Marcel Marceau’s cause of death was announced shortly after his death.
He died on September 22, 2007 at the age of 84 due to cardiac arrest while surrounded by his family at his retirement home in Cahors, France, where he had moved after retiring in 2005.
Although Marcel’s former assistant, Emmanuel Vacca, later publicly confirmed his death, no details were shared about his abrupt demise at the time.
Some sources later reported that he died of a heart attack, but this news was not confirmed by his family.
Marcel’s unexpected death shocked his millions of fans, who sent their condolences and paid tribute to him on various social media platforms.
In addition, many television personalities fondly remembered him in their interviews, and his admirers continue to appreciate his work to this day.
Marcel is survived by his family. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
At his funeral, the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, which Marceau often used to accompany his elegant mime routine, was played, as well as the sarabande of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5.
Marcel Marceau, the lithe French mime artist known for his character Bip The Clown, was known for his ability to communicate without words. His colleague Quipping once said of him: “Never let a mime talk. He doesn’t stop.”
As a French Jew, Marcel survived the atrocities of the Holocaust and even played a role in the French Resistance, working to protect Jewish children.
Who was Marcel Marceau?
Marcel Marceau was a recognized French actor and mime artist. He performed in numerous television programs. At the height of his career, he introduced a unique kind of stage performance, which lasted more than a decade.
He was best known for his stage performance “Bip The Clown”. 3,000 soldiers witnessed Marceau’s first significant performance. Marceau studied dramatic art and mime in Paris after the war to pursue his love of performing.
He attracted audiences all over the world with performances that were both beautiful and moving, and he quickly gained fame for his distinctive demeanor.
Participating in a large number of performances throughout his career, Marceau has garnered praise and admiration from all over the world for his mastery of the mime arts. Even today, young artists are still motivated and influenced by his legacy.
Marceau was five years old when his mother took him to see a Charlie Chaplin movie, which gave him the idea of becoming a mime artist.
His first use of mime was to aid in the escape of Jewish children from Nazi-occupied France.
Marceau used his extraordinary talent for playing pantomimes to keep the children quiet during the most dangerous parts of the journey to the Swiss border.
During World War II, Marceau made three of these trips and freed at least 70 children.
Charles Mangel, Marceau’s father, was captured by the Gestapo in 1944 and died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Marceau’s mother was fortunately still alive.
Marceau enrolled at the Charles Dullin School of Dramatic Art after the war in 1945. Later he joined the company of Jean-Louis Barrault, where he got the role of Arlequin in the pantomime Baptiste.
His work in Baptiste received much praise. His career as a mime took off quickly after he performed his first ‘mimodrama’, Praxitele and the Golden Fish, at the Bernhardt Theater.
The character for which Marceau would become best known, Bip The Clown, was created by him in 1947. Marceau dressed up as Bip The Clown in a striped shirt, white face paint and a filthy top hat with a flower on it.
Marceau performed all over the world and developed the art of silence, familiarizing millions with the mime through his various film and TV appearances.
In 1973 he played Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. He earned an Emmy for Best Specialty Act for his 1956 performance on the Max Liebman Show of Shows.
His voice was first heard on film in 1968 when he played Professor Ping in Barbarella.
Married life of Marcel Marceau
Marcel Marceau was married three times in his life.
First and foremost, he married Huguette Mallet, and together the couple shares two sons, Michel and Baptiste.
The couple had spent 8 years together but had gone through many ups and downs during their married life, eventually separating and divorcing in 1958. After their divorce, the deceased couple co-parented their children.
In 1966, Marcel married Ella Jaroszewicz, but they had no children together. Marcel had bad luck in his love life and divorced his second wife after a few years of living together.
After divorcing a second time, he married his third wife, Anne Sicco, in 1975, with whom he welcomed two daughters, Camille and Aurelia. The couple later divorced.
Early life
Marcel Marceau was born on March 22, 1923 to a Jewish family in Strasbourg, France.
His father, Charles Mangel, was originally from Będzin, Poland, and worked as a kosher butcher, while his mother, Anne Werzberg, was from Yabluniv, present-day Ukraine. The family moved to Lille at the age of four, but later returned to Strasbourg.
When the Nazi troops occupied France in 1940, Marcel’s family was among the millions forced to flee their homes, eventually reaching Limoges.
Upon his arrival, Marcel’s cousin Georges Loinger saw potential in him and encouraged him to join the Organization Juive de Combat-OJC (OJC), a secret organization of nine different networks, part of the French-Jewish resistance.
OJC managed to save thousands of Jews across Europe through clandestine operations such as providing false identity papers or hiding children from non-Jewish families.
Marcel, who was skilled at impersonation, posed as an employee at a school run by Yvonne Hagnauer; for his valiant efforts during World War II to save members of the Jewish community, he was honored with the recognition of Yad Vashem “Righteous among the nations.”
Unfortunately, Marcel’s father was less fortunate: he was arrested in 1944 and shortly afterwards deported to Auschwitz, where he died. Despite this heartbreaking loss, Marcel’s mother survived.
Marcel Marceau was a French artist who marked his place in history as the most acclaimed mime artist of the 21st century.
During World War II, Marcel’s determination to continue living an authentic life led him to join a group of Jewish resistance fighters and smuggled children out of France.
His time during the war greatly influenced his art, making him an internationally acclaimed artist as he emerged as one of the founders of modern mime.
His extraordinary depictions of everyday situations earned him many recognitions throughout his life, eventually leading to his well-deserved achievement of the title of ‘Master of Mime’.
Sadly, after 84 years dedicated to bringing joy and beauty through art, Marcel tragically passed away in 2007 at the age of 84.
