One of the biggest stars of the classic Hollywood period, Cary Grant got his start in vaudeville, learning to sing and dance on the job and developing his physical comedy.

It was after the end of World War II in Europe that American crime films, embargoed during the occupation, started flooding French cinemas. Films like The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944), and Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) received their first screenings in France, prompting critics to sit up and take notice—and Nino Frank to coin the term “film noir.”