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.
as Self (archive footage)
as Self (archive footage)
as Francis
as Nathaël Grissom
as Gérard Rollain
as Pierre, the perverted financier
as Victor Hutin, Sophie's father
as Doctor
as Gaston Payrac
as Wanderer
as Norbert
as Pietro l'Aretino
as Darbon, le galeriste
as Mr. de Chatiez
as Commissioner Pigna
as padre Scirer
as Self(2 eps)
as Paluche
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as Sigfrid
as Hector Grogenol
as Hugon
as Maurice Gombaud
as Auguste Kougloff / Augustin Colombani
as Self(4 eps)
as King of hearts
as Marco Lombardi
as Léo Bertold
as Tax collector Dupuis
as Alphonse Ramier / Al Gregor
as Loïc de Kerfuntel
as Achille
as Le polyvalent
as Spinosa
as Francis Bertolde aka 'Le book'
as Maximiliano
as Self(1 ep)
as Doctor Loupioc
as Passerby with the pipe (uncredited)
as Strumberger
as Captain Hans Vogel
as La Prudence
as Copec
as Mr. Adolphe
as Le docteur Grego
as The Doctor (segment "Aujourd'hui")
as Le druide inventeur de la potion d'invisibilité
as L'inspecteur Maurice Leloup
as Gédéon
as Monsieur Achille Eloy
as Ivanov
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as Mario l'enchanteur
as Dufour
as Le patron du restaurant(1 ep)
as Paul Souflé
as Louis Dujardin
as Félix
as Boris Vassiliev
as Adjutant (segment "Chance du guerrier, La")
as Commissaire Lenoir
as Nino Papatakis
as Francis
as Mr. Humlaupt (segment "L'Homme qui vendit la tour Eiffel")
as Nuisance at the Miss ceremony (uncredited)
as Émile aka 'le Boxeur'
as Chauffeur
as Absalon
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as Breton
as Mr. Pédro Andromèze
as Maître Folace
as Franz
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as Le procureur général
as Bartoli
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as Félix
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as Me Marcerou, avocat et ami du couple (segment "Le Divorce")
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as Ferdinand Haudouin
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as Francis Blanchard
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as Self(1 ep)
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as Garibaldo Trouchet, le ténor / Un musicien
as Nicolas
as M. Boulay, l'épicier libidineux
as Gilles
as Michel Barbarin
as Jean du Bois d'Ombelles
as Self
as Ami de Gilbert
