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Julian Shagran: "I miss the stage, this is the place I felt safest" - Walla! culture

2021-11-07T23:01:18.369Z


The health difficulties ("I knocked my feet, I can not walk. I feel terrible"), the work in 'Garden Party' ("People's faces are bright when they remember the show") and the feeling of missing out ("Our art required a lot of work"): the actor Julian Shagran speaks on the occasion of receiving an award for an EMI life enterprise. Interview


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Julian Shagran: "I miss the stage, this is where I felt safest"

The health difficulties ("I knocked my feet, I can not walk. I feel terrible"), the work in 'Garden Party' ("People's faces are bright when they remember the show") and the feeling of missing out ("Our art required a lot of work"): the actor Julian Shagran speaks on the occasion of receiving an award for an EMI life enterprise. Interview

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  • Julian Shagran

  • Garden party

  • Rolanda Shagran

  • Yaron London

  • Tom Hanks

Sagi Ben Nun

Monday, 08 November 2021, 00:00

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Excerpt from the "Garden Party" program broadcast on Channel One starring Julian Shagran (courtesy here 11)

Most of all, Julian Shagran misses the stage.

"My last performance on stage was in 2016. I felt safest on stage. In front of the audience I felt most protected. I miss the stage."

Over the years, Shagran has undergone two catheterizations and today he has great difficulty walking.

"I worked as a stuntman and I had too many falls and bad stunts, so I knocked myself off my feet and now I can not walk. I feel terrible. My connection with the world of culture today is mainly through writing from my home in Ein Hod."



"I wrote a novel, a children's book and I also wrote a comedy about a crazy hospital, which could turn into a play or a series that I hope I can sell," reveals the actor, comedian, director and mime artist.

"It's very silly, it's a parody of a soap opera that happens in a hospital. I filmed it but no one wants to pick it up. It takes so much energy to sell your work, so much more energy than writing. I prefer to write something else at this time."

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Surprisingly this did not happen years ago.

Shagran (Photo: Niv Aharonson)

At the end of each episode of the mythical show "Garden Party" which aired on Channel One, Yaron London invited the children he interviewed to get up from the polka dot sofa and called on his side kicker, actor Julian Shagran, to begin the medal ceremony for children for their participation.

About 30 years later, Shagran will receive a kind of medal himself, when he is awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of EMI (Israel Artists Association) the next day (Wednesday), and will receive the respect he deserves alongside names like Shlomo Artzi, Danny Sanderson, Gavri Banai and a group That's it. "It's very surprising to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award," says Shagran. "It's surprising that it didn 't happen years ago."



You did so many things in your life - you were nominated for two Oscars for short films you produced in the 1970s - "The Concert" and "The Morning Spider"; Created a comedy series called "The Orchestra" that aired on Channel One and won the Golden Rose Awards in Montreux and the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival; Directed the hit "Tits" and many other productions; And despite the glorious resume - you almost only remember your character from "Garden Party". Does it suck or is it more of a blessing than a curse?



"It's true that they mostly remember 'Garden Party' because people watched TV as children and it affected their lives in weird ways. It was unexpected. I did not think such a thing would happen. So it's more of a blessing than a curse. I see people's faces lit up when they remember ' "A garden party." And it's wonderful and very special. "



Julian Shagran was born in February 1950 in London, the son of the Romanian-Jewish composer and conductor Francis and the mother Aline the teacher.

At age 6 he was sent to a boarding school from which he fled after a year.

Already as a child he was attracted to comedy, and in his youth he joined comedian Vic Oliver and together they appeared as a duo in England, Ireland and South Africa.

One of the more hallucinatory performances he had in his youth was in strip clubs.

"Always, from the age of five, I wanted to be a comedian so I looked for an audience everywhere. At the strip club I did a sketch with my partner, called 'The Two Princesses', which is about two Chinese warriors attacking each other. Instead of ignoring each other they continue to hit each other by mistake. "I later repeated this sketch with Sefi Rivlin, but not in a strip club but on the street. It was fantastic."

(Photo: Niv Aaronson)

At the age of 19 he moved to Paris where he studied pantomime for three years with actor and mime artist Jacques Lecoque. In France he married Claude and had three children. Later, he returned to London to appear in the satirical play "Chaganog" which was a success at the Edinburgh Festival in 1964. He then appeared in TV series, commercials and several films, including "Passions" which was released in 1966 directed by Michelangelo Antoninho, in which he played a pantomime alongside his wife and - "The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom" alongside Shirley McClain and John Cleese.



Next month will mark the 55th anniversary of the release of Antonioni's "Passions" in which you played. How do you look at the film in the perspective of time?



"When you make a movie you are not even really aware of what you are doing. There are a lot of shots and you do not think what will happen. I was filmed for a day or two, and that's it. I was asked in the movie to play tennis without a ball. "I was amazed. It arranged a lot of work for me in commercials, and it's ironic, because this film is such a masterpiece and I get commercials from it. I will not forget Antoninio either because of the tics he had."



The highlight of his career, you'd be surprised to hear, is not his proximity to the medals handed out at the "Garden Party" but to his touching distance from the Oscar statuette. Shagran has twice been nominated for an Oscar for two short films he has produced - "The Concert" from 1974 and "The Morning Spider" from 1976. " "It could be that Tom Hanks stole the idea from me."



His arrival in Israel in the late 1970s happened, like quite a few things in his life, in a strange and accidental way.

"My ex-wife Claude, who was very religious, lived in England and even though she had nothing to do with Israel, she suddenly said to me, 'I think there's going to be a war and Jerusalem will be the only safe place.' Let's go there and see what happens. We got on the ship and arrived in Haifa. 'And now what do we do?', We thought to ourselves. Because we did not plan in advance. So we said, we will go to Bethlehem. We decided to put the children in school here. "It will turn out that Hitler was actually a good man." I ran away. Then we moved to Neve Ilan, and it was beautiful there, and I started performing in kibbutzim. "

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Yaron London and Julian Shagran on the "Garden Party" program that aired on Channel One (Photo: screenshot, here 11)

In 1985 he wrote, produced, directed and starred in the comedy series "The Orchestra", which combined classical music with humor without words, which included ten episodes and aired on Channel One. She won the Golden Rose Awards in Montreux and the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. This may have been the first Israeli series to be sold and distributed in the world. Shagran played the character of a conductor in the series, as his father's preoccupation with reality. "My father moved from Romania to France, then from France to England, where he made a career. He was a famous conductor and composer, who made music for many films. Naturally I wanted to do the same thing but the other way around, that is to make fun of it. "By the way music, I once posed as a journalist so I could talk to Edith Piaf. She's so sweet. I did the same thing with Judy Garland, who performed in a London theater. I went behind the scenes and projected to a journalist from Evening Standard and she was very nice."



More than anything, Shagran is identified with the children's program "Garden Party" on the first channel in which he participated since 1989, in which he appeared with T-shirts with a print of Winnie the Pooh. "What made 'Garden Party' a good and successful show is that Shiron did not rise above the children. He spoke to them at eye level. I, by the way, also spoke, loudly. A lot of people don't remember talking on the show, and it's interesting because I talked all the time."



In 2010 there was a one-time comeback to a “garden party” where hosted foreign child workers nominated for deportation. The possibility of returning the plan has been considered here in the past, but at the moment it is not on the agenda. Can such a series return today?



His wife Rolanda Shagran: "It was something with a lot of thought. A whole week they worked on a half-hour program. Hundreds of children went through until they chose a child who calls over time. Three or four days we wrote the texts of the guest child. All the celebrities wanted to participate. The musician also worked. "A whole week on the show. It was a very high level."

"I suspect Tom Hanks is older than me."

Julian Shagran in an excerpt from the movie "The Concert" (Photo: Courtesy of the filmed)

Liron London, who starred alongside him in "Garden Party", has had several embarrassing incidents and statements in recent years.

He said of the Arabs that they were "wild man."

After the disaster Meron said "this is not my mourning because we are not members of one people".

And told of a case in which he said he was sexually harassed when a woman's breastplate in an elevator because she had touched his stomach before.

What did you think of it?



Rolanda asks for permission to speak again: "It happens to people who have been in a position of power for too many years. You become insensitive to others. It is not good to be in a position of power for too many years."



Julian: "I do not know his remarks. As for the case with the woman in the elevator, I like it. I think Shiron is right. People take advantage of you when you are famous. They think they know you. They are arrogant about you and think they can slip away from it."



In addition to "Kindergarten Party", Shagran has worked extensively in the world of children, including starring alongside his wife Rolanda Shagran in the mythical children's show "A Thousand Faces" which he ran for many years, hosted the series "Hoppa Hi", "Nice Butterfly" and "Sesame Street", participated In videotapes for children, and in the early 1990s, two books written by Hagit Maor were published in which the character of Shagran from "Garden Party" appeared.

Shagran also succeeded in the adult world.

He directed the successful play "Boobs" in which his wife Rolanda played.

“This show changed the face of the comedy because it was a cabaret of three women, we created everything and it came out to us there that we are vulgar even though we didn’t utter a bad word,” Rolanda says.

"We did 800 or 900 shows. Halls were full blown up. Julian would come to see every show, and after every show he told me he laughed at me. That's what kept me going - that he laughed at me at every show."

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Julian Shagran and Rolanda Shagran in the show "A Thousand Faces" (Photo: Courtesy of the photographers, Alex Liebek)

While part of your distancing yourself from the public consciousness is related to your medical condition.

What are the other reasons for a certain miss in the career of such a talented artist and creator as you?



Rolanda wants to answer: "True, his medical condition is only in recent years. There were many years that were ignored. Too many years. After he did the series 'The Orchestra' he wrote a lot of screenplays for TV but they did not treat us. The attitude towards us was like this - where did you come from? , From the attic? Where did you land from? We were treated as if our time had passed, and that was already in the 1990s, when Channel 2 started. It's not cheap. You have to invest in accessories and costumes. It's not a camouflage. And it was not a style that was treated at all back then. They wanted to do everything new then. "Garden party, artistic things. And we did not catch the handle of the train."



Julian: "I agree with her. Our art required a lot more work than M.Cam cam '. And 'cam cam' has become a style. "



Rolanda: "Even though he directed the successful play 'Tits', in which I played, they did not take him to direct. You do not see that he understands Hebrew, even though he does not speak Hebrew?"



Julian: "People are afraid of the different. I'm English, my sense of humor is English, and that's a big change already. I think people are afraid of the unknown."

The crew of the satirical cabaret show "Boobs!"

- Director Julian Shagran and actresses Rolanda Shagran, Doreen Caspi and Martin Friedman (Photo: courtesy of the filmed)

And maybe it has to do with the fact that you also did not do enough PR for yourself? Take for example this newspaper clipping from September 1992, entitled and content "Hanoch Rosen filled halls and praised at the Edinburgh Festival". After praising Rosen for about 200 words, they note in a short line at the end that another Israeli name, Julian Shagran, arrives.



"Enoch is very good at public relations."



Rolanda: "Julian went to Edinburgh alone, on his own behalf, without any PR. At the time they came there was Channel 1, there was no need to do so much PR. They knew us, we were the first power couple."



What do you make a living from?



Julian: "We have money from the sale of a house in Tel Aviv. I did comedy workshops but it has not happened for two years because of the Corona. And Rolanda does stand-up. She is a wonderful stand-up comedian, invited to people's homes, even if it is 50 or 75 people. I directed "Part of it. She's very, very funny, a huge comedian."



Rolanda and Julian, earlier this year you marked 40 years of marriage.

How to ask a woman: What is the secret?



Julian: "We have a lot in common. We like to laugh together. This is the basis of being together - loving to laugh with each other."



Rolanda: "That's right. You can't stay serious with him for too long."

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It's hard to stay serious.

Shagran (Photo: Niv Aharonson)

Julian has three children from a previous marriage. Are you okay with the decision not to have a child together?



Rolanda: "I'm very happy with it. For me it's a choice."



Julian: "I also have two grandchildren. I am happy with the current situation."



Looking back on your life - what are you especially proud of? And what do you regret?



"I'm proud of the 'The Orchestra' series, proud of my two Oscar-nominated films, of my show with Rolanda for kids that hasn't changed in 30 years and that's a sign that she's good. "And I regret that I did not learn Hebrew. My Hebrew at the same level for decades. I went to the studio, it was so boring, and I immediately left. It's awful. I'm ashamed of it."



Are you afraid of death?



"Absolutely not afraid of death. I am energy. Energy is not dead. I watched YouTube, and there is a lot of evidence of 'death threshold experience.' "If there are hundreds of such testimonies on YouTube - it can not be a lie. So I am not afraid at all."

Not afraid of death.

Shagran (Photo: Niv Aharonson)

By the way, it's hard to forget the prank that Yigal Shilon performed in 1997 on his show "Misses" to the late Ehud Manor and Rolanda Shagran, when he made them believe that a plane they boarded on their way to a show in the north had to make a stopover in Damascus. : "The time I spent in Syria was one of the hardest in my life, no such thing is done to a bereaved brother and a committee should be set up to discuss where the border is. Next time they'll rape a girl and tell her it was a prank. "



Julian:" I knew about it. Rolanda did not know. She was invited to come to a kibbutz somewhere in the north, and was flown in a small plane. We got on the plane, we flew, and suddenly the pilot says we need to land. When we landed players dressed as Syrian soldiers appeared. I'm not surprised that Ehud took it hard. Rolanda was amazing because she told jokes. She thought she had been arrested by Syrian soldiers, and yet she told jokes. She was fantastic and so brave. "



Rolanda:"I told a joke about Bibi. "



Julian: "Yigal was behind the scenes, I left the room, and he said - let's put some 'blood' on Julian. I said, no way, do you want her to have a heart attack? He has no boundaries, Legal, unbelievable. That's humor. "



If in reality Hamas or Hezbollah or other terrorists had really captured you, do you believe you would have come out of it with humor?



Julian: "Yeah, because humor is the only thing I know."

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