Claude André Lalande

Biography

Claude André Lalande (aka Claude Lalande) is a French director born December 13, 1925 in Montrouge and died July 12, 2020 in Montereau-Fault-Yonne. Claude Lalande spent almost twenty years entirely dedicated to cinema, assuming different functions from 1942. Assistant to Henri Decoin and Marcel Carné during the War, he was also a poster designer (his main activity), cinematographer, producer and director of short, medium and feature films. As a director, he called on Louis de Funès three times, for two medium-length films and a feature film from 1949 to 1952. Thus, like André Hunebelle, Claude Boissol, Raymond Rouleau and Daniel Gélin, Claude Lalande is one of those who helped Louis de Funès in his early days, when the actor accepted every performance that came his way (and again! de Funès recognized much later that contracts were not rushed at that time!). In 1961, after two inconclusive experiences in production, Claude Lalande moved away from cinema to devote himself fully to his profession as a poster designer. He then set up the Lalande-Courbet printing house, the largest in Europe. “When I started, I had 400 m² and 23 employees. When I retired, my printing house covered 5000 m² and had 256 employees.” Thus, his company produced very diverse posters, both for the cinema (“Live and Let Die” with Roger Moore alias James Bond, “The War of the Buttons” by Yves Robert, “The Phantom of the Opera” by Terence Fischer...). In the winter of 2015, Claude Lalande finished writing his memoirs and then wished to publish only a few copies of his memories, on his own behalf, for his family and loved ones. He died five years later, on July 12, 2020, at the age of 94, in Montereau-Fault-Yonne.