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(LAS
VEGAS) - Just back from another road trip. Good to be back,
its the best time of year here, the crowds have subsided,
the heat is gone and the traffic is back to semi-normal, making
it a wonderful time to live here in this crazy city.
Caught
up with Anita Pointer ands her sisters this weekend when they
performed on Saturday night. What a fabulous concert, high
energy and lots of highlights, with so many hit songs to whip
the crowd into a frenzy.
My
dressing room chat with them will appear next week, watch
for it.
This
week, it's my recent visit with the one and only Gerry Marsden,
another Liverpool lad and his band, Gerry & The Pacemakers.
Not the original Pacemakers, mind you, but certainly the original
Gerry, who was delightful, both on and off the stage. Read
my chat here.
The
OJ circus has left town, and we all look forward (?) to the
criminal returning to face the music soon, and no doubt the
beginning of his prison stay with us, once he is convicted
of armed robbery and attempted kidnapping.
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MARCEL
MARCEAU
We
lost anther legendary entertainer this past weekend, Marcel
Marceau, the man who put pantomime on the map without uttering
a single word (except for that famous scene in the Mel Brooks
movie).
Be
sure to check out our photo tribute to this great man Photo
Tribute.
Wearing
white face paint, a dancer's shoes and an old hat topped with
a distinctive red flower, Marceau breathed new life into an
art form and made it respectible for many generations. He
played out the human comedy through his alter-ego Bip, modeled
after the famed Charlie Chaplin character, the Tramp, without
ever uttering a word.
 In
this photo I picked up on the campus of UCLA sometime in 1983,
Marcel Marceau is seen performing on the Westwood campus,
an event that remains in my mind clearly.
The
absolute silence within the place, eerie silence from a couple
thousand people packed into the theatre as we all watched
this master illusionist create something from nothing and
fill it with emotion and elicit laughter and then tears, then
laughter again...
It's
been said (rightfully so) that Marcel Marceau revived the
art of mime and brought poetry to silence. He did all that
and more. He was a one of a kind.
And
even though he is gone, his work will live in to some degree,
on film and DVD. His real magic, though, came during his live
stage performances, which are gone forever.
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Offstage,
he was famously chatty, according to many of his friends and
acquaintences.
"Never
get a mime talking. He won't stop," he 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 he often has said that he used the memories
of his own life to create his art.
His
biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. In turn, Marceau
inspired countless young performers — including Michael
Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau
sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."
Emmanuel
Vacca, who was Marceau's former assistant, 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. It was truly
magical and never duplicated.
He
took his art to stages across the world, performing in Europe,
Asia, and the United States, where he first performed in 1955
and returned every two years. He performed for four sitting
presidents; Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and
Bill Clinton.
He
did many performances all over the world as recent as 2005,
and looking for a challenge, Marceau took his art to Cuba
for the first time in September 2005.
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"France
loses one of its most eminent ambassadors," President
Nicolas Sarkozy said. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon
called Marceau "the master" who had the rare gift
of "being able to communicate with each and everyone
beyond the barriers of language."
The
son of a butcher, Marcel Mangel on March 22, 1923, in Strasbourg,
France. His father Charles, a singer, 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: Charlie Chaplin,
Buster Keaton and the Marx brothers, as well as the Keystone
Cops. .
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 General 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 dump of a joint on
the Left Bank, he worked to perfect the style of mime that
would become his trademark and make him famous all over the
world..
The
on-stage persona Bip was born in 1947, a sad-faced character
with the familiar white face and deep eyes that lit up with
childlike wonder as he discovered things in the world. The
Bip character was based on 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."
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In
1949, Marceau's newly formed mime troupe was the only one
of its kind in Europe. He came to America and performed all
across the country. It was a highly successful tour that sealed
his position as a world famous entertainer.
Single-handedly,
Marceau revived the art of mime, which came from Greece and
continued until the 19th century through the Italian Commedia
dell'Arte, or improvised theater.
In
one famous sketch, "Public Garden," Marceau played
all the characters that happened to be in a park, from men
walking through or sitting. and children playing and even
several old women knitting together.
"I
have a feeling that I did for mime what Segovia did for the
guitar, what (Pablo) Casals did for the cello," he once
sai in an interview. Marceau started his own mime company,
then in 1978 he formed the International School of Mime and
Drama in Paris.
Marceau
also made a number of film appearances, including an early
role in Barbarella alongside Jane Fonda. His most famous film
appearance has to be in the Mel Brooks 1976 film "Silent
Movie". In that movie, he had the only speaking line,
which was, "Non!"
As
he aged, Marceau kept performing, never losing the agility
that made him famous.
 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 it all when you are 70 or 80, you cannot go on,"
he told the press. "You have to keep working."
Marceau
was married three times and had four children.
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One
of my dear friends, Walter Zaney Blaney, the Texas Ambassador
of Goodwill and a TRUE giant in the world of magic, sent me
this wonderful note regarding his encounter with the great
Marcel Marceau...(thanks, Walter)...
Marcel
Marceau's death today brought back a couple of great memories.
I was an ardent fan. When I was working a trade show at the
McCormick Center in Chicago in 1967 I saw that Marcel was
appearing at a big theater that night just a few blocks away.
After the trade show closed up for the day I rushed out to
the theater. It was bitterly cold, snowy and windy. As I was
entering the theater and opened the door to enter I was gallant
enough to allow a lady behind me, also rushing to get out
of the cold, to enter before me as I held open the door. She
went to the box office, bought a ticket and went into the
show. When I asked to buy a ticket the clerk said she was
sorry, they had just sold the last ticket, the theater was
full. I was heartbroken and had to leave and just go eat a
hamburger by myself somewhere.
Then in 1973 I was appearing on the Mike Douglas Show. There
was a man that walked into the dressing room who was also
on the show, and we exchanged greetings and names. I was busy
with my props and I didn't quite hear his name, but it didn't
seem too important at the moment. But he asked what I was
going to do on the show, and I said I would make a lady from
audience float in the air. He said he also did a levitation
in his program, but that it was a different form from a magician's
illusion. I perked up and asked again what his name was. He
said Marcel Marceau.
I was shocked, and I stammered trying to get out my great
admiration for him, explaining I had not really heard his
name a moment before, and what an honor it was to get to meet
him. Then I told him my story of how I just missed seeing
his show in Chicago. He was of course pleased that I did know
who he was. He said the next time he appeared in Houston he
wanted me to come sit in the front row as his guest. It was
a thrill to meet this very kind gentleman, one of the really
great artists of our time. As it turned out, he went on the
Mike Douglas Show just ahead of me. It's my own private joke
that I can say Marcel Marceau "opened for me".
When a reporter once asked Marcel why he was still performing
at his age he replied, "If you stop at all when you are
70 or 80 you cannot go on." That made me think of our
great friend in magic, John Calvert, still performing at age
96, and still doing it great.
Walter Blaney
Photo
Tribute
Until
next week,
Magically
yours,
Steve
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Sept
25, 2007