Georges Renavent

Georges Renavent, born Georges DeChaux on April 23, 1892, in Paris, France, was a French-American actor whose career spanned Broadway, film, and theater management. In 1914, he immigrated to the United States, entering the country by crossing the border between Canada and Vermont.

Renavent's Broadway career ran from 1916 to 1928 and encompassed a range of productions. His stage credits include Goin' Home, Diplomacy, Antonia, Grounds for Divorce, and The Crooked Square, among others. He also operated his own American Grand Guignol and was associated with the Renavent Theater in 1936, with involvement in productions in both New York and Los Angeles.

His screen career began with an appearance in The Seven Sisters in 1915. In 1929, he took on the role of the Kinkajou in Rio Rita, a film adaptation of the 1927 Florenz Ziegfeld stage musical that had originally brought Wheeler and Woolsey to prominence. The production was purchased by Radio Pictures, later known as RKO Radio Pictures, and its final sequences were filmed in Technicolor. Two years later, Renavent starred in East of Borneo (1931), playing the Prince of Marudu opposite Rose Hobart and Charles Bickford. The film became one of the most frequently televised pictures of the 1950s and 1960s and later gained additional recognition when avant-garde filmmaker Joseph Cornell used footage of its leading lady to create the surrealistic work Rose Hobart in 1936. In 1936, Renavent appeared alongside Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in The Invisible Ray, and in 1940 he was featured in Hal Roach's Turnabout. His final film role came in 1952, when he played Ortega in Mara Maru, starring Errol Flynn.

Renavent was married to actress Selena Royle, the daughter of Edwin Milton Royle, who authored The Squaw Man, a work later adapted for film by Cecil B. DeMille. When Selena became entangled in the McCarthy-era investigations into Communism and was placed on the Hollywood blacklist, the couple relocated to Mexico. Both continued working in the arts there and co-authored several cookbooks, including Pheasants for Peasants, A Gringa's Guide to Mexican Cooking, and Guadalajara As I Know, Live It, Love It.

Renavent died on January 2, 1969, in Guadalajara, Mexico.