Marcel Marceau (1923

Biography

Marcel Marceau was a French mime artist and actor most famous for his stage persona, "Bip the Clown". He referred to mime as the "art of silence", performing professionally worldwide for more than 60 years.

Timeline

The story of Marcel Marceau, told in moments.

1923 Birth

Born Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg. His father was a kosher butcher who loved music. Marcel saw a Charlie Chaplin film at age five. He started imitating what he saw. He never really stopped.

Did seeing Chaplin at five reveal your calling instantly? Was imitating what you saw on screen practice or instinct? What did your father's love of music add to your art?

1944 Life

Works with the French Resistance, helping Jewish children escape to Switzerland. He alters their identity papers, changing their ages. He entertains the children to keep them quiet during border crossings. His father dies at Auschwitz.

Did entertaining children during border crossings feel like performance or survival? How do you keep children quiet when silence means life? Was your father dying at Auschwitz the wound beneath every performance?

1947 Event

Creates "Bip the Clown," a white-faced character in a striped shirt and battered top hat. Bip doesn't speak. Bip fights the wind, walks against invisible walls, catches invisible butterflies. Marceau performs Bip for the next sixty years.

Was Bip the Clown your truest self? Did performing Bip for sixty years feel like devotion or compulsion? How do you fight invisible walls and make them real?

1967 Life

Tours the world to sold-out theaters performing solo. No set, no dialogue, no props. Just his body. He can make an audience see a room that isn't there. Michael Jackson studies his moonwalk technique. So does every street mime in every city.

How do you fill a theater with no set, no dialogue, no props? Was Michael Jackson studying your moonwalk flattering? Did you know every street mime in the world was copying you?

2007 Death

Dies in Cahors, France. He was 84. His only spoken movie line was a single word: "Non!" in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie. The world's greatest mime got the only speaking part.

Was 'Non!' in Silent Movie the perfect joke? Did the world's greatest mime getting the only speaking part feel like destiny? What would you say now if you had more words?

In Their Own Words (13)

No art is superior to another one, but every art looks for expertise and perfection. This is life, which continues; this is why there is no death. There is continuation. There is no silence. There is a continuation of thought.

Interview The Lantern (5 April 2001), 2001

Chaplin made me laugh and cry without saying a word. I had an instinct. I was touched by the soul of Chaplin — Mime is not an imitator but a creator.

Interview, The Lantern (5 April 2001), 2001

Fathers, I do not practice. I’m not religious in life, but when I perform "The Creation of the World" and when my soul is touched by the confrontation of "Good and Evil", then God enters in me.

Interview The Lantern (5 April 2001) Replying to two priests who, after a performance of his routines of "The Creation of The World" and "The Hands of Good and Evil", asked if he was religious., 2001

Silence is like a flame, you see?

Interview Charlie Rose (27 September 2000), 2000

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.

The Guardian (London, 11 August 1988), 1988

Artifacts (15)

The Marcel Marceau Alphabet Book

Photographs of pantomimist Marcel Marceau record his mimes of twenty-six words which represent objects or activities.

1970

Works Read Talk

The Marcel Marceau Counting Book

Mime Marcel Marceau wears twenty different hats representing twenty different professions. Color photographs.

1971

Works Read Talk

Pimporello

Pimporello, a disillusioned Italian street mime befriends Nina, a shy, frightened orphan. Each deceives the other with shattering consequences.

1991

Works Read Talk

Le mime Marcel Marceau

Marcel Marceau, Maître Mime, mais aussi peintre, poète, passionné par l'histoire des civilisations et simplement homme. Sa maxime : rendre visible l'invisible sur scène ... et cette fois grâce aux...

1996

Works Read Talk

Bip in a Book

"Bip in a Book" captures the celebrated mime's boundless talent in a playful and charming adventure as Marceau discovers he is trapped in the pages of the book and tries to escape. 32 photos.

2001

Works Read Talk

Bip piégé dans un livre

Depuis plus de cinquante ans, le génie de Marcel Marceau étonne et ravit les foules du monde entier. Un génie tout en gestes et en silences, qui se rebelle et se dérobe à toute capture. D'où cette...

2002

Works Read Talk

No chance. Glastonbury has a tradition of, kind of, guitar music, do you know wh...

zers for choosing Jay-Z to headline a traditionally guitar-driven festival. "I'm sorry, but Jay-Z?" Gallagher asked, swearing. "No chance. Glastonbury has a tradition of, kind of, guitar music, do you...

Works Talk

It was the type of smooth performance you would expect from the hip-hop supersta...

m in North America. In a Shave Magazine review of his performance at Rexall Place in Edmonton, Jake Tomlinson expressed that "It was the type of smooth performance you would expect from the hip-hop...

Works Talk

We don't play guitars, Noel, but hip hop has put in its work like any other form...

t I'm not having hip hop at Glastonbury, no way, no, no. It's wrong." As controversy mounted, Jay-Z replied, "We don't play guitars, Noel, but hip hop has put in its work like any other form of music....

Works Talk