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Gina Manès
(COMÉDIENNES)
18 Rue de Périgueux, 75019 Paris, France

Gina Manès began her career in Parisian variety shows before making her film debut in The Man Without a Face (1919), directed by Louis Feuillade. She then worked under the directors René Navarre and Jean Epstein, and rose to become one of the leading French screen stars over the course of the 1920s. She reached the peak of her popularity in 1927 as Joséphine de Beauharnais in Abel Gance’s film Napoleon. At the height of her fame, Gina Manès left France with her husband, actor Georges Charlia, to run a canteen and later an acting school in Morocco. She developed a tiger training act which she presented at the Cirque d’Hiver and Medrano Circus, but in 1942 one of the wild animals seriously injured her. Manès continued to act in films, though in lesser roles. Her last screen appearance was the heist movie Pas de panique in 1966. She died in 1989 and donated her body to science.