[Rhodes22-list] A Moment of Silence Please

[Brad Haslett]

Another great one has died.  Here's the news and a video.  Brad

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http://youtube.com/watch?v=zNqskkKMkFQ

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Mime Legend Marcel Marceau Dies at 84

By ANGELA DOLAND – 1 hour ago

PARIS (AP) — 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.

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.