Marcel Marceau, R.I.P.

[Mme. Hermine]

From the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-O...Marceau.html?hp

Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died, his former assistant said Sunday. He was 84.

Marceau died Saturday in Paris, French media reported. Former assistant Emmanuel Vacca announced the death on France-Info radio, but gave no details about the cause.

Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously chatty. ''Never get a mime talking. He won't stop,'' he once said.

The Times has an additional report from Reuters:

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entert...marceau.html?hp

For decades, Marceau epitomized the silent art, eliciting laughter and tears from audiences around the globe. His comic and tragic sketches appeal on a universal level, with each audience interpreting his performance in its own way.

"Mime, like music, knows neither borders nor nationalities," he once said. "If laughter and tears are the characteristics of humanity, all cultures are steeped in our discipline."

[atm711]

Rest in peace, sweet Bip--how I loved seeing him perform.

[drb]

Rest in peace, sweet Bip--how I loved seeing him perform.

So long a Star, already the Old Master back in the 70's. Look up tonight, there is a new star, leaning on a secret wall in heaven.

[papeetepatrick]

So long a Star, already the Old Master back in the 70's. Look up tonight, there is a new star, leaning on a secret wall in heaven.

That's lovely, drb--I can't add anything to that except that he really had been something we knew about and loved for so long, that when I saw the obituary I was surprised he was not at least 6-10 years older.

[dirac]

I was surprised he was not at least 6-10 years older.

Me, too - for me he's always been there, like the Queen. He seemed almost ageless, though.

Thank you, Mme. Hermine, for posting the links.

[dirac]

A nice article in The Economist.

When the spotlight faded on Bip last week, leaving not even a hand or a flower illuminated, it caused only a sigh of surprise. Bip had tried many times to put an end to himself. He would cut his wrists with a blade, nicking and wincing away from it, in case his copious blood gushed over his pure white sailor's trousers. He would shake out into his palm a handful of pills from a bottle, open his wide red mouth, and fail to swallow them. Stepping on a chair that wobbled under him, he would knot a noose round his scrawny neck, test it, yank it, gyrate his neck like a pigeon and step out into the void. Nothing worked. He went on living.