Marcel Pagnol (February 28, 1895 – April 18, 1974) was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. In 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie Française.
Born February 28, 1895 in Aubagne, Bouches-du-Rhône département, in southern France near Marseille, the son of school teacher Joseph Pagnol and seamstress Augustine Lansot, Marcel Pagnol grew up in Marseille with his younger brothers Paul, René, and younger sister Germaine.
He learned how to read at a young age to his father's amazement but his mother did not allow him to touch a book until he was six "for fear of cerebral explosion". During this time he spent many summers with his family in a house in the sleepy Provençal village of La Treille in the hills near Aubagne.
At the age of 15, he wrote his first play and, after winning a prestigious scholarship to the Lycee, eventually followed in his father's footsteps to become an English teacher for secondary schools. However, he stopped teaching when he went to Paris, instead devoting his life to playwriting. His first adult play, Merchants of Glory, was produced in 1924. In 1929 he wrote Marius for the Paris Theatre. Marius would also be later turned into a film in 1931, Pagnol's first film.
In 1916, he married Simone Coline in Marseille, to the displeasure of his father Joseph. In 1945 he married Jacqueline Bouvier.
Marcel Pagnol was elected a member of the Académie Française in 1946. He was the first film maker ever to receive this honour.
He died in Paris on April 18, 1974. He is buried in the municipal cemetery at La Treille, along with his mother and father, brothers, and wife. His boyhood friend, Baptistin Magnan (Lili des Bellons in the autographies), died at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1917 and is buried nearby.
Pagnol adapted his own film Manon des Sources, which starred his wife in the titular role, into two novels collectively titled L'Eau des collines. Those were in turn adapted back to international acclaim in the 1980s by film-maker Claude Berri as Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Pagnol's affectionate reminiscences of childhood, La Gloire de mon père and Le château de ma mère were also filmed successfully by Yves Robert in 1990.
