Marcel Pagnol (28 February 1895 - 18 April 1974) was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. In 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française.
Pagnol was born on 28 February 1895 in Aubagne, Bouches-du-Rhône département, in southern France near Marseille, the eldest son of school teacher Joseph Pagnol and seamstress Augustine Lansot. Marcel Pagnol grew up in Marseille with his younger brothers Paul, René, and younger sister Germaine.
In 1945, Pagnol re-married, to actress Jacqueline Bouvier. They had two children together, Frédéric (born 1946) and Estelle (born 1949). Estelle died at the age of two. Pagnol was so devastated that he fled the south and returned to live in Paris. He went back to writing plays, but after his next piece was badly received he decided to change his job once more and began writing a series of autobiographical novels - Souvenirs d'enfance - based on his childhood experiences. In 1957, the first two novels in the series, La Gloire de mon père and Le château de ma mère were published to instant acclaim. The third Le Temps des secrets was published in 1959; though the fourth Le Temps des Amours was to remain unfinished and was not published until 1977, after his death. In the meantime, Pagnol turned to a second series, L'Eau des Collines - Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources - which focused on the machinations of Provençal peasant life at the turn of the twentieth century and were published in 1962.
Pagnol died in Paris on 18 April 1974. He is buried in Marseille at the cemetery La Treille, along with his mother and father, brothers, and wife. His boyhood friend, David Magnan (Lili des Bellons in the autographies), died at the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918, and is buried nearby.
Pagnol adapted his own film Manon des Sources, with his wife, Jacqueline, in the title role, into two novels, Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, collectively titled L'Eau des Collines.