Eighteen years ago, on Yom Kippur, the curtain fell on one of the most extraordinary performers the world has ever known: Marcel Marceau. With a face as eloquent as words and a silence that spoke volumes, he elevated mime into an art of universal language. To the world, he was the greatest mime in history - though in his own eyes that honour belonged to his lifelong inspiration, Charlie Chaplin.
Marceau was also the bravest. Risking risked his life many times during the Nazi occupation of France to smuggle hundreds of Jewish children across the border to safety in Switzerland.
Born Marcel Mangel in 1923 in Strasbourg, he was introduced early to music and theatre by his father, a kosher butcher from Poland, who also sang baritone and loved the arts. Marcel wanted to be an actor and playwright when he grew up but taken by his Ukranian mother to a Charlie Chaplin movie at the age of five, the young boy was entranced and decided to become a mime when he was older. But life changed after Nazi Germany began its persecution and killing of Jews across Europe.
Marcel became a member of the Jewish Boy Scouts and after his family was forced to flee the Germans, he hid his Jewish origin and changed his name to Marceau (a tribute to one of Napoleon’s most celebrated generals). But his father was captured and deported to Auschwitz, where he died. 16-year old Marcel and his brother Alain escaped and at the request of their cousin, George Loinger, a commander in the French Resistance, the boys joined the secret underground movement.
Loinger was part of a Jewish relief group that smuggled Jewish children from occupied France to neutral countries. Credited with saving over 300 children, he urged Marcel to join the cause. Their mission was to evacuate Jewish children who were hiding in a French orphanage and get them to the Swiss border, where they would sneak across to safety. It was initially planned that Marcel would take 24 children on an ‘hiking holiday’ in the Alps, then help them over the border into neutral Switzerland. Travelling with large groups of children would be far from easy but Marceau had a unique secret weapon: his brilliance at miming.
Using his gift for communication without words, he began training the orphans in the art of staying silent - moving without noise and speaking in sign language. His lessons quickly formed part of the relief group’s curriculum of physical education and survival skills, all aimed at helping the children to stay alive during an escape. He was also a master forger, having years earlier forged a passport for himself when he changed his name, and he forged a multitude of papers for the children which they smuggled inside sandwiches for their escapes.
“The kids loved Marcel and felt safe with him,” Loinger later told the Jewish Telegraph Agency. “He had already begun doing performances in the orphanage where he had met a mime instructor earlier on. The kids had to appear like they were simply going on vacation to a home near the Swiss border, and he really put them at ease.”
Marcel told the children he was taking them on a vacation in the Alps, and led them to safety in Switzerland. His use of mime was a way of distracting the children and keeping them quiet to avoid detection when they were being pursued by German officers. He made the perilous journey more than once, saving hundreds of Jewish orphans.
On one occasion, while fighting with the Jewish French Resistance, Marcel ran into a unit of German soldiers. Thinking fast, he mimed the advance of a large French force, and the German soldiers quickly retreated in fear for their lives.
Word spread throughout the Allied forces of Marcel’s remarkable talent as a mime. In 1944, following the liberation of Paris, he gave his first public performance as a mime in front of 3,000 allied troops. From that moment on, his future was determined. Later, being multilingual in English, French and German, he served as interpreter for the Free French Forces under General de Gaulle, acting as liaison officer with Patton's Third Army.
In 1947, blending a 19th century harlequin with the gestures of Chaplin and another of his heroes, Buster Keaton, Marceau created his most famous mime character - Bip, a white-faced clown always clothed in a striped jumper with a scarlet carnation sprouting from his battered top hat. Bip became his alter ego, just as the Little Tramp had become Charlie Chaplin's, and together Marcel and Bip – who soon became the most famous clown in the world - toured around the globe.
Through Bip, Marceau was able to convey the entire spectrum of human life from birth to death, playing out the human comedy without uttering a word. He called it ‘the art of silence’. His classic silent works and satires on artists, sculptors, matadors, have been described as works of genius. Of his summation of the ages of man in the famous sketch Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, one critic said: “He accomplishes in less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes”. In time, Marceau created his own company and for many years his Compagnie de Mimodrame was the only pantomime company in the world.
In 1959, he established his first of many pantomime schools in Paris and years later, after launching his Marceau Foundation in 1996, received great acclaim for promoting the art of pantomime in the United States. He was awarded countless national honours in France, won America’s Emmy Award for his television work and in Japan was declared their National Treasure. In 2002 he became the UN's Goodwill Ambassador at the International Conference on Ageing.
Marcel Marceau’s unique ‘art of silence’ filled a remarkable acting career that lasted over 60 years. He was an actor, director, teacher, interpreter and public figure, and made extensive tours in countries on all five continents. With his company, which he formed in 1949 and later reconstituted as a school, he continued to perform until 2005. Beyond his career as a mime, he was also an author who published books for children, and an artist, filling books with his illustrations and a collection of lithographs.
He also played several silent film roles, including in Barbarella with Jane Fonda, and he played a mind-blowing 17 roles in the movie First Class, in which he stars as the French mime stuck on a giant ocean liner where he falls in love with the only woman on the ship. But there was only one film in which he had a speaking part - as himself, uttering the single word “Non!” in Mel Brooks' classic Silent Movie.
In 1995, pop megastar Michael Jackson, who had been friends with Marceau for nearly 20 years and credited him with inspiring his famous Moonwalk, planned a concert with him for HBO, but the concert was cancelled after Jackson was hospitalised for exhaustion. In an interview, Jackson said that he had always been ‘in awe’ of his friend’s skill as a performer and had used some of Marceau's techniques in his own dance steps. “I used to go see Marcel Marceau all of the time. I used to sneak in and sit in the audience and watch how he would defy the laws of gravity, like he was stepping on air. I would take some of those things and include it into rhythm and dance when I moved.”
In 2001, Marcel was awarded the Raoul Wallenberg Medal for Humanitarianism for his acts of courage during the Holocaust. In his acceptance speech he said, "I don't like to speak about myself because what I did humbly during the war was only a small part of what happened to heroes who died through their deeds in times of danger.
“It is true that I saved children, bringing them to the border in Switzerland. I forged identity cards with my brother when it was very dangerous because you could be arrested if you were in the Underground. I also forged papers, not to save only Jews, and children, but to save Gentiles and Jews, especially Gentiles because there was a law in Vichy-occupied France to send the young French men, who were 18, 19 years old, to factories in Germany to work for the German Army. And then I had an idea to bribe the officials, and make people look much younger in their photos so they couldn’t be sent.”
On 22 September 2007, Marcel Marceau died at the racetrack in Cahors, France, at the age of 84. It was Yom Kippur.
Following his death, statesmen from around the world flocked to issue tributes to the man who’d long been hailed as a national hero. Marcel Marceau will always be remembered not only for his onstage performances and work as a mime, but for his dedicated work as a member of the French Resistance during World War II and his devotion to the Jewish children.
As Yom Kippur approaches us now, we pay tribute to the memory of this great man. A truly international treasure.
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It’s time to celebrate the 75th anni of that glorious classic movie Sunset Boulevard. I watched it again last night…for about the 13th time. I can never get enough of Billy Wilder’s masterpiece starring the incomparable Gloria Swanson as faded silent film star Norma Desmond. So many memorable scenes never to be forgotten, with writing so brilliant it deservedly won an Academy Award. Do you remember these lines immortalised by Swanson and William Holden:
Holden: "You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big."
Swanson: "I AM big! It's the pictures that got small!"
Well, this picture was far from small. It was a huge cinematic jewel that’s become a historic treasure. Gloria Swanson was stunning as the deranged and histrionic former screen goddess Norma Desmond, 50, who exhibits grandiose delusions about making a screen comeback. She falls madly in love with much younger William Holden, 30, as struggling screenwriter Joe Gilles who accidentally winds up in her sprawling estate on Sunset Boulevard when his car breaks down. Rich beyond measure, she hires him to write the scribbled notes of her life into a screenplay. Lured by her immense wealth, he reluctantly succumbs to her passion and soon becomes her toyboy. But he’s really only interested in her money and his writing. At night he sneaks off to the studio to work on a new screenplay with aspiring writer Betty Schaeffer, played by Nancy Olson, and the couple falls in love, which leads to the film’s spellbinding denouement.
Gloria Swanson had already retired from movies 16 years earlier and, unlike Norma Desmond, was content to settle into the new medium of television. But she was fascinated by this role (which originally was offered to Mae West who didn’t want to play a has-been and felt she was too young to play a silent film star, although she was nearly six years older than Swanson) and couldn’t resist the opportunity to return to the big screen. During the ‘20s and early ‘30s, she had been the highest-paid female in the world and the most famous woman across the globe. With Sunset Boulevard she became a legend all over again, winning a third Oscar nomination.
During the rise of Nazi fascism in the ‘20s, she had owned a scientific business buying patents from German Jewish inventors in Europe. With the assistance of Henri de Falaise, her second husband (she had six in total), she helped scientist refugees to flee from behind Nazi lines in Germany to France or to America. While still married, in an open secret in Hollywood, she had a long affair with Joseph Kennedy, father to later president JFK.
Like Mae West, many leading male stars turned down the role of Joe Gilles, not wanting to play someone they viewed as a gigolo. (Ironically, that’s how Billy Wilder once described his own earlier antics in Berlin as a ‘taxi dancer for hire’ before he fled to America in the ‘30s.) Montgomery Clift had been signed but dropped out just a few weeks before filming began. The studio offered the part to Gene Kelly but MGM wouldn’t loan him out. Cue in William Holden.
Indisputably the crowning achievement of director Billy Wilder’s career, Sunset Boulevard was nominated for 11 Academy Awards (among the highest in Oscar history up till then), including Holden as Best Actor and Austrian director Erich von Stroheim (who had directed many of Swanson’s silent films till they had a falling out) as Norma Desmond’s faithful, loving butler/chauffeur (in reality he didn’t drive and while we see him in many scenes at the wheel as he squires Swanson and Holden around Beverly Hills, what we don’t see is the vehicle far in front that’s towing their car on a long rope). Billy Wilder was nominated as Best Director but instead won for co-writing the screenplay. Nancy Olson’s husband, songwriter Jay Livingston, appeared as himself in a cameo in the film – as did Buster Keaton, Hedda Hopper and Cecil B DeMille. DeMille agreed to do his cameo for a $10,000 fee and a brand-new Cadillac, but when Billy Wilder went back to him later to secure a close-up shot, DeMille charged him another $10,000.
Nancy Olson was a 21-year old student at UCLA and had only been under contract to Paramount for a year when she was hired to play Holden’s co-screenwriter and eventual love interest Betty Schaefer, a role that won her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Seventy-five years later she’s still being asked about the movie. “If they ever change the name of that street,” she laughs, “I’m going to be in great trouble!”
Actually, the house wasn’t on Sunset Boulevard (site of my first apartment when I arrived in Hollywood in 1975). The studio hadn’t been able to find a suitably dilapidated mansion there and they ended up renting a home from J. Paul Getty’s ex-wife in another wealthy area bordering Hollywood. But it had no pool which was vital to the story, so finally Paramount agreed to put in a pool and fill it all back in after filming was completed. In fact, after they wrapped all they did was empty out the water. Three years later the empty pool was used in the James Dean classic Rebel Without A Cause.
I’ve had the delight of interviewing Nancy several times over the years and have wallowed in her riveting memories from more than 70 years spent in the film industry. All told, she made four movies with William Holden and appeared with Gloria Swanson in Airport ’75. Today, she’s the sole survivor from Sunset Boulevard and, at age 97, as sharp as ever.
“When they signed me,” she exulted, “I knew I had fallen into a tub of butter! Imagine working with Billy Wilder!”
I knew what she meant. I’d interviewed him a few times and was always mesmerised by his tales from behind the camera. Still, when I worked on a BBC radio documentary about the legendary director who brought us such memorable classics as Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, The Seven Year Itch, Ace in the Hole, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, I was struck by a particular observation of the film from my producer, Neil Rosser: “Wilder’s take on media cynicism and obsession on celebrity status is discomforting,” he ventured, “and the deadweight of failure that hangs over Desmond and Gilles is staggering!”
Certainly, the film takes on some pretty heavy subjects: ambition, greed, failure, and the fickleness of stardom. They were heavy back then and they’re still heavy today.
“I think that’s the reason it’s survived so long,” opines Nancy Olson. “It’s hard to absorb that it’s retained its importance all these years later with the kind of questions that were relevant then and are relevant now. Wilder’s film is tremendous proof about the vulnerability of human beings, their exploitations and how they see themselves and how they destroy themselves. And there’s nothing more destructive than to buy into the myth of stardom.“
Swanson’s fabulous exaggeration of the role so much larger than life that Billy Wilder was constantly giving her new lines to add in, and Holden told me that he and the entire cast and crew deemed her performance as “absolutely magnificent!”
In 1993, the film was re-born as a musical in London by Andrew Lloyd Webber who was intrigued by the story of Hollywood’s discarding of ageing stars. Wilder gave him his blessing and the show opened in London's West End with Patti LuPone in the starring role. Recalling the opening, Nancy Olson told me, “By then, Billy Wilder and I were the only ones still alive from the film and we both went to the premiere in London and later in New York. It was wonderful to see it recreated in another form!”
Hollywood has changed drastically over the decades since Sunset Boulevard hit the cinema screens, but 75 years on it still holds up and is regarded as an all-time classic, included in the National Film Registry (along with six more of Wilder’s films) and in the top 20 of the American Film Institute’s Greatest American Films of All Time.
For movie lovers around the world, the film is a regular indulgence of which they can never get enough.
As she reflects back on the film, Nancy Olson says Gloria Swanson was “the only person on the entire set who understood that this movie would live forever and that she would be remembered forever. That it was a story that had a truth to it that would never be forgotten".
And she was so right!
Till next time, Shavua Tov.
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