Cast

Francis Blanche

Acting

Cast

Francis Blanche

Known for

Acting

Born

1921-07-20

From

Paris, France

Died

1974-07-06

Also known as Francis-Jean Blanche, Francis Jean Blanche

Biography

François Jean Blanche, known as "Francis Blanche" (20 July 1921 – 6 July 1974) was a French actor, singer, humorist and author. He was a very popular figure on stage, radio and in films, during the 1950s and 1960s. His two daughters, Barbara & Dominique, are artists with their studios in Eze. Blanche was born in an artistic family, mainly of stage actors—including his father Louis Blanche and his uncle, Emmanuel Blanche, who was a painter—. He completed his secondary schooling at fourteen, the youngest in France to do so at the time. In the 1940s and 1950s, Blanche was part of Robert Dhéry's theatrical company Les Branquignols, with whom he played in the film Ah! Les belles bacchantes, starring Robert Dhéry, Colette Brosset (Dhéry's then-wife), and Louis de Funès; directed by Jean Loubignac in 1954. Blanche teamed up with Pierre Dac to form a comic duo best remembered for Le Sâr Rabindranath Duval, a sketch about a phony and nonsensical Indian clairvoyant and guru (1957). They also created a popular and equally nonsensical radiophonic series, loosely based on a highly improbable espionage and conspiration plot, Malheur aux barbus, which was broadcast on Paris Inter in 213 episodes from 1951 to 1952. The same plot and characters were revived on Europe 1 in a series called Signé Furax, enjoying no less than 1,034 daily episodes between 1956 and 1960. Both broadcasts were phenomenal audience successes in the pre-television era. Blanche was also renowned for broadcasting phone pranks, in which he entertained listeners by making the most improbable situations sound plausible. He wrote poems, and the lyrics of 673 songs. On stage, he acted in Tartuffe and Néron and, in 1955, Chevalier du Ciel, an operetta by Luis Mariano at the Gaîté-Lyrique theatre. Blanche also enjoyed a successful cinematographic career, both as an actor and scriptwriter. He appeared as a hard-headed German colonel ("Obersturmführer Schulz") opposite Brigitte Bardot in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre (1959). He was one of the favourite actors of French filmmaker Georges Lautner, and played Maître Folace (a shady solicitor counselling a colourful gangster mob) in Les Tontons flingueurs (1963). Blanche also appeared in Boris Vassilief's Les Barbouzes (1964). He delighted in parodying classical music, adapting famous works such as Schubert's "Die Forelle" (The Trout) into a crazy and slightly risqué piece about a 16-year-old romantic girl obsessed with Schubert's song to the point of giving birth to a live trout while performing it on her piano. Similarly, he turned Beethoven's 5th Symphony into a lengthy and quite repetitive musical glorification of the clothes peg and its fictitious inventor, Jérémie-Victor Opdebec. Blanche died at the age of 52, from a heart attack with a background of untreated Type 1 diabetes. He is buried in Èze cemetery. Source: Article "Francis Blanche" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Francis Blanche

Francis Blanche

Biography

Good Enough to Eat

Belle de Jour

Actualités télérévisées

The Great Spy Chase

Adieu Berthe

By the Blood of Others

Les Gorilles

The Black Tulip

Thank Heaven for Small Favors

Les baratineurs

The Stud

Romulus and the Sabines

Love and the Frenchwoman

Crooks in Clover

Erotissimo

The Eroticist

Jaloux comme un tigre

Who Stole the Body?

Clémentine chérie

Babette Goes to War

Peek-a-boo

People in Luck

The Sleeping Sentinel

Some Like It... Cold

House of Sin

The Indestructible

The Seventh Juror

La Grande Maffia

Pierre Dac et Francis Blanche : Le Meilleur du Parti d'en Rire

Male Hunt

Honoré de Marseille

Toto in Paris

A Dog, A Mouse and a Sputnik

The Oldest Profession

No Pockets in a Shroud

Scandal Man

The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers

Operation Gold Ingot

Midnight... Quai de Bercy

Rita the Field Marshal

The Green Mare

Sweet and Sour

L'échelle

Les Gros Bras

The Big Grasshopper

Long Live the Duke!

Easy Come Easy Go

Dandelions by the Roots

Deux Romains en Gaule

Tartarin de Tarascon

The Men in the Family

Le canard en fer blanc

Long Live Henry IV... Long Live Love!

Loose in the Trigger

Un merveilleux parfum d'oseille

Le pillole di Ercole

The Virgins

The Great Java

France, Incorporated

Il furto è l'anima del commercio!?...

Requiem pour un caïd

Le Solitaire

The Great Gadget

Under Your Hat

Trust Me!

The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot

Les gros malins

Hitch-Hike

The Big Wash

Anyone Can Kill Me

The Little Professor

Le bourgeois gentil mec

Are You Engaged to a Greek Sailor or an Airline Pilot?

Aux frais de la princesse

OK Patron

The Big Scare

Little Girls and High Finance