At the end of the 60s, the Nîmois Gérard Catherine was the assistant director of Robert Hossein, who died on December 31, at the age of 93.
“It was after my military service with Johnny Hallyday in the 43rd Marine Infantry Regiment that I landed on this shoot. I had been boosted by Mrs. Michèle Mercier in person, met a few weeks earlier at a dinner and who played the leading role there. !“, remembers, amused, Gérard Catherine.
Today secretary general of the Nîmes Jazz 70 association (7, bld Talabot), Gérard Catherine was, at the end of the 60s, a professional stuntman for the cinema. An experience in front of the camera which he then completes by passing behind, for the very first time, on the set of “A rope, a colt “, Robert Hossein’s first western shot in the spring of 1968 in the Andalusian desert, near Almería.
For nearly six months, Gérard Catherine was the director’s assistant trainee at just 21 years old. An honor for the young man, while the anecdotes of the shooting are counted by dozens: slaps by Robert Hossein inflicted on Michèle Mercier (at the express request of the latter!), So that she finally manages to shed a tear in the face camera, to those American shots where Gérard Catherine found himself carrying (even on the shoulder!) Serge Marquand, the actor with the broken ankle having the absolute prohibition to go back on horseback, Gérard Catherine’s memories are, close to 50 years later, almost intact. Not to mention the surprise visits of Sergio Leone on the set or, more slightly, the evenings among the biggest stars organized at his hotel by a certain Brigitte Bardot, she also shooting a western (Shalako, editor’s note) a few kilometers away. “Robert Hossein was one of my most beautiful encounters. That of a golden man, both warm and very professional who had the strength to make you happy to do your job!”, Adds Gérard Catherine, to the evocation of his last meeting with Robert Hossein in Nîmes in 2012. During a tribute to the filmography of an equally talented director, a certain Claude Lelouch.
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