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WORLD / Newsmaker
Mime legend Marcel Marceau dies at 84
(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-09-24 14:29
PARIS -- 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.
French mime Marcel Marceau is shown in this 1970 file photo. Marceau, who
revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died, French
media reported Sunday, Sept. 23, 2007. [AP]
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.
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