Little Known Spaghetti Western Actors ~ Roger Beaumont

[These daily posts will cover little known actors or people that have appeared in more recent films and TV series. Various degrees of information that I was able to find will be given and anything that you can add would be appreciated.]

Roger Beaumont was born Roger Fellous in Paris, France on January 4, 1919, Fellous entered the film industry in the early 1930s as an intern for Kurt Kurant, a great pre-war cinematographer who had worked extensively in popular German cinema, but also for Tourneur, Lang, Hitchcock, Ophuls and Chaplin. Passing through all the technical positions of the cinema, Fellous was in turn assistant director for Yves Mirande, a filmmaker and screenwriter with a large following of the time ("Messieurs les ronds de cuir" after Courteline), then cameraman or assistant for some great academicians of cinema photography, such as Philippe Agostini, Armand Thirard (notably on "Hôtel du Nord") or Michel Kelber.

After World War II, which he spent in a prison camp, he still roamed the sets in various positions related to shooting and began to sign, as a cinematographer, the photography of a few short films. It was at this time - the end of the 1940s, ten years before the New Wave - that he and a few friends, including the young writer René Barjavel, the editor Jacques Grassi, and the producer/director Marcel Garand, tried to form a group of independent filmmakers. Unfortunately, the team, deprived of resources, experienced a lot of difficulties in carrying out its projects. The production of short autobiographical films was first started with the aim of putting together a series retracing the first steps of each of the members of the team, but the adventure was cut short. Only one completed film was released, "First Novel", inspired by Barjavel's beginnings and which would forever remain Roger Fellous' only work as director. It was then a feature film that tried to be put on track, an adaptation, again by Barjavel, of Michel de Ghelderode's "Barabbas", but here again, if a few turns of the crank were given, the project ended up running aground, because it did not attract serious investors.

Although Roger Fellous' career as a cinematographer culminated in 1964 during a collaboration with Luis Buñuel ("The Diary of a Chambermaid" filmed in very bright and beautiful black and white), it took a turn that quickly led him to the depths of French cinema and lasted much less. Roger Fellous will have been of all the smoking blows of exploitation cinema made in France. When he hasn't taken it upon himself, sublime downfall, to illustrate a Turkish-style screenplay in the streets of Istanbul, snatching a few shots of Droopy stricken by our international Robert Ginty under the impassive gaze of mustachioed passers-by transformed for the occasion into unwitting extras in a film with three titles, this three-headed monster that is “White Fire”, “Living to Survive”, “The Diamond”.

Roger is the brother of cinematographer Maurice Fellous [1925-2015].

Roger appeared in front of the camera in two Spaghetti westerns: “Ace High” (croupier) and “The Longest Hunt” as Warner under the alias Rowland Bartop both in 1968.

BEAUMONT, Roger (aka Rowland Bartop) (Roger Fellous) [1/4/1919, Paris, Île-de-France, France – 2/4/2006, Paris, Île-de-France, France] – director, cinematographer, film, TV actor, brother of cinematographer Maurice Fellous [1925-2015].

Ace High – 1968 (croupier)

The Longest Hunt – 1968 (Warner) [as Rowland Bartop]