Both the title and the play have become cult.
It was played several thousand times, before being adapted to the cinema, then to Broadway, in the form of a musical.
Madelen invites you to discover, or rediscover, the rare images available.
The play written by Jean Poiret has, alas, never been shot in its entirety.
The story begins exactly 50 years ago, and it got off to a bad start.
The day after the gala premiere of
La cage aux folies
in front of all of Paris and the stars of the media, the press was far from unanimous.
Some critics cry burlesque genius, but many of their colleagues grimace.
Their opinions seem to tip the economic balance in the wrong direction.
Read alsoThe crazy scenes of La Cage aux Folles on Madelen
A week after the publication of these articles, the telephone does not ring at the box office of the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, and rentals are extremely low.
Jean-Michel Rouzière, the director, does not hide his concern.
He tells himself that, within a month at the latest, he will find himself obliged to put an end to the performances.
He is very concerned but not really surprised.
He remembers having hesitated for a long time before giving the green light to Jean Poiret.
He hardly believed in the subject's potential.
He ended up letting himself be convinced, and he regrets it bitterly.
Two weeks go by and one morning, who knows why, the rentals start.
The more the days pass, the more the requests multiply.
A month later, every evening, the queue in front of the theater reaches the end of rue Montpensier.
Some spectators who never go to the theater come back three times, sometimes five, and never discover the same show.
Poiret and Serrault regularly launch into moments of delirium.
The piece thus sometimes lasts half an hour longer than expected.
The most memorable moment in the memory of those who lived it, is when, at the end of an argument, Serrault decides not to come back to Poiret, as the situation theoretically predicts.
He settles in a corner of the set, and affirms that this time, it's too much, he's leaving.
His buddy,
who has a hard time holding back his giggles, will try everything to bring him to his senses, but especially at home.
He will succeed, under the ovations of an audience crying with laughter.
However, these moments of improvisation were preceded by long weeks of adjustment.
Throughout the first 20 performances, scenes were cut, and the character embodied by Poiret evolved.
At first he was, like Serrault, dressed as a woman.
In order to play the card of contrast, he decided to wear more masculine outfits.
Inspired by Julien Carette and Fernand Gravey
The origin of the idea dates back to the day after Jean Poiret was nine years old.
One evening, he accompanies his parents to the cinema and discovers
Fanfare d'amour
, a black and white film with Julien Carette and Fernand Gravey.
They play the roles of two poor guys, who disguise themselves as women in order to be engaged in an orchestra called
The Dutch Tulips
.
It is also from this story that Billy Wilder will realize, twenty years later,
Some like it hot
.
Poiret did not forget this film when in 1968, he attended a performance of
The Staircase at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées
with Paul Meurisse and Daniel Ivernel.
The disputes between two men, refugees in a sordid hairdressing salon, cause a click.
This is how he began to develop an idea based on a sketch,
Les deux Hortense
, which he had played with Serrault for several years.
He transposes the decor of an antique store into a cabaret specializing in the genre that made Michou famous: male transformation.
An excerpt from the mythical
Cage aux Folles
with Poiret and Serrault
From time to time, rumor has it that Poiret and Serrault are as intimate in town as they are on stage.
Between bursts of laughter, they reply, “
it's true, we were two friends for twenty years, we are now a real couple!
".
Finally, to those who congratulate Serrault because, for the first time in the history of the duo, his role is not that of an average Frenchman, the person concerned replies, "you will see, in ten years, it will
be
".