MARCEL MARCEAU, THE MIME ARTIST & 'BIP THE CLOWN'

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Marcel Marceau, the French actor and mime artist, who died on a day like today in 2007.

Marcel Marceau (born Marcel Mangel; 22 March 1923-22 September 2007) was a French actor and mime artist most famous for his stage persona, Bip the Clown.

He referred to mime as the art of silence, and he performed professionally worldwide for over 60 years. As a Jewish youth, he lived in hiding and worked with the French Resistance during most of World War II, giving his first major performance to 3,000 troops after the liberation of Paris in August.  Following the war, he studied dramatic art and mime in Paris.

In 1959, he established his own pantomime school in Paris, and he subsequently set up the Marceau Foundation to promote the art in the U.S. Among his various awards and honors, he was made Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur (1998) and was awarded the National Order of Merit (1998) in France.

He won the Emmy Award for his work on television, was elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, and was declared a National treasure in Japan. He had a 20-year friendship with Michael Jackson, who said he used some of Marceau's techniques in his own dance steps.

More information: Smithsonian Magazine

Marcel Marceau was born in Strasbourg, France, to a Jewish family. His father, Charles Mangel, was a kosher butcher originally from Będzin, Poland. His mother, Anne Werzberg, came from Yabluniv, present-day Ukraine. Through his mother's family, he was a cousin of Israeli singer Yardena Arazi. When Marcel was four years old, the family moved to Lille, but they later returned to Strasbourg.

After France's invasion by Nazi Germany, Marcel, 17, fled with his family to Limoges. His cousin Georges Loinger, one of the members of the French Jewish Resistance in France (Organisation Juive de Combat-OJC, aka Armée Juive), urged him to join the French Jewish Resistance in France in the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. The OJC, which was composed of nine clandestine Jewish networks, rescued thousands of children and adults during the Holocaust in France.

Marceau joined Jean-Louis Barrault's company and was soon cast in the role of Arlequin in the pantomime, Baptiste (which Barrault had interpreted in the film Les Enfants du Paradis). 

Marceau's performance won him such acclaim that he was encouraged to present his first mimodrama, Praxitele and the Golden Fish, at the Bernhardt Theatre that same year. The acclaim was unanimous and Marceau's career as a mime was firmly established.

In 1947, Marceau created Bip the Clown, whom he first played at the Théâtre de Poche (Pocket Theatre) in Paris. In his appearance he wore a striped pullover and a battered, be-flowered silk opera hat. The outfit signified life's fragility and Bip became his alter ego, just as the Little Tramp had become Charlie Chaplin's.

Bip's misadventures with everything from butterflies to lions, from ships and trains to dancehalls and restaurants, were limitless. As a stylist of pantomime, Marceau was acknowledged without peer. Marceau, during a televised talk with Todd Farley, expresses his respect for the mime techniques that Charlie Chaplin used in his films, noting that Chaplin seemed to be the only silent film actor who used mime.

More information: History

His silent mimed exercises, which included The Cage, Walking Against the Wind, The Mask Maker, and In The Park, all became classic displays. Satires on everything from sculptors to matadors were described as works of genius.

Of his summation of the ages of man in the famous Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, one critic said: He accomplishes in less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes. During an interview with CBS in 1987, Marceau tried to explain some of his inner feelings while creating mime, calling it the art of silence.

Marceau performed all over the world in order to spread the art of silence (L'art du silence).

Marceau died in a retirement home in Cahors, France, on 22 September 2007 at the age of 84. At his burial ceremony, the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 (which Marceau long used as an accompaniment for an elegant mime routine) was played, as was the sarabande of Bach's Cello Suite No. 5.

Marceau was interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

More information: John Cabot University

Mime is an art beyond words. It is the art of the essential.
And you cannot lie. You have to show the truth.

Marcel Marceau