Marthe Villalonga

Vivacious, good-natured and friendly, but also fussy, invading and possessive, all these terms can apply to most of the characters played by Marthe Villalonga, one of the busiest comic actresses in France for five decades. Either the quintessential Jewish mother hen (poor Guy Bedos in "Un éléphant ça trompe énormément" and its sequel "Nous irons tous au paradis"!)or the typical voluble caretaker or else the both pampering and annoying wife of Roger Hanin eternally nagging her macho husband, who on earth can resist her fluency, her energy and her sense of comic effects? At least not this writer, even if it can be deplored that the funny lady partly damaged her reputation in appearing in too many a campy French comedy(?) perpetrated by dunces named Philippe Clair, Michel Gérard, Michel Caputo and the like. Add to these qualities her inimitable "pied-noir" accent(characteristic of those French people who had been living in Algeria for generations) and you will find no other actress on a p