A cult comedy par excellence, the Gendarmes saga experienced some tensions behind the scenes and particularly an irreversible falling out between Louis de Funès and Jean Lefebvre.
Hilarious on screen, Louis de Funès does not have the reputation of having an easy character on the sets. His relationships with Jean Marais (“Fantomas”), Fernandel (“Le mouton à cinq pattes”) or even Jean Gabin (“Le tatoué”) have paid the price. The French actor also fell out with another comedy ace with a strong temperament: Jean Lefebvre, with whom he shared the bill in the “Gendarmes de Saint-Tropez” saga.
During the filming of the cult comedy franchise, the relationship between the two actors could be explosive. But it was especially during the preview of the film “Le Gendarme se marie” in October 1968 that the tension reached its peak. Lefebvre discovered with stupor that some scenes he had played had been cut in the editing. He would then accuse Louis de Funès, decision-maker on many aspects of the film, of having demanded his cuts in the final cut, and would even complain about it in the media.
The director of Les Gendarmes will be forced to intervene. Jean Girault will then accuse the actor who plays Lucien Fougasse of being “mediocre” in the daily newspaper “Paris-Jour”. He will repeatedly overwhelm his actor, accusing him of arriving late, sometimes drunk, forgetting his lines or performing catastrophically in front of the camera.
A frosty reunion
Jean Lefebvre would try to re-establish his truth in his autobiography (“Why does it only happen to me?”, Michel Lafon) in 1984 and would recount his icy reunion with Louis de Funès “years later, at a cocktail party”. “He was there, with his wife, and he was watching me from afar, without saying anything”, the actor recounted. “I went up to him and forced him to greet me. His wife refused to shake my hand. So I forced the explanation, because it seemed to me that this problem had to be resolved once and for all.”
“Listen, Louis, when I attacked you publicly, I was mad with anger. I was starting to have a little name and by arbitrarily deleting my scenes, you did me harm. It seems to me that the least you could have done would have been to warn me, to have the courage to warn me,” the actor is said to have said to the monster of comic cinema. According to Jean Lefebvre, De Funès then remained silent for a few moments, then stood up and said: “You’re right.”