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Topic: Marcel Marceau RIP Return to archive
23rd September 2007 06:47 PM
Ten Thousand Motels Mime Legend Marcel Marceau Dies at 84

Sep 23, 2007
AP
By ANGELA DOLAND

PARIS (AP) - Marcel Marceau, the master of mime who transformed silence into poetry with lithe gestures and pliant facial expressions that spoke to generations of young and old, has died. He was 84.

Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau breathed new life into an art that dates to ancient Greece. He played out the human comedy through his alter-ego Bip without ever uttering a word.

Offstage, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.

A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp during World War II, unlike his father who died in Auschwitz. Marceau worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children, and later used the memories of his own life to feed his art.

He gave life to a wide spectrum of characters, from a peevish waiter to a lion tamer to an old woman knitting, and to the best-known Bip.

His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. In turn, Marceau inspired countless young performers - Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."

Marceau's former assistant Emmanuel Vacca said on French radio that the peformer died Saturday in Paris, but gave no details.

In one of Marceau's most poignant and philosophical acts, "Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death," Marceau wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes.

He took his art to stages across the world, performing in Asia, Europe and the United States, his "second country," where he first performed in 1955 and returned every two years. He performed for Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Tireless, Marceau took his art to Cuba for the first time in September 2005.

"France loses one of its most eminent ambassadors," President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement. Prime Minister Francois Fillon praised Marceau as "the master" with the rare gift of "being able to communicate with each and everyone beyond the barriers of language."

The son of a butcher, the mime was born Marcel Mangel on March 22, 1923, in Strasbourg, France. His father Charles, a baritone with a love of song, introduced his son to the world of music and theater at an early age. The boy was captivated by the silent film stars of the era: Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx brothers.

When the Nazis marched into eastern France, he fled with family members to the southwest and changed his last name to Marceau to hide his Jewish origins.

With his brother Alain, Marceau became active in the French Resistance, altering children's identity cards by changing birth dates to trick the Nazis into thinking they were too young to be deported. Because he spoke English, he was recruited to be a liaison officer with Gen. George S. Patton's army.

His father was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.

"Yes, I cried for him," Marceau said. But he said he also thought of the others killed.

"Among those kids was maybe an Einstein, a Mozart, somebody who (would have) found a cancer drug," he told reporters in 2000. "That is why we have a great responsibility. Let us love one another."

Some of Marceau's later work reflected the somber experiences. Even the character Bip, who chased butterflies in his debut, took on the grand themes of humanity.

Marcel's life as a performer began with the liberation of Paris from the Nazis. He enrolled in Charles Dullin's School of Dramatic Art, studying with the renowned mime Etienne Decroux.

On a tiny stage at the Theatre de Poche, a smoke-filled Left Bank cabaret, he sought to perfect the style of mime that would become his trademark.

The on-stage persona Bip was born in 1947, a sad-faced double whose eyes lit up with childlike wonder as he discovered the world. Bip was a direct descendant of the 19th century harlequin, but his clownish gestures, Marceau said, were inspired in part by Chaplin and Keaton.

Marceau likened his character to a modern-day Don Quixote, "alone in a fragile world filled with injustice and beauty."

Dressed in a white sailor suit, a top hat - a red rose perched on top - Bip covered the gamut of human experience, and emotion. He went to war and ran a matrimonial service.

In one famous sketch, "Public Garden," Marceau played all the characters in a park, from little boys playing ball to old women with knitting needles.

In 1949, Marceau's newly formed mime troupe was the only one of its kind in Europe. But it was only after a hugely successful tour across the United States in the mid-1950s that Marceau received the acclaim that would make him an international star.

Single-handedly, Marceau revived the art of mime, which dates to antiquity and continued until the 19th century through the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, or improvised theater.

"I have a feeling that I did for mime what (Andres) Segovia did for the guitar, what (Pablo) Casals did for the cello," he once told The Associated Press in an interview. Marceau started his own company, then in 1978 the International School of Mime-Drama.

Marceau also made film appearances. The most famous was Mel Brooks' 1976 film "Silent Movie" - he had the only speaking line, "Non!"

As he aged, Marceau kept performing, never losing the agility that made him famous.

A perforated ulcer nearly killed Marceau in the Soviet Union in December 1985. He was rushed home to Paris in critical condition, but bounced back to the stage five months later.

On top of his Legion of Honor and his countless honorary degrees, he was invited to be a United Nations goodwill ambassador for a 2002 conference on aging.

"If you stop at all when you are 70 or 80, you cannot go on," he told the AP in 2003. "You have to keep working."

Marceau was married three times and had four children. Funeral arrangements were not immediately known.

[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
23rd September 2007 06:54 PM
Riffhard The pall bearers will no doubt be fighting an invisible wind as they carry the invisible box to the grave.


Is it true that Shields and Yarnell are delivering the eulogy?


RIP Marcel



Riffy
23rd September 2007 07:09 PM
gypsy Stones connection there - Marcel had a bit part in Barbarella with Anita Pallenberg.
23rd September 2007 07:22 PM
Gazza
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
Mime Legend Marcel Marceau Dies at 84



How could they tell for sure?
23rd September 2007 07:41 PM
fireontheplatter

mime artists always bother me

go ahead and rest a long long while marcel
23rd September 2007 07:43 PM
Joey
quote:
Gazza wrote:


How could they tell for sure?



Gazza ...........................


.... that is ' Brazen Head ' postin'


You are on FIRE !!!!!!! Whatever you do , do not grow old gracefully --- it would not suit you .

Joey Townshend

















...

[cc:ss]
[Edited by Joey]
23rd September 2007 08:07 PM
luxury1 anyone from the Boston area know of a mime artist by the name Trent Arterberry (or something very close to that)?
23rd September 2007 09:20 PM
Paranoid_Android I wonder what his last words were?
24th September 2007 03:28 AM
pdog If a mime dies in a forrest, does anyone care?
24th September 2007 06:53 AM
egon those mime guys (like clowns) scare the shit out of me.

and now i have this image in my head of a (real) dead mime guy.
24th September 2007 09:42 AM
Joey
quote:
egon wrote:
those mime guys (like clowns) scare the shit out of me.

and now i have this image in my head of a (real) dead mime guy.




Baby Egon .........................


I too have an innate fear of Clowns .

I do not trust Clowns --- I Don't --- NONE of them !
24th September 2007 09:59 AM
EELPIE
quote:
Joey wrote:
I too have an innate fear of Clowns .

I do not trust Clowns --- I Don't --- NONE of them !



24th September 2007 01:09 PM
Joey
quote:
EELPIE wrote:








You make Young Joey scared !!!!
25th September 2007 12:25 AM
sweetcharmedlife Marcel Marceau dead.........I have no comment.
25th September 2007 01:08 AM
Brainbell Jangler
quote:
Gazza wrote:


How could they tell for sure?


That line is stolen from Dorothy Parker's comment on the death of President Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge.

A friend of mine studied mime with Marceau.
25th September 2007 02:49 AM
stonedinaustralia










25th September 2007 12:45 PM
Joey
quote:
stonedinaustralia wrote:

















Post of the CENTURY !!!!!!!!
25th September 2007 12:55 PM
Gazza
quote:
Brainbell Jangler wrote:

That line is stolen from Dorothy Parker's comment on the death of President Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge.




Honestly, it wasn't. LOL
25th September 2007 12:55 PM
Gazza
quote:
Paranoid_Android wrote:
I wonder what his last words were?



"++++ BLANK FRIGGIN' STARE ++++" ???
25th September 2007 01:42 PM
andrews27 And the silence is deafening...
25th September 2007 05:41 PM
Joey

What we have here folks is " Miracle - on - Ice Postin ' "




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