La Chute d'un Géant!

On August 7th 2010, France lost one of its biggest and most loved stars from film, television and theatre in the form of Bruno Cremer. Bruno Cremer, best known for playing Georges Simenon‘s Inspector Jules Maigret in the long-running French television series Maigret from 1991 untill 2005, died in a Paris hospital. Cremer, a heavy chain smoker during his life, had been fighting cancer of the tongue for a number of years. He was 80. Cremer’s acting career spanned half a century. He began appearing in bit parts in films in the ’50s; following a slow ascent, he landed several major roles in French productions of the ’70s. Most notable among those was Claude Sautet‘s Academy Award-nominated drama "A Simple Story" from 1979, co-starring Romy Schneider. Cremer kept himself busy in the ’80s, but from the early ’90s on his film/tv work was almost exclusively restricted to playing the pipe-smoking Maigret. To fans of Marisa Mell, Bruno Cremer will always be fondly remembered as the strong headed military officer Jean Reichau, who tried to steel 500 millions French Francs with the help of a model Yo, played by Marisa Mell in the movie "Objectif: 500.000 millions" from 1966 directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer. After hearing the news of the death of his friend Pierre Schoendoerffer told the press that "Les grands comédians ne meurent jamais".