I’ve run into a few people who do not feel that there is any value
to reading fiction novels – but I disagree.
As I mentioned about 5 years ago, there are MANY reasons to
read fiction novels. I would consider historical novels to be the best in the
category, since they wrap compelling stories around historical facts. James
Berry, Clive Cussler, James Patterson, and John Grisham do the best job of producing
compelling books, but sometimes you can find good stories by artists who are
not well known. “The Auschwitz Escape” was written by Joel Rosenberg, who I had
never heard of, but the title sounded interesting – and the story was very
compelling.
I recently picked up “The Lincoln Highway”, by Amor Towles,
because it sounded interesting. Truth be told, it’s not an easy read, since it
runs to 576 pages. Very little of the book relates to The Lincoln Highway, but
it touches on a topic that we can all appreciate.
Clowns.
One of the characters in the book is a clown named Marceline
Maupassant, who was a very successful mime in France, but he had the misfortune
to move to America in 1929, just before the market crashed. Although he was
able to work occasionally, his diminished status led to depression, which lead
to suicide.
If you Google his name, you’ll pull up a man named Marceline
Orbes, who Marceline Maupassant was modeled after.
His story is posted below:
The
evolution of comedy in early twentieth century America is dominated by names
like Chaplin and Keaton but prior to the explosion of those cinematic
luminaries, the medium was dominated not by stars of the silver screen but the
superstar clowns of the stage. Foremost among these was Marceline Orbes,
the Spanish-born clown who was watched, and adored, by hundreds of thousands
-if not millions- in his prime from 1905 to 1915. Marceline, as he was
simply known, was one of New York’s clowning superstars – he influenced Charlie
Chaplin and was fondly remembered by Buster Keaton as one of the ‘greatest
clowns’. And yet his name is almost completely forgotten today – unlike
those comedians he influenced, Marceline’s work occurred almost entirely on the
live stage and, as a result, little is left to remember him by or
appreciate. One of the most important comedic artists of the twentieth
century left almost nothing around which a legacy could be formed and, as a
result, is all but forgotten today. That is a situation that needs to
change.
Appearing
in The Appendix,
my latest article –‘Silent Film Killed the Clown’– seeks
to rectify that situation by recovering the tragic tale of Marceline’s rise,
fall, and suicide – it also aims to recover something of his life’s work in
order to create something that
pop culture scholars can use as a basis for future appraisal and
appreciation. Included in the digital first article is a reconstruction
of Marceline’s lost silent film, Mishaps
of Marceline. This article, then, is a trans-media project
and the first in a two-part series that aims to recover the legacies of New
York’s superstar cadre of clowns and comedians whose work evaporated into
memory and then obscurity.
If
the name Marceline sounds vaguely familiar, you may be familiar with another well-known
mime whose name is similar.
His
name is Marcel Marceau.
His
complete story is posted below, but here is a shorter version:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Marceau
In 1947 Marceau created
Bip the Clown, whom he first played at the Théâtre de Poche (Pocket Theatre) in
Paris. In his appearance, he wore a striped pullover and a battered,
be-flowered silk opera hat. The outfit signified life's fragility, and Bip
became his alter ego, just as the "Little Tramp" had become Charlie Chaplin's. Bip's misadventures with everything
from butterflies to lions, from ships and trains to dancehalls and restaurants,
were limitless. As a stylist of pantomime, Marceau was acknowledged without
peer. Marceau, during a televised talk with Todd Farley, expresses his respect
for the mime techniques that Charlie Chaplin used in his films, noting that
Chaplin seemed to be the only silent film actor who used mime.
His silent mimed exercises, which included The Cage, Walking Against the Wind, The Mask Maker, and In The Park, all became classic displays. Satires on everything from sculptors to matadors were described as works of genius. Of his summation of the ages of man in the famous Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, one critic said: "He accomplishes in less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes." During an interview with CBS in 1987, Marceau tried to explain some of his inner feelings while creating mime, calling it the "art of silence:"Marcel Marceau 1958, work by Isaac Frenkel Frenel
We
actually saw Marceau perform in a live show in Minneapolis decades ago, and
enjoyed it thoroughly.
Upon
his death at the age of 84 in 2007, the
second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 (which
Marceau long used as an accompaniment for an elegant mime routine) was played,
as was the sarabande of
Bach's Cello Suite
No. 5. Marceau was interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in
Paris.
If
you like classical music, and have 31 minutes to spart, you can listen to
Mozart’s concert below. However, it you are like me, you’ll be more apt to appreciate
a song my Dame Judi Dench:
Dame
Judi Dench sings "Send in the Clowns" - BBC Proms 2010 - YouTube
Judi Dench, by the way, is 88 years old – and she
is still performing.
in January 2023, Dench appeared in the BBC concert, Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends where
she sang "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music..
In March 2023, it was announced that Dench would be appearing in a one-off show
at that year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe,
discussing her life and career with Gyles
Brandreth, and would also sing and perform excerpts from
her past works. The show is titled I Remember It Well: Judi Dench in
Conversation with Gyles Brandreth. In April 2023, Dench was the
subject of a Channel 5 documentary,
titled The Divine Judi Dench: Our National Treasure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judi_Dench
Good story
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