Cohl's financial situation deteriorated during the Great Depression and he endured years of severe poverty. While his peer George Méliès was awarded the Legion of Honor medal in 1931, scant attention was given Cohl's pioneering work in animated film. In the spring of 1937, at the age of 80, his face was lightly burned when a candle on his desk set fire to his beard. During a couple of months stay at a charity hospital, the young film journalist René Jeanne helped organize a benefit screening of Cohl's work, which played at the Champs-Elysées Cinema on January 19, 1938, the day before Cohl's death, two weeks after his 81st birthday. Coincidentally, Georges Méliès died hours later.