, raised in Dieppe where his father ran a grocery, his first fugue, Michèle Morgan, whose real name is Simone Roussel, makes fourteen. She embarks Paul, his youngest of three years, direction the capital, where his grandparents live. The telegram she sends on her arrival does not calm the paternal anger. But no question of compromising with his dreams: a friend of his father, amateur astrologer, predicted to him, child, a world career, and it falls well, because little Simone is projected in CinemaScope. And having fun, since she’s a kid, to take poses at the Garbo in front of her mirror. If its legendary beauty, of course, immediately attracted the film, c ‘is his temperament, at once passionate and incredibly modern, that makes the difference.
Having played opposite Raimu ( Gribouille, 1937) and Gabin, it crossed the Atlantic and is renamed Morgan (name of a US bank). In France, it is war. She tries a Hollywood career. And find love. His name is William Marshall, known as Bill, play-boy and Errol Flynn’s mate. She married in 1942 and with it will be his only child, Mike, born in 1944 . But another war is played out in his couple, a fight where all the blows are allowed, even the vilest. Fell in love with a young actor Henri Vidal, met in Italy on the set of Fabiola, a finding of adultery made him lose custody of her only son. Divorced. Remarriage. Michèle Morgan feels amputated from one end of herself and must however find the strength to keep afloat her second husband, addicted to cocaine. Of course, cinema, it connects successfully, the proud, in 1953, with Gérard Philippe, or the maneuvers, in 1955, of course, in life, there she saw the painting as a vocation, a railing ( ” Today, I consider myself a painter who makes films ,” she says at the end of his life), but the blue eyes hides thunderstorms. In 1959 she appeared in four films. The same year, in December, the heart of her second husband does not resist the sixth cure of detoxification. ” He died at forty years of an overdose, he fled from the clinic. That evening, he joined junkies friends and returned to die a few hours later , “she said.
Michèle Morgan, who subsequently live a great love story with Gérard Oury , has this elegance of never having complaint. Just as she admits to always being made up and dressed, as a politeness she owes not only to others but also to herself. Worthy. Right. Demanding. And that’s probably why she does not forgive her granddaughter Sarah, when she does not respond to the thousand words she sends him as so many SOS. No, Michèle Morgan does not have a heart of stone. No, she is not insensitive. It’s quite the opposite. It hurts her. Too much. She does not know how to handle this emotion that overflows her suddenly, so she stiffens even more, her dignity is her crutch. From afar, through the sisters and brothers of Sarah, she knows the slightest gesture of her granddaughter. She learns in particular that at the end of December 2003, at the end of force, the latter presents herself to the Hotel-Dieu in Paris, and asks to be hospitalized. Resting for three weeks, she begins to recover slowly. The balance is still very fragile, but Sarah clings. From a distance, her grandmother prays for her to have inherited her strength.
In 2005, fate strikes again. Mike Marshall, only child of Michèle Morgan, died of cancer at the Caen hospital . In an interview with the magazine Paris Match , four years later, Sarah Marshall says, ” My life with Alexander had remote us, At the funeral of my father, I did not dare take her in my arms … Mimi came to me tell me that all was forgiven . ” The girl, already a model, then set to make his stage debut. ” I’m so happy to see Sarah in shape and proud to know that she will play at the theater, I was waiting for this moment for a long time , ‘says Michèle Morgan. Yes, she was afraid for her when she was under the “evil” influence of Alexander Anthony, from whom she has since divorced. ” When she has made” big mistakes “adds Michèle Morgan, I decided not to see and not to speak to him. I thought it would be an electric shock. It was terrible for me to see the magnificent young girl she had been, brilliant student, healthy, athletic, destroy her with drugs. And here, for the first time – and only once – this great discreet has returned to the still so painful episode of his life. She speaks of Henri Vidal, this handsome man, whom she adored for eight years, and who ended up dying of an overdose. ” The ravages of addiction, I know ,” she said. And the confidence still seems painful. But Michele Morgan continues: ” Sarah has understood and I know she will never fall on the wrong person. ”
Michele was right. Sarah never slipped again.