One online source claims that the real name of Jacques Vanaire (1888-1954) was August Jack van Roosendael who went to the United States to breed cattle. Whatever the truth of this, he was certainly a Belgian who spent a dozen or so years playing Frenchmen in Hollywood.
Vanaire appeared in about sixty films, including French language versions of studio films. They included Le spectre vert (1930, apparently the first French film made in Hollywood), Jewel Robbery (1932), Sylvia Scarlett (1936), Jezebel (1938), Ninotchka (1939), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941) and Holiday Inn (1942).
He was uncredited in five MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, Everybody Sing, Swiss Miss and I Married an Angel.
