Paris (AFP)

Marthe Mercadier, one of the stars of the boulevard theater between the 50s and 90s, and sick with Alzheimer's for several years, died at the age of 92, her daughter announced to AFP on Wednesday.

Hospitalized a week ago at the Puteaux palliative care center (Hauts-de-Seine), "my mother passed away this morning around 5:00 am. She had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease for several years. I accompanied her. until the end, "her only daughter Véronique Néry told AFP.

Born October 23, 1928 in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis), she entered the world of entertainment at the age of 5, when she danced alongside the great Joséphine Baker.

The one who started in the theater as a blower has played in nearly fifty plays, sharing the stage with Bruno Crémer, Michel Galabru or Louis de Funès.

She played Georges Feydeau, Françoise Dorin, Marcel Aymé and triumphed in pieces like "Treize à table" (1984) or "Le squat" (2000).

She became popular on television at the end of the 1960s, in the successful series, "Les Saintes chéries", alongside Micheline Presle and Daniel Gélin.

His cinematographic career, made up of around forty films, began in 1950 with "Souvenirs perdus" by Christian-Jaque.

In 1952, she married the actor Gérard Néry with whom she had a daughter, Véronique.

The couple will separate 20 years later.

However, she will not have a significant role to her credit.

"I never looked for rewarding roles. I played the ridiculous, the lost, the rejected women, the idiots. I was more vigilant for my life as a woman than for my cinematographic career, a- she said in 1999 to the Dépêche du Midi.

Author René de Obaldia (g) and actress Marthe Mercadier receive an award during the Molière award ceremony in Paris, April 5, 1993 PATRICK KOVARIK AFP / Archives

She has also produced films (in particular the great success of Patrick Schulmann, "And tenderness? Brothel!" In 1979) and plays.

In her youth, she helped her father in the Resistance during the war and, at the end of the 1940s, launched her first humanitarian association.

Engaged in various actions against stammering (child, she stammered) or cystic fibrosis, in 1979 she created an association to help the deprived of Africa which kept her busy.

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