Marcel Marceau: why is Google honoring the famous mime this Wednesday?

 Marcel Marceau: why is Google honoring the famous mime this Wednesday?

This March 22, 2023, Google highlights the famous mime Marceau, born 100 years ago.

Who was the mime Marcel Marceau?

The mime Marceau, who was born in Strasbourg on March 22, 1923, would have celebrated his centenary this year. But who was he? Every day, the JDD's cheat sheet answers a not-so-silly question, to better understand the news.

The mime Marceau, Marcel Mangel of his real name, was the most famous French mime. Tomorrow will mark the centenary of his birth. He also reappeared in the news during the debate on pension reform. At the National Assembly, the president of the deputies of the Renaissance group, Aurore Bergé, compared the elected representatives of the National Rally to the comedian: “The far right in the Assembly is the mime Marceau: it gesticulates, but it speaks not ". A phrase that caused controversy.

Marcel Mangel was born in Strasbourg on March 22, 1923 into a Jewish family. In 1942, Marcel Mangel became a theater instructor in Montintin (Haute-Vienne) and at the Hagnauer couple's children's home in Sèvres, a boarding school that had become a refuge for a hundred Jewish children. He even participated in the flight of about thirty of them towards the Swiss border.

After the war, he decided to devote his career to mime under the name of mime Marceau and participated in popularizing silent art again. It was in 1947 that he achieved international fame thanks to the creation of his character, Bip. This clown with a white face in a striped jersey and with a top hat adorned with a red flower becomes inseparable from the mime Marceau. In the 1950s and 1960s, he produced shows all over the world. To pass on his knowledge, in 1978 he created the mimodrame school in Paris.

His gestures even influenced Michael Jackson. In 1953, Marc Mangel performs for the first time on stage his "march against the wind". A movement that strongly inspired the King of Pop for his emblematic dance step, the moonwalk. He thus leaves an indelible mark, even fifteen years after his death, which will occur on September 22, 2007.