Simone Desmaison

Simone Desmaison, born Simone Damiani in Paris in 1926, actress under the name of Simone France at the start of her career, is an actress, writer and screenwriter.

Companion of the mountaineer René Desmaison, it is she who, in the shadows, allowed the media coverage of his exploits. Before landing the role of her life and becoming the wife of the great mountaineer who died in 2007, Simone was an actress. Sister of screenwriter and director José Giovanni, the beautiful and talented brunette had notably played alongside Lino Ventura and the young Belmondo in Claude Sautet's "Classe tous risque". the rocks of Fontainebleau with René Desmaison. He fell in love with the actress, four years his senior. Already married twice and mother of two daughters, Simone did not marry René, who had already founded a family before him, until three years later.

She joined the guide in Chamonix and effectively put her acting career on hold. But Simone Desmaison was not the simple mountaineer's wife, prey to anxiety when her man embarked on races from which he was not certain to return. An unbearable wait, the most emblematic episode of which was the tragedy of February 1971, when René Desmaison and Serge Gousseault tackled a new route on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses and had to wait on the drop zone of the helicopter from mountain rescue to Chamonix. to find out which of the two had just lost his life.