Encyclopedia of French Film Directors

Ingram; 1923 A Woman of Paris, also assistant, Charles
Chaplin; 1924 The Arab, Rex Ingram; Human Desires,
Burton George), he also co-wrote several screenplays
(1928 The Legion of the Condemned, William A.
Wellman; Three Sinners, Rowland V. Lee; The Magnifi -
cent Flirt, Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast). A fi lm director
since 1929, he gave up cinema in 1945 and obtained
the post of manager in the French automobile industry
for the Simca company. He was the son-in-law of
opera singer Feodor Chaliapin (1873–1938).
Filmography
1929 The Letter (co-director with Louis Mercanton;
also dialogist, editor; USA)
Jealousy (US)
1930 Mon Gosse de Père (French-language version
of Jean de Limur’s The Parisian; also screenwriter,
adapter, dialogist; USA)
Monsieur le Duc
1931 Circulez!
1933 Paprika
Mariage à Responsabilité limitée
1934 L’Amour en Cage (French-language version of
Carl Lamac’s Die vertauschte Braut; Germany)
Le Voyage imprévu / USA: Slipper Episode (also
English-language version: Runaway Ladies)
L’Auberge du petit Dragon
1935 La Petite Sauvage / Cupidon au Pensionnat
La Rosière des Halles
Le Coup de Trois
1936 La Garçonne
La Brigade en Jupons
La Bête aux Sept Manteaux
1938 La Cité des Lumières (also co-dialogist)
Petite Peste
1939 Le Père Lebonnard / Papà Lebonnard (France /
Italy)
1942 L’Homme qui joue avec le Feu
1943 Apparizione (Italy)
1945 La Grande Meute
LINDER, MAUD (Maud Leuvielle / June 27, 1924,
Paris, France–)
The daughter of actor and director Max Linder
(1883–1925), she briefl y worked as an assistant director
(1954 Faites-moi Confi ance, Gilles Grangier; 1956
Papa, Maman, ma Femme et moi / UK: Papa, Mama, My
Wife and Me / USA: Papa, Mama, My Woman and Me
(Jean-Paul Le Chanois) but dedicated most of her life
to the memory of her father. She directed two docu-
LINDER, MAX • 643
mentaries on him and wrote several books (1998 Les
Dieux du Cinéma muet: Max Linder, Editions Atlas; 2003
Max Linder était mon Père, Editions Flammarion).
Filmography
1963 En Compagnie de Max Linder / US LD: Pop
Goes the Cork (compilation documentary; also
producer)
1983 L’Homme au Chapeau de Soie / UK and USA:
The Man in the Silk Hat (documentary; also
screenwriter, producer, voice)
LINDER, MAX (Gabriel Leuvielle / December 16,
1883, Saint-Loubes, Gironde, France–November 1,
1925, Paris, France)
The son of wine growers, he dropped out of high
school to attend acting courses at the Bordeaux
Conservatory and start a theatrical career. After receiving
a fi rst prize for comedy in 1902, he settled in
Paris, where he frequented the “Boulevard du Crime”
and the “Théâtre des Variétés,” playing small parts in
melodramas. He was hired by Pathé in 1905 and made
some brief fi lm appearances before starring in Louis J.
Gasnier’s Première Sortie / La Première Sortie d’un Collégien.
A fi lm director since 1908, he created the comedy
character of Max, who brought him international
fame. Mobilized in 1914 as a driver in World War I, he
spent a whole night in icy water and contracted pneumonia.
Discharged and convalescent in Switzerland in
1916, he received a visit from George K. Spoor, who
was looking for a new comic star to replace Charlie
Chaplin (the British director and actor had left the Essanay
Company to join Mutual). He signed a one-year
contract—$5,000 per day against twelve movies—and
moved to Chicago, where he shot his fi rst American
picture (Max Comes Across) during the winter of 1917.
One fi lm later, his poor health and some diffi culties
he had adapting himself to American methods of
production interrupted his Hollywood career. He
had to return to Europe and spent a year in a Swiss
clinic recovering from double pneumonia. In 1919, he
returned to the screen in his fi rst feature-length fi lm,
Raymond Bernard’s Le Petit Café. The three pictures he
produced and shot in Hollywood in the early 1920s
(1921 Be My Wife; Seven Years Bad Luck; 1922 The Three
Must-Get-Theres) are regarded as his masterpieces and
infl uenced the Marx Brothers and Douglas Fairbanks.
In 1923, his friend Abel Gance directed him in Au Secours!
(he was also the author of the original idea). The
same year, he married a seventeen-year-old woman,