MARCEL MARCEAU, FAMED FRENCH MIME, DIES AT 84

 

AP Photo: French pantomime Marcel Marceau performs in Rome in this June 14, 1980 file photo.

 

By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer

Used with permission of The Associated Press Copyright © 2007.   All rights reserved.  

 
PARIS - Marcel Marceau, whose lithe gestures and pliant facial
expressions revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence,
died Saturday. He was 84.

Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a
red flower, Marceau - notably through his famed personnage Bip -
played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50
years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously
chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.

A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation during World War II -
unlike his father, who died as Auschwitz - and worked with the French
Resistance to protect Jewish children.

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

Marceau performed tirelessly around the world until late in life,
never losing his agility, never going out of style. In one of his
most poignant and philosophical acts, "Youth, Maturity, Old Age,
Death," he wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just
minutes.
                                          

"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?"
he once said.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon praised Marceau as "the master,"
saying he had the rare gift of "being able to communicate with each
and everyone beyond the barriers of language."

In recent decades, Marceau took Bip from Mexico to China to
Australia. He's also made film appearances. The most famous was Mel
Brooks' "Silent Movie": He had the only speaking line, "Non!"

"France loses one of its most eminent ambassadors," President Nicolas
Sarkozy said in a statement.

Marceau's former assistant, Emmanuel Vacca, announced the death on
France-Info radio, but gave no details.

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

When the Germans marched into eastern France, he and his family were
given just hours to pack their bags. He fled to southwest France and
changed his last name to Marceau to hide his Jewish origins.

With his brother Alain, Marceau became active in the French
Resistance. Marceau altered children's identity cards, changing their
birth dates to trick the Germans 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.

In 1944, Marceau's father was sent to Auschwitz, where he died.

Later, he reflected on his father's death: "Yes, I cried for him."

But he also thought of all 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."

When Paris was liberated, Marcel's life as a performer began. 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.

Bip - Marceau's on-stage persona - was born.

Marceau once said that Bip was his creator's alter ego, a sad-faced
double whose eyes lit up with child-like wonder as he discovered the
world. Bip was a direct descendant of the 19th century harlequin, but
his clownish gestures, Marceau said, were inspired 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 chased butterflies and flirted at cocktail parties. 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.

"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.

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

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

Funeral arrangements were not immediately known.