Francis Blanche

Acting · 1.0 popularity

Age

105

Movies

120

Born: July 20, 1921 – July 6, 1974
From: Paris, France

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.

Works

120 films

Belle de Jour

19677.3

Actualités télérévisées

1964

Good Enough to Eat

19516.8

By the Blood of Others

19745.2

The Black Tulip

19646.3

Les baratineurs

19655.0

The Great Spy Chase

19646.8

The Eroticist

19725.6

The Seventh Juror

19626.8

Les Gorilles

19646.4

Erotissimo

19695.7

The Oldest Profession

19675.0

The Stud

19704.9

Peek-a-boo

19545.0

Scandal Man

19726.5

Adieu Berthe

1970

Babette Goes to War

19595.6

Romulus and the Sabines

19615.3

Crooks in Clover

19637.7

Who Stole the Body?

19637.0

House of Sin

19615.5

A Dog, A Mouse and a Sputnik

19585.0

Thank Heaven for Small Favors

19636.6

Love and the Frenchwoman

19604.9

Jaloux comme un tigre

19644.7

The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers

19645.4

The Little Professor

19583.9

Le canard en fer blanc

19675.4

Long Live the Duke!

19608.0

Sweet and Sour

19635.1

Long Live Henry IV... Long Live Love!

19615.6

Male Hunt

19646.5

Clémentine chérie

19646.2

Little Girls and High Finance

19607.7

Rita the Field Marshal

19675.2

La Grande Maffia

19716.0

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

20208.0

The Indestructible

19597.0

Dandelions by the Roots

19645.4

Tartarin de Tarascon

19625.3

People in Luck

19635.5

Easy Come Easy Go

19607.0

Some Like It... Cold

19605.6

The Killer is Listening

19484.5

L'échelle

1964

We Like It Cold

19607.2

Honoré de Marseille

19566.3

OK Patron

19745.7

The Sleeping Sentinel

19665.3

Under Your Hat

19654.0

No Pockets in a Shroud

19745.4

Midnight... Quai de Bercy

19537.3

The Green Mare

19595.6

Un merveilleux parfum d'oseille

19696.0

Order of the Daisy

19676.2

Loose in the Trigger

19675.8

Les Gros Bras

19633.8

The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot

19734.9

Champagne for Savages

19646.2

The Vendetta

19625.8

The Big Wash

19685.9

Comiques de toujours (Vol. 1 à 4)

20096.0

La Dernière Bourrée à Paris

19735.5

Faites donc plaisir aux amis

19696.3

The Men in the Family

19685.1

The Big Scare

19645.8

The Girl of a Thousand Months

19615.5

Hitch-Hike

19626.1

France, Incorporated

19744.1

Il furto è l'anima del commercio!?...

19715.2

Say it with Flowers

19745.7

Le bourgeois gentil mec

19695.0

Accroche-toi, y'a du vent!

196210.0

Les Jambes en l'air

19714.5

Anyone Can Kill Me

19576.2

Deux Romains en Gaule

19677.0

I've Had It

19736.0

Trust Me!

19546.2

A Whale That Had a Toothache

19756.7

Alice au pays des merveilles

19706.3

Le pillole di Ercole

19607.0

Les malabars sont au parfum

19664.5

The Big Grasshopper

19676.3

Snobs!

19626.0

Too Late to Love

19595.8

The Great Gadget

19675.3

Chance at Love

19646.5

The Virgins

19634.8

Ces messieurs de la gâchette

19704.1

Les Pieds nickelés

19646.2

Salut Berthe !

19684.9

Racconti romani di una ex-novizia

19733.7

Le Solitaire

19736.5

Frédérica

19425.5

Qu'est-ce qui fait courir les crocodiles ?

19717.3

Les enquiquineurs

19665.5

The Abominable Man of Customs

19635.4

Toto in Paris

19586.3

Life is beautiful

19566.3

Les Livreurs

19618.0

The Bear

19607.0

Le Olimpiadi dei mariti

19606.8

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

19714.2

Les gros malins

19695.0

The Terror with Cross-Eyes

197210.0

The Great Java

19716.0

La Polka des menottes

19576.8

The Real Bargain

19654.0

Ils ont vingt ans

195010.0

Requiem pour un caïd

19646.3

The Sad Sack

19509.0

Pas de caviar pour tante Olga

19659.0

Poussez pas grand-père dans les cactus

19695.0

Operation Gold Ingot

19627.0

Les 100 vies de Francis Blanche

2022

The Motorcycle Cops

19595.5

I. You. They.

19734.5

Match contre la mort

19598.0

Aux frais de la princesse

19695.0

The Hideout

19627.0