On his passport, it's Roger.
But everyone calls him "Doudou".
Since childhood.
“Because he's nice to everyone,” his wife tells us.
It is logically with his nickname that the former manager of the Olympia Roger Morizot signs the book which has just been published by Éditions de l'Archipel.
In "I saw them all begin" (250 p., 20 euros), he tells more than thirty years behind the scenes of the Parisian theater, since its opening in 1954. An incredible life as close as possible to the stars of the time .
It was Bruno Coquatrix, her "spiritual father", who had suggested that she take notes.
“The stars like you.
And one day we will have to know what really happened here.
Write it all down, I know you won't betray me, ”the former director had told him.
So he blackened pages and pages, notebooks, loose sheets.
They slept at the bottom of a drawer until a phone call from his friend the writer Emmanuel Bonini, with whom he wrote the book.
A year later, the book is here.
It is teeming with incredible, tasty, often funny, touching anecdotes too.
Doudou Morizot, lively and talkative at 91, agreed to receive us at his home, in Bois-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), to talk about it.
Selected pieces.
The Olympia at the start?
"Pompeii under the ashes!"
"
When Doudou arrives at the Olympia, the hall must be completely renovated.
The Parisian titi then works at the Winter Circus for Joseph Bouglione.
The circus director offers to “lend” his decorator to his friend Bruno Coquatrix, who has just taken over the management of the room and needs help to restore it to its original state.
Roger had no idea that he would stay there for more than thirty years.
“The room was in terrible shape,” he recalls.
She had been abandoned since the war, everything was rotten.
We had to clean everything, repaint the walls.
We recovered curtains from other Parisian theaters, remade columns decorated with relief patterns.
At the end, we were happy.
It was not Versailles, but at least it was no longer Pompeii under the ashes!
"
On the arm of Edith Piaf
La Môme holds a special place in the old man's heart.
"With Brel, she was the closest I was to," he breathes.
When I knocked on her dressing room, she yelled at me:
Why are you
knocking
?
You're at home!
The singer, very superstitious, had her ceremonial.
And no one other than Doudou could accompany him.
"You are my little mouth, you come with me, you are my luck!
She said to him.
“I was going to look for her in her dressing room.
We crossed the corridors, she, with her uncertain walk.
She had a gold cross around her neck.
I had also removed a piece of carpet on the stage, a corner that we had called
the Piaf square
.
She would kiss him to touch wood, then she would kiss her cross and she would say:
That's it, I'm ready!
And we opened the curtain.
"
It evokes Théo Sarapo, the singer's last love.
“Between them, it was a perfect love.
At the end, she called me and told me,
for once, it's not a story of buttocks, but a love story
.
She died a year later.
"
Johnny's eventful tour
From his first concert here, in 1961, the Olympia team quickly understood that Johnny had something special.
"That, my children, is a spectacle!"
», Exclaimed Joséphine Baker seeing the Belgian singer in rehearsal, reports Roger Morizot in his book.
In 1972, Doudou was hired to go with the Idole des jeunes on tour on the roads of France.
“A real pain.
The end of my collaboration with him.
Bouglione had lent us a marquee.
The first date at Chantilly, we had a lighting problem.
The second evening, in Compiègne, Johnny used the excuse of the retransmission of a boxing match and crashed the concert.
The marquee was packed with people, the spectators were pissed off.
"
At that time, the singer was particularly "badly surrounded", he recalls.
“He had gone on tour with a bunch of friends, who were making a mess in his trailer.
They smoked his cigarettes, drank his scotch, ate his food.
And Hallyday said nothing.
One evening, before the show, he couldn't even find a place to change.
He had to go on stage in street clothes.
"
Dalida's anger
Dalida?
Doudou is laughing.
“She was having terrible anger.
One day, we hired a young technician to take care of the microphone.
There was a wire problem at one point during the concert.
Between two songs, Dalida leaves the stage like a fury:
Who took care of my microphone?
The young man, who denounces himself, is given a slap by Dalida who immediately returns on stage.
"Stunned, the guy is gone, pissed off."
He held two hours at the Olympia!
Dalida's brother, Orlando, tells her that she was wrong to get carried away like that.
And paf!
He took a slap too!
"
Mr. 100,000 volts damage
On the living room table, the photos in the files, carefully sorted and arranged, scroll.
On one of them, Gilbert Bécaud.
“Mr. 100,000 volts, he was breaking the piano,” Doudou remembers with a smile.
He was tapping on it, instead of playing normally.
It was my job to call the tuner the afternoon before the show.
Often, he would tell me that a rope had to be replaced!
It cost a fortune.
"
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A mischievous smile illuminates the face of the nonagenarian.
“One day, I had the idea to cut up the piano,” he says.
Becaud complained that the lid was too high and people couldn't see his hands.
I suggested that Coquatrix cut the legs a bit and saw off the sides.
A Steinway cut with a chainsaw!
The boss was crazy.
The photo of the three men in front of the cut out piano is reproduced in the book.
The more or less wise public
When it wasn't the artist doing the damage, it was the audience.
During a James Brown date, it was necessary to call the police, who disembarked in full buses on Boulevard des Capucines.
And repair, the next day, the 800 broken seats!
Another striking memory, the Egyptian diva Oum Kalthoum: “One of my most beautiful concerts, in 1967, assures Doudou Morizot.
The spectators were so grateful that she was invited to Paris that they left with their drinks, to throw them themselves in the trash!
"
Léo Ferré, he sensed the public, and according to his reaction, adapted.
“He raised his voice, played with it, slowed down.
That was an artist!
Like Brel.
They knew it was never a given.
Brel, for example, before going on stage, he sometimes vomited because he was so scared.
Crazy stage fright, panicked fear ”.
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Artists not always convenient
Claude Francois?
Doudou grimaces.
"A great artist, but he was not easy," sighs the ex-manager.
He had the easy insult and everyone took it for his rank.
One day he spoke badly to me.
I grabbed him by the collar.
He then apologized.
Thierry Le Luron, too, leaves him with mixed memories.
"He had taken a big head and believed himself to be allowed anything," he says in his book.
With Michel Polnareff, relations were not easy.
“He was weird,” says Doudou Morizot.
He had something of his own, I felt he was a real artist, a genius, and all geniuses are weird.
One day, he used a back pain as an excuse to postpone a concert.
“The first three dates have been deleted.
But one evening, I ran into him in a nightclub.
I tell him,
hey, is it not painful?
- Hush, have a drink, I'll explain!
".
The next day, Polnareff "said he still had back pain", smiles the former employee.
He would have given Bruno Coquatrix so much trouble, that the director of the Olympia would have locked himself up and plunged into his bathtub, the night of the premiere, so as not to attend the concert.
“I saw them all start”
, by Roger Morizot and Emmanuel Bonini, Archipel editions, 250 pages, 20 euros.
