"We are only the age of his funeral"
said Francis Blanche.
He thus evokes his disappearance at the beginning of the program “À bout porter”, produced in 1974, proposed on Madelen, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth.
The words he pronounces are premonitory since he will disappear only a few months later, at the age of 53, after having lived a hundred lives at the same time.
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Discover "A Bout porter", the program with Francis Blanche
He was a comedian, of course, but also an actor, director, singer, and author of 600 songs, including
The Prisoner of the Tower
, created by Édith Piaf, to music by Gérard Calvi. He also signed the French adaptations of
Vive le vent
,
Noël Blanc
or
Histoire d'un amour
, one of Dalida's first successes. We also owe him an operetta
La belle Arabelle
, created by the Jacques Brothers, an opera libretto for Serge Lifar and poems that are much more important to him than all of his other texts.
Making sure he was early in the morning, because he went to bed at four in the morning, he made 123 films. His most famous roles remain that of
Papa Schultz
, a Nazi officer in
Babette goes to war
and of the lawyer, Maître Folace, in
Les tontons flingueurs
. The line
"Don't touch the grisbi, bitch"
in the kitchen scene has become cult. You should know that it did not appear in the dialogues of Michel Audiard: he improvised it in front of the cameras of Georges Lautner. This sense of spontaneous invention allowed him to become, in the 1960s, the pioneer of the telephone hoax. His dialogue with the director of a boarding school for young girls, shocked because he offered her a meeting with his boys from Cours Sautreau in Vincennes, is a piece of anthology. Today, he would undoubtedly cause a scandal on social networks. Far from the microphones, he offered himself jokes that are difficult to imagine in 2021, and not only because they have sometimes cost him dearly. One afternoon, in his Cadillac, he begins to push the back of the 4 CV parked in front of him.The violence of the blows ended up causing a crowd and the arrival of a police officer. He asks for an explanation. Seriously in the world, Blanche hands him the vehicle registration document for the 4 CV, which he owns.
His fifties and sixties were marked by his complicity with Pierre Dac, his teacher. They signed together the 1034 episodes of
Signé Furax
, and interpreted, laughing a lot,
Le Sar Rabindranath Duval
where facing Dac in a yoga position, Blanche becomes professor Papamakavroconstinévizélargueropoulos. This name was chosen because it made a line on the typewriter.
Francis Blanche lived quickly and well.
Too good, no doubt.
He had several households at the same time.
He abused desserts even though he knew he was diabetic.
He made a lot of money, but spent more.
Unable to pay his taxes on time, he led an exhausting battle against the tax authorities, lost in advance.
This is to say the accuracy of a line of which he is the author, and that he asked that one engrave on his tomb in the cemetery of the perched village of Èze in the Alpes-Maritimes:
"Leave me to sleep, I was made for that. "
Find here the show “À bout porter” with Francis Blanche. Free subscription on Madelen two months, then 2.99 euros per month.
