Great star of the cinema, the actor Fernandel died at the age of 67 in very strange circumstances…
More than 50 years after his death, the actor Fernandel is still as well known to film lovers, and for good reason: he has managed to become, in a few years, a veritable beast at the box office by accumulating more than 200 million viewers thanks to its 150 films. Of The red inn to Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves through the saga of Don CamilloFernandel has definitely marked the cinematographic landscape with his humor and his inimitable smile. Only death claimed it early, when he was only 67 years old, and this in circumstances which, today, remain as unclear as ever. Fernandel, whose real name is Fernand Joseph Désiré Constantin, is death from generalized cancer which, according to the information disclosed on this subject, was not communicated to him before the fateful moment.
The story is as amazing as it is touching. This is before the end of the shooting of the sixth film in the series Don Camillo that the tragedy touched Fernandel. The actor, who distinguished himself in the costume of a priest, indeed had to stop shooting the titled film Don Camillo and the protesters due to excessive pain. After passing examinations, it was soon found that Fernandel suffered from a cyst in his right breast, cyst which was then surgically removed at the Passy clinic. Only after further analysis it was discovered that this cyst was cancerous and that, having had surgery too late, the actor was already suffering from generalized cancer. But the beginning of the 1970s was not marked, for Fernandel, by the news that was to change his life. Indeed, at the request of his family, the actor was not told about the disease that was slowly killing him.
Of the last painful hours
Fearing that the news of cancer would terrify him for the time he had left to live, Fernandel’s wife, Henriette, with whom he had three children, decided not to tell him, without however preventing treatment. In fact, the actor still suffered several radiation sessions which doctors said were supposed to help with healing following his operation. Sessions which unfortunately could not stop the disease which, a few months later, weakened Fernandel again. In July 1970, the actor made an appointment with a pulmonologist, affected by extreme fatigue and worrying weight loss. Always on the directive of the patient’s family, the truth is hidden from him and the doctor therefore announces to him that he is suffering from pleurisy, namely an inflammation of the membranes which surround the lung.
Forced to rest, Fernandel joins his family villa in Provence where he continues, without knowing it, to be eaten away by a generalized cancer. At that time and following the cessation of filming of Don Camillo, rumors about his upcoming death are already rife. The actor therefore decides, in October 1970, to give an interview to deny them, obviously without knowing that the rumors will quickly prove to be true. After leaving the Provençal villa for his Parisian apartment at 16e arrondissement, Fernandel suffers more and more and in particular from a heavy paralysis of his lower limbs. Still determined to hide the truth from her, her family blames it on sciatica. On February 26, however, the actor dies in his room, gone to take a nap from which he will never wake up, and without having known for a single second the real cause of his suffering.