Émile Genest
Encyclopedia

Career

Born in Quebec City
Quebec City
Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...

, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

, as a young man Émile Genest served with the Canadian Navy during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. At war's end, he worked for a time in radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 in his hometown before accepting a job with CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

 radio in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 where he would eventually become a sportscaster, working in both the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 languages.

Genest turned to acting and in his early years played a son on the immensely popular French-language radio show, The Plouffe Family
La famille Plouffe
La famille Plouffe was a Canadian television drama, more specifically a téléroman, about a Quebec family that first aired in the French-language on Société Radio-Canada in 1953. The show was created to fill a void in francophone television in Canada...

and on its follow-up television series. In 1961 he had a significant role in the first of several films for Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...

. The first was Nikki, Wild Dog of the North
Nikki, Wild Dog of the North
Nikki, Wild Dog of the North is a 1961 Walt Disney film directed by Jack Couffer and Don Haldane.This story, based on the novel "Nomads of the North" by James Oliver Curwood, is about the adventures of a malamute dog named Nikki. Nikki and his kind master, Andre Dupas, are traveling via canoe...

followed by 1962's Big Red
Big Red (film)
Big Red is a 1962 American family-oriented adventure film from Disney Studios. Based on a 1945 novel by American author Jim Kjelgaard and adapted to the screen by American screenwriter Louis Pelletier, the film starred Walter Pidgeon....

with Walter Pidgeon
Walter Pidgeon
Walter Davis Pidgeon was a Canadian actor, who starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs...

 and the following year he was cast in the lead of The Incredible Journey
The Incredible Journey
The Incredible Journey, by British author Sheila Burnford, is a children's book first published by Hodder & they travel 300 miles through the Canadian wilderness searching for their beloved masters. It reveals the suffering and stress of an arduous journey, together with the unwavering loyalty and...

that was remade by Disney in 1993 as Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey
Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey
Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey is a 1993 American remake of the 1963 film The Incredible Journey, which was based on the best-selling novel The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford. Directed by Duwayne Dunham, it was released on February 3, 1993...

. Moving to Hollywood, Émile Genest went on to play a number of character roles in a variety of films including in the Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen
Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...

 1965 production, The Cincinnati Kid
The Cincinnati Kid
The Cincinnati Kid is a 1965 American drama film. It tells the story of Eric "The Kid" Stoner, a young Depression-era poker player, as he seeks to establish his reputation as the best...

. His son, Claude Genest
Claude Genest
Claude William Genest is a former Canadian journalist, actor, and TV host. He ran as the Green Party of Canada candidate in the riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie during the 2008 federal election.-Biography:...

, was born in 1963 in Hollywood and too worked as an actor before becoming an ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

 activist.

In the early 1960s Émile Genest turned to performing on television, appearing in a large number of guest roles in a variety of series such as Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible is an American television series which was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicled the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force . The leader of the team was Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, except in...

, Route 66
Route 66 (TV series)
Route 66 is an American TV series in which two young men traveled across America. The show ran weekly on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis was ill for much of the third season, during which time Tod...

, Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....

, Combat!, Perry Mason
Perry Mason (TV series)
Perry Mason is an American legal drama produced by Paisano Productions that ran from September 1957 to May 1966 on CBS. The title character, portrayed by Raymond Burr, is a fictional Los Angeles defense attorney who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner...

, The Virginian
The Virginian (TV series)
The Virginian is an American Western television series starring James Drury and Doug McClure, which aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute western series...

, Ironside
Ironside (TV series)
Ironside is a Universal television series which ran on NBC from September 14, 1967 to January 16, 1975. The show starred Raymond Burr as the wheelchair-using Chief of Detectives, Robert T. Ironside. The character's debut was in a TV-movie on March 28, 1967. The original title of the show in the...

and others. Near the end of the 1970s, Genest returned to work in film in Canada. In 1981, he was cast as the head of the family in a four-hour film update of the "The Plouffe Family" for which he was nominated for a Genie Award
Genie Award
Genie Awards are given out to recognize the best of Canadian cinema by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. From 1949-1979, the awards were named the Canadian Film Awards...

 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.

In 2000, at the age of seventy-nine, Émile Genest appeared in his last film. He died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

 while vacationing in Hallendale, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 in 2003.

His son is Green Party politician Claude Genest
Claude Genest
Claude William Genest is a former Canadian journalist, actor, and TV host. He ran as the Green Party of Canada candidate in the riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie during the 2008 federal election.-Biography:...

. His other son Eric Genest is the Vice President of Group Alta Real Estate, Inc.married to Cornelia Huerlimann and have 2 children.

External links

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