Francis Blanche

Acting

Born Jul 20, 1921

From Paris, France

Died Jul 06, 1974

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

Known For

The Indestructible

Crooks in Clover

Belle de Jour

The Black Tulip

The Eroticist

The Oldest Profession

The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers

Male Hunt

Love and the Frenchwoman

The Seventh Juror

Filmography — Acting

The Indestructible

Crooks in Clover

Belle de Jour

The Black Tulip

The Eroticist

The Oldest Profession

The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers

Male Hunt

Love and the Frenchwoman

The Seventh Juror

People in Luck

Loose in the Trigger

The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot

The Great Spy Chase

The Real Bargain

Romulus and the Sabines

Peek-a-boo

Erotissimo

Long Live Henry IV... Long Live Love!

By the Blood of Others

Rita the Field Marshal

Under Your Hat

Sweet and Sour

OK Patron

Babette Goes to War

Les Pieds nickelés

Anyone Can Kill Me

The Stud

The Green Mare

The Great Gadget

Snobs!

Hitch-Hike

No Pockets in a Shroud

France, Incorporated

Les Gorilles

The Virgins

Order of the Daisy

Requiem pour un caïd

Faites donc plaisir aux amis

The Big Grasshopper

Dandelions by the Roots

Salut Berthe !

La Dernière Bourrée à Paris

The Men in the Family

La Polka des menottes

I've Had It

The Little Professor

The Sad Sack

Les gros malins

Deux Romains en Gaule

The Great Java

Too Late to Love

Accroche-toi, y'a du vent!

We Like It Cold

Midnight... Quai de Bercy

Il furto è l'anima del commercio!?...

The Terror with Cross-Eyes

Les Livreurs

Le Olimpiadi dei mariti

The Big Scare

Chance at Love

Say it with Flowers

The Girl of a Thousand Months

Ces messieurs de la gâchette

Scandal Man

Poussez pas grand-père dans les cactus

Le bourgeois gentil mec