Article

Guy Dufresne

Published Online February 7, 2008

Last Edited October 17, 2014

Guy Dufresne, playwright, scriptwriter (b at Montréal 17 Apr 1915; d at Frelighsburg 29 July 1993). He studied at the Jesuit colleges of Ste-Marie and Jean-de-Brébeuf (BA 1939). Lung problems caused him to abandon his studies; he settled in Frelighsburg, Qué.

Dufresne, Guy

Guy Dufresne, playwright, scriptwriter (b at Montréal 17 Apr 1915; d at Frelighsburg 29 July 1993). He studied at the Jesuit colleges of Ste-Marie and Jean-de-Brébeuf (BA 1939). Lung problems caused him to abandon his studies; he settled in Frelighsburg, Qué. Dufresne wrote for radio, TV and theatre. With L'Île aux pommes (November 1952), he became one of the world's first French TV script writers.

His radio and TV scripts made him famous, either for the quality of his historic and ethnographic research (as in Le Ciel par-dessus les toits, 1947-55; Cap-aux-sorciers, 1955-58; Kanawio, 1960-61 and Les Forges de St-Maurice, 1972-76), or for his sensitive psychological analyses. The son and brother of physicians, he provided the public with his well-crafted observations about the hospital milieu in a TV series entitled Septième-nord (1963-67), which appeared well before most American series on this subject.

He was awarded the Prix Anik in 1978 for his 1976 video Johanne et ses vieux. He has published 5 plays, most notably Le Cri de l'engoulevent (first played at Comédie Canadienne, 1960, adapted for TV as Chemin Privé (November 1960), translated as The Cry of the Whippoorwill in 1972), and remarkable TV adaptations of Luigi Pirandello's As You Desire Me (October 1962), Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters (November 1963) and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (January 1971). He wrote the film scenarios for Décembre (1978) and Le Frère André (1987). He was visiting professor of drama at Université de Québec in Montréal in 1980.