CHARLIE RIVEL, THE CLOWN WITH THE SADDEST STORY

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Charlie Rivel, considered the best clown of all time by his own colleagues, and a person (Josep Andreu), who suffered a terrible experience during his staying in Denmark in 1944.

Josep Andreu i Lasserre (April 23, 1896-July 26, 1983), best known as Charlie Rivel, was an internationally known Catalan circus clown. 

He was born in Cubelles (Barcelona).

His parents Pere Andreu Pausas (Catalan) and Marie-Louise Lasarre (Occitan) were circus artists as well. He debuted at the age of three and formed the group Los Rivels with his brothers Polo Rivel and René Rivel. 

He took his artistic first name from Charlie Chaplin whom he encountered first in 1910. Each respected the other. Legend has it that Chaplin later asked him: Is it you who imitate me or I who imitate you?

He later discovered his definitive routine, featuring a chair, a guitar and a long jersey.

In 1970, he appeared in Federico Fellini's film I clowns.

He performed in the interval act for the Eurovision Song Contest 1973 in Luxembourg.

The Charlie Rivel Hall in Cubelles is a museum dedicated to him, and there is also a park dedicated to him in Vigo in the province of Pontevedra.

More information: Circopedia

A clown is a person who performs comedy and arts in a state of open-mindedness using physical comedy, typically while wearing distinct makeup or costuming and reversing folkway-norms.

The clown character developed out of the zanni rustic fool characters of the early modern commedia dell'arte, which were themselves directly based on the rustic fool characters of ancient Greek and Roman theatre. Rustic buffoon characters in Classical Greek theater were known as sklêro-paiktês or deikeliktas, besides other generic terms for rustic or peasant. In Roman theater, a term for clown was fossor, literally digger; labourer.

The English word clown was first recorded c. 1560 (as clowne, cloyne) in the generic meaning rustic, boor, peasant. The origin of the word is uncertain, perhaps from a Scandinavian word cognate with clumsy.

It is in this sense that Clown is used as the name of fool characters in Shakespeare's Othello and The Winter's Tale. The sense of clown as referring to a professional or habitual fool or jester developed soon after 1600, based on Elizabethan rustic fool characters such as Shakespeare's. 

More information: Clown Bluey

 Every human being is a clown
but only few have the courage to show it.

Charlie Rivel