Famous Biographies

Born: Paris, France, 17 July 1900.
Died: 1983.

Dalio came from the music hall and theatre and was typecast in most of his huge 1930s filmography (thirty features in 1936-38 alone) in minor roles which exploited his Semitic features—a casting which was both racist and a source of employment. The cowardly L’Arbi in Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1936) and Mattéo in Pierre Chenal’s La Maison du Maltais (1938, a rare leading part) are the epitome of this stereotyping. His role as the rich and generous Jewish prisoner in Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937), clearly meant as positive, still appeared as racist to some. As the cultured Marquis de la Chesnaye in Renoir’s La Règle du jeu / Rules of the Game (1939), Dalio at last escaped the stereotype. But when the war forced him to emigrate to Hollywood, he found himself playing another: the “Frenchie” in US films which, however, included distinguished titles such as Casablanca (1942) and To Have and Have Not (1944). Dalio acted in small parts in many popular French and US movies until 1980.

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