The grandchildren of Jacques Cousteau, the world’s best-known underwater explorer, have an immediately recognizable final identify. They’re additionally legally restricted from utilizing it.
For the previous 25 years, the Cousteau Society, a nonprofit run by Cousteau’s mistress turned spouse, Francine Cousteau, has been firing off lawsuits in opposition to members of the family that the society says are supposed to make sure the explorer’s “identify, picture and life work usually are not abused for revenue.”
The lawsuits have forged a large web. Jacques Cousteau’s youngsters and grandchildren are restricted in how they’ll talk about him to advertise their very own nonprofit or enterprise ventures. Some have been sued for making bulletins on June 11 (his birthday) or writing about their recollections with him. As a result of the identify “Cousteau” is taken into account mental property, members of the family could use it to model their very own enterprises provided that they embody their first identify in the identical font and colour as “Cousteau.” The letters of their first identify should even be both the identical measurement or as much as twice as massive because the surname.
In a single 2003 authorized submitting, amongst different situations, three members of the Cousteau household agreed to show images of Jacques Cousteau of their houses or workplaces provided that the picture was captured at a household occasion and included them. For each photograph that breaks these guidelines, they need to pay a $50,000 charge.
Since 1995, the Cousteau Society, which holds the rights to Jacques Cousteau’s mental property, has filed a half dozen fits within the US in opposition to different Cousteaus — together with Jacques’ eldest son and his 4 grandchildren — and a number of other extra in France and Fiji. One lawsuit, which claims Céline Cousteau is profiting off images of her grandfather by utilizing them in advertising and marketing supplies for a documentary, is ongoing.
The brutal tug-of-war over the Cousteau identify originated within the early Eighties, when Francine, then an Air France govt, met Jacques. He was one of the beloved males on the earth, a revered documentarian, TV host, and the so-called father of scuba diving, due to his invention of the Aqua-Lung, the primary trendy equipment for respiratory underwater. Jacques Cousteau’s French accent and pink knit cap had been acknowledged across the globe. In Cuba, the place one among his movies was set, Jacques stated he was “given a clean test to fly with our seaplane and helicopter wherever we wished, as a result of Castro admires what we do.” On the time of his demise in 1997, the Cousteau Society had almost 300,000 members, and Jacques and his crew had produced greater than 50 books and 115 movies — three of which gained Oscars.
ABC Picture Archives/Disney Common Leisure Content material by way of Getty Pictures
Jacques himself wasn’t wildly rich. But he and people round him had quick access to money and energy. “We by no means needed to fear about cash for tasks,” a former Cousteau Society affiliate stated. “These grants simply got here. That is why the identify Cousteau was invaluable.”
Behind the scenes, his life was messier. Whereas he was married to his first spouse, Simone, he and Francine carried on an affair, secretly having two of their very own youngsters. They married shortly after Simone died of most cancers in 1990. A bitter feud emerged between Cousteau’s first household and his second — one which worsened after Jacques’ demise, when Francine grew to become president of the Cousteau Society. Jacques’ authentic brood knew they might now not be part of the nonprofit’s future.
Underneath Francine’s management, a lot of the Cousteau Society’s work has fallen by the wayside. At this time, the nonprofit is a shadow of its former self: It has only one worker, in line with its most up-to-date federal submitting, and in 2019, the final 12 months it filed monetary disclosures, $428,004 of its $816,030 in program service bills went to paying its authorized counsel. Lots of its packages listed on-line or in lawsuits are inactive.
In the meantime, Calypso, the long-lasting ship that ferried Jacques and his crew around the globe, has spent many years rotting — even because the nonprofit raised greater than $7 million in donations from 2015 to 2019. (A Cousteau Society spokesperson instructed Insider that the nonprofit spent greater than 300,000 euros, about $332,000, on Calypso in 2019 and is raring to “choose up the tempo” on repairs this 12 months.)
Brad Matsen, the writer of the biography “Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King,” stated he would not guess on the ship setting sail ever once more.
As he instructed Insider: “The Cousteau Society has been eating out on Calypso for fairly some time.”
Jacques Cousteau was born in 1910 in a small city outdoors Bordeaux, France. As a younger man he skilled to turn out to be a naval pilot, however a virtually deadly automobile crash left him with two damaged arms, which had been weakened for the remainder of his life. He ended his piloting profession and turned to his childhood ardour: the ocean.
Jacques started undersea exploration as a French naval officer. In 1943, he and an affiliate invented the Aqua-Lung. Seven years later, Jacques secured his personal boat, the Calypso, which the billionaire Loel Guinness leased to him for 1 euro a 12 months.
Jacques took the Calypso in all places from Antarctica to Tasmania to the Mississippi River, filming his documentaries like journey sagas. Every episode, narrated by Rod Serling, the voice of “The Twilight Zone,” usually started with an existential query: Will Jacques and his crew handle to swim with hippos, or will the large creatures gobble them up? Will coral reefs harm Calypso? May Antarctic winds topple it? (Often, catastrophe is averted as majestic orchestra music performs.)
“The explanation why I like the ocean, I can not clarify,” Cousteau instructed the Related Press months earlier than his demise. “It is bodily,” he stated, including: “If you dive, you start to really feel that you just’re an angel. It is a liberation of your weight.”
AP Picture/John Lindsay
Jacques’ magnetism made him an ideal figurehead. “There are many ocean organizations with plenty of employees, however they lack that determine, that chief, that pioneer,” the oceanographer John Englander stated. He was the final CEO of the Cousteau Society throughout Jacques’ life. “To place the underwater world on TV, again within the Nineteen Sixties, it was simply completely visionary.”
Jacques met his first spouse, Simone Melchior, at a cocktail occasion within the Thirties. The Melchiors had been French elites with the cash to match; lots of Simone’s male family members had been admirals within the French navy. Jacques appeared the right companion for the ocean-loving Simone. The 2 married in 1938. Their first son, Jean-Michel, was born quickly after, then their second, Philippe.
Cash from the Melchiors, money from the Aqua-Lung, and a partnership with British Petroleum helped fund Jacques’ early expeditions, but it surely was becoming a member of forces with ABC to supply the long-running tv collection “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” that cemented his fame.
The entire Cousteau household participated in Jacques’ aquatic pursuits. Simone moved aboard the Calypso and spent most of her time there, even when Jacques wasn’t on board. Philippe grew to become his costar and inheritor obvious — the good-looking, bearded sidekick to his weathered father. When Philippe died in a seaplane crash in 1979, at 39, Jacques was heartbroken. “Philippe’s demise was an enormous crush to Captain Cousteau. Simply enormous,” a former Cousteau Society affiliate instructed Insider.
After Philippe’s demise, Simone started to withdraw into her quarters on Calypso, former crew members stated, whereas Jacques targeted on environmental points. In 1990, Simone died of most cancers. Jacques stated in a 1993 interview that his spouse had stored her prognosis a secret from him and the remainder of his household for 5 years.
Six months later, Jacques and Francine married. It turned out Jacques had been carrying on an affair with Francine, 36 years his junior, for greater than a decade. Their two youngsters, Pierre-Yves and Diane, had been 9 and 11.
The French media, unsurprised by the revelation that Jacques had a mistress, largely ignored the story, however British and American media jeered. One author complained within the pages of the Night Normal: “Nobody appears to have had any concept about Cousteau’s secret household, or why he all of the sudden determined to drop anchor for the second time on the age of 82.”
Francine rapidly grew to become indispensable to Jacques. The trim blond began writing scripts for his documentaries within the early Nineties and made movie cameos together with their two youngsters. Former Calypso crew members keep in mind her as charming and enticing.
Francine was methodical in establishing herself on the Cousteau Society. She despatched positive candies and pens to these divers and employees members she wished to ally with and snubbed these she did not, 5 former Cousteau Society workers stated.
In 1995, Jacques quietly shifted his belongings to the Cousteau Society, giving the group complete management over his movie archive, royalties, and mental property. These belongings are valued at about $10.2 million, in line with the nonprofit’s most up-to-date federal filings.
Longtime associates soured on the society with Francine’s ascent, and plenty of left, together with Jean-Michel in 1992. “She is destroying every little thing my father constructed,” he stated in a 2008 interview. (One other rationalization for Jean-Michel’s exit could possibly be his ill-fated enterprise enterprise, a Disney World-like oceanographic park he opened in Paris in 1988, with a mortgage from the Cousteau Society equal to $2.2 million at the moment. In keeping with Matsen’s e book, it was bankrupt by 1990 — and Jacques held that blunder in opposition to Jean-Michel for years.)
ARNAL/Gamma-Rapho by way of Getty Pictures
Within the Nineties, the Cousteau Society started to take authorized motion to guard its founder’s identify. The primary lawsuit got here in 1995, when Jacques and Francine sued Jean-Michel over the identify of his Fiji ecotourism lodge: The Cousteau Fiji Islands Resort. A New York Occasions article referred to as the strife “a South Seas variation of King Lear.”
Jacques claimed the hoity-toity resort was damaging his picture. Whereas Jacques was campaigning in opposition to local weather change and drilling in Antarctica, his son was opening a lodge that includes glass-bottom boat excursions and buffet breakfasts. The famed leisure legal professional Lee Steiner stated in a 1995 interview that Jacques, his shopper, felt his son was “simply palming off, utilizing the identify” for his monetary profit.
The courtroom in the end dominated in Jacques’ favor, setting an essential precedent. Jean-Michel’s resort is now referred to as Jean-Michel Cousteau Resort Fiji.
The lawsuits piled on, getting even uglier after Jacques died of a coronary heart assault in 1997 and Francine was made president of the Cousteau Society, as mandated in a 1995 settlement between Jacques and the nonprofit.
In 2002, the society sued the late Philippe Cousteau’s youngsters — Philippe Jr. and Alexandra — and their mom, Jan Cousteau, over the identify of their nonprofit, the Philippe Cousteau Basis. The society claimed the trio was searching for to revenue off the Cousteau identify as Jean-Michel supposedly had years earlier.
Philippe Jr. stated the courtroom battle was difficult, as they did not have the kind of money the Cousteau Society may throw at a authorized downside. “When my grandfather died, we did not inherit something,” he instructed Insider. “Lots of people assume we’re wealthy, and we’re not.” (A consultant from the Cousteau Society stated a few of Jacques’ grandchildren, together with Philippe and Alexandra, obtained cash from Jacques’ non-public property, which continues to be being settled.)
The Cousteau Society’s claims had been punishing. In a single submitting, its legal professionals wrote that Jan pressured Jacques to present “increasingly more cash” for her youngsters’s non-public faculties, journey, and clothes. They described Jan’s failed images studio and failed second marriage and mocked her makes an attempt to launch her personal “‘Cousteau’ profession.”
The 2 events finally settled; the Philippe Cousteau Basis is now referred to as EarthEcho Worldwide.
Then there’s the continuing lawsuit in opposition to Céline Cousteau, Jacques’ granddaughter. After she produced a nature documentary and started selling the mission in 2017, the society went on the assault, arguing in its 2019 submitting that her use of the phrase “the journey continues” in advertising and marketing supplies hewed too intently to its trademarked tagline, “the journey continues.” A few of the supplies included what the nonprofit says are unauthorized pictures of Jacques Cousteau. Additionally unacceptable: The lawsuit stated they had been distributed in Sudan, the place the Cousteau Society accomplished a analysis mission and claimed to be main a conservation mission. The society stated Céline Cousteau’s advertising and marketing may confuse or “deceive” customers into believing her documentary was a Cousteau Society manufacturing.
The Cousteau Society consultant instructed Insider that defending Jacques Cousteau’s trademarked identify was of the “highest significance” to the famed explorer. The consultant added, “He felt so strongly about this that he efficiently sued his son.”
This has rankled these of Jacques’ youngsters and grandchildren who really feel that the Cousteau identify is a part of their household legacy.
“I used to be given this identify, and I’m satisfied that I’ve the fitting to name myself Cousteau,” Jean-Michel instructed The New York Occasions in 1995. “There are limits to what I can take — and I’ve needed to take quite a lot of punishment from my father and from a few of his entourage.”
Philippe Jr. was hesitant to debate how these lawsuits had affected him and his fast household. However he did inform Insider that “any time you will have the potential for litigation, it is one thing folks need to keep away from — it does not encourage productiveness.”
Amid these expensive authorized battles, nostalgic donors have given hundreds of thousands to the Cousteau Society. A key rallying level is the restoration of Calypso, the ship Jacques and his crew sailed on all seven seas. “Restored, she is going to sail once more as an Ambassador for the Seas and Oceans, as Captain Cousteau wished,” the Cousteau Society’s web site pledges.
But the boat stays in disrepair. After sinking in Singapore in 1996, Calypso was transported to numerous French shipyards. From 2009 to 2016 it sat fallow at a shipyard in Northern France; from there it was moved to a shipyard in Turkey that was ravaged by a hearth. Lots of those that labored aboard Calypso and spoke with Insider had no concept how a lot of the vessel remained.
The society has had repeated gives to revive Calypso — however every has fallen by means of.
In 2001, Prince Albert of Monaco teamed up with two Cousteau grandchildren to ask Francine for the ship, however the supply was declined, in line with Damien Leloup, a former crew member who helped join the grandchildren to the royal. The consultant from the Cousteau Society stated Prince Albert by no means made a critical supply. The royal’s press illustration didn’t return a request for remark.
Carnival Cruises received as far as to place out a press launch saying it could spend $1 million to revive Calypso in its Bahamas shipyard in 2004, however an organization supply stated the deal fell aside for unknown causes. The Cousteau Society consultant instructed Insider that members of the family, particularly Jean-Michel, complained to media concerning the concept of taking Calypso out of France, producing unfavourable press that performed a job within the deal’s collapse. Carnival declined to touch upon the file.
Fred Tanneau/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Most not too long ago in 2015, the New York power scion Samuel Nappi instructed Insider he tried to strike a cope with the Cousteau Society for hundreds of thousands to make Calypso a floating museum off the coast of Los Angeles. That supply too was rejected. The Cousteau Society consultant stated this deal was not enticing, as Jacques didn’t need Calypso to turn out to be a museum.
Those that used to work on Calypso cannot pinpoint how a lot it could value to revive the ship, although estimates vary from $1 million to $10 million. The nonprofit generated $8.2 million from 2015 to 2019, in line with its most up-to-date federal tax return.
“I do know that sources have been raised so as to cope with that state of affairs and to try to resurrect that ship and defend that ship for nicely over 20 years now,” Philippe Jr. stated. “The place they’ve gone, what has occurred to them, I do not know.” Many say a full renovation seems more and more unlikely.
The society consultant stated that the group is “dedicated to repairing and restoring the Calypso” in accordance with Jacques’ “specific want” for the ship to “sail once more” however that COVID-19 and authorized challenges to the society’s possession of the vessel within the early 2000s, spearheaded by Jean-Michel, have delayed the method (by December 2007, a French courtroom dominated that the Cousteau Society was the true proprietor of Calyspo).
In the meantime, most of the society’s environmental tasks as described on its web site and in lawsuits seem like inactive. A analysis mission in Sudan led to 2018, in line with a advisor who labored on it, and a program with the College of Costa Rica led to 2019, a college consultant instructed Insider. The society lists a vaquita conservation program in Mexico, however neither the analysis middle nor the researchers with whom it claims to be partnering responded to requests for remark. (The Cousteau Society did present some knowledge for a kind of researchers’ papers in 1999.) The society additionally claims its UNESCO-Cousteau Ecotechnie Programme continues to be in progress, however an archived model of the UNESCO web site reveals it led to 2005.
Different tasks on the society’s web site stay lively. Undertaking Hermes, an effort by Francine and Jacques’ son, Pierre-Yves, to have scuba divers add measurements of ocean temperatures to a crowdsourced database, continues to be underway. Cousteau Youngsters, {a magazine} for youngsters concerning the oceans, is frequently printed and distributed in faculties. The Cousteau Society consultant stated that from 2014 to 2020 the nonprofit researched biodiversity and developed sustainability practices in Djibouti, and till 2019 it participated in a marine biology mission within the Black Sea.
The consultant instructed Insider that the society was “proud to have efficiently carried out a various array of packages.” A supply acquainted with the Cousteau Society stated the nonprofit is hesitant to publicize a few of its tasks out of concern that those that’ve opposed the society, together with Cousteau members of the family, may disrupt them.
As of late, Francine’s management of the Cousteau Society is absolute. She, her two youngsters with Jacques — Pierre-Yves and Diane — and her new TV-executive husband, Michael Garin, maintain 4 of the group’s six board seats. As head of the society, Francine earned $200,000 yearly till the late 2000s (she now takes no wage). Francine’s youngsters and husband usually are not compensated both.
Jacques’ youngsters and grandchildren from his first marriage have established their very own careers in leisure and ocean advocacy, although not as part of the household model.
Jean-Michel, now 83, grew to become a famous environmentalist and filmmaker, founding the Ocean Futures Society in 1999 and producing a short-lived PBS collection on ocean exploration. Jean-Michel declined to touch upon particular claims on this piece however shared an anecdote from the Eighties by which Jacques instructed him, “It’s you, Jean-Michel, who will keep on my flame.”
Jean-Michel’s son, Fabien, lived underwater for a record-setting 31 days in 2014 and has his personal nonprofit, the Ocean Studying Middle; headlines generally check with him as the world’s “sexiest explorer.” Jean-Michel’s daughter, Céline, is a filmmaker and environmental activist.
Philip Scott Andrews/Roll Name/Getty Pictures
Alexandra and Philippe Jr., the kids of Philippe Cousteau, are cofounders of the nonprofit EarthEcho with their mom, Jan. Philippe Jr. has served as a correspondent for networks like CNN Worldwide and Animal Planet and has hosted a number of of his personal reveals, most notably Fox’s “Xploration Superior Planet.”
“Due to the fixed concern of lawsuits, it typically makes it tougher to do the work that our household has championed for 3 generations and that is an enormous disgrace,” a Cousteau member of the family instructed Insider. They requested to stay nameless for concern of litigation.
Francine has publicly pushed again on the concept Jacques’ descendants ought to robotically inherit his legacy. “It is a massive mistake to assume that anyone within the household has the fitting to Jacques’ imaginative and prescient,” she instructed the Irish Impartial in 2008.
But observers observe that Francine’s efforts to guard the Cousteau identify do not seem like serving to the group. Englander, the previous Cousteau Society CEO, stated the nonprofit at the moment was all however “small beans.”
“Like Walt Disney, when you will have such a legendary determine, different members of the family will attempt to keep on some side of his work and may confuse the legacy,” he stated. “I can perceive all of them desirous to perpetuate his work. However they’ve all gone in numerous instructions. We’ve seven or eight folks every asserting their very own mission and identification. They’ve diluted the model.”
Philippe Jr. and others near the Cousteau household described Francine because the gatekeeper in the course of the explorer’s last weeks of life. Jean-Michel was allowed to see his father, who was sick with a respiratory an infection, solely after begging Francine, in line with pals of Jean-Michel. Philippe Jr. stated that his mom was barred from seeing Jacques and that he and his sister had been allowed a short go to underneath Francine’s watch. An individual near the Cousteau Society stated Francine was following Jacques’ request that choose youngsters and grandchildren go to him.
By the point Philippe Jr. noticed his grandfather, Jacques had undergone a tracheostomy and was in a position to talk solely by writing.
He wrote only one phrase to his grandson: “l’angoisse” (“anguish”).
Francine has shouldered a lot of the blame for souring Jacques’ skilled and personal life. However some say Jacques deserves equal scrutiny for the tangled mess he left behind.
“You’ll be able to’t merely say Francine usurped every little thing and made her youngsters the quote ‘heirs,'” the previous society affiliate stated. “Jacques was 50% of that.”
He added: “If it is true that Cousteau had a relationship with Francine for a variety of years whereas Simone was alive and preventing most cancers, nobody ever brings that half up, do they? It isn’t like Francine was sitting on the dinner desk by herself throughout these years. She was sitting with the captain.”