10 Unbelievable Details Surrounding Marcel Marceau, The French Mime Who Smuggled Jewish Children To Safety During The Holocaust

6 /10 Bip, The Clown

As he gained more confidence in his skills, Marcel created “Bip the Clown” in 1947, inspired partly by Commedia Delle Arte (an early form of professional theater originating in Italy) and Philip Pirrip (or Pip) in Dickens’ Great Expectations.

Bip was just another person in an enormous world, and his life experiences were full of misadventures. Despite his unlikely chances, Bip was optimistic and rebellious.

Society made him feel insignificant, but it didn’t matter. Marcel toured Europe, North America, South America, India, Israel, Australia, and Japan.

5 /10 An International Success

By 1956, Marcel’s reputation as a mime artist had grown exponentially. At the Phoenix Theatre, he appeared in a program called “An Evening of Pantomime” after a tour of Canada.

The audience and critics were amazed. Marcel continued playing in the United States to packed houses and began picking up TV shows.

His works on TV were not as impressive as his theater acts, but they didn’t diminish his brilliance either.

He once created a mime version of “A Christmas Carol” filmed by the BBC. In the early 1970s, he appeared five times in the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

4 /10 Wallenberg Medal

Marcel was the best in the art of silence throughout his adult life.

In 1995, he and Michael Jackson planned to have a concert together for HBO, but it was eventually canceled because Michael had to be hospitalized for exhaustion after rehearsal.

In 2001, Marcel received his well-deserved recognition as a war hero for his courage during the Holocaust.

When asked about whether he would give an acceptance speech, he said something along the lines of “never give a mime a chance to speak or he would never stop talking” jokingly.

3 /10 A Model, Not A Fossil

During the late 1990s, new generations of mime artists began to move away from the classical style signature that had made Marcel Marceau a star.

Despite the rebellious gestures from the fresh faces, Marcel remained a role model and never an outdated fossil.

Later in life, Marcel expressed gratitude that the first fundamental review of his performance was published in the US Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes.

His 1955 US tour, where he played “Creation” among other titles, was also a massive success. In “Creation,” he reenacted the beginning of the world by mimicking birds and fish using his fingers.

2 /10 Chevalier De La Légion d’Honneur

The “Creation” was a great success that it moved to a Broadway theater, the Ethel Barrymore. After the first tour in the US, Marcel kept on coming back to the country every year throughout his career.

The French government awarded him a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur for his achievements in cultural affairs.

In 1978, Jacques Chirac, then the mayor of Paris, established a subsidy for Marcel Marceau’s school for mimes, which still exists today and continues to produce performers. In 1998, he was awarded the National Order of Merit in France.

1 /10 An Eminent Ambassador

One of the mime greats, Marcel Marceau, died on September 22, 2007, at the age of 84 in a retirement home in France. The day he died happened to be Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism.

At his burial service, the 2nd movement of Mozart Concerto No. 21 played in the background, as did Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5, the music he often used during his mime routine.

Nicolas Sarkozy said that France lost one of its most eminent ambassadors of Marcel’s passing.