Jean-Claude Olivier
(Guitare)
4 Vla Sadi Carnot, 75019 Paris, France

Jean-Claude Olivier was a founding member of one of the best guitar-led groups of the 1960s, Les Fingers. A jazz and bebop fan, Olivier began his musical journey in Algiers during the 1950s but soon moved to Paris to play guitar in the orchestras of Armand Canfora, Léo Clarens, Georges Jouvin and Fernand Verstraete (Trumpet Boy). By the start of the 1960s he had formed Les Fingers with Marcel Bourdon, Yvon Rioland and Jean-Marie Hauser. They regularly accompanied the hottest singers of the era including Claude François, Line Renaud and Nathalie. The band won the Grand prix Charles Cros and the Grand prix public, but disbanded in 1965, a great loss. Jean-Claude Olivier moved on to work with Claude Bolling, Paul Piot, Michelle Torr, and Moustaki. Apart from his career as a studio musician and a brief career as a singer he composed for Mireille Mathieu, Mireille Darc, and France Gall.

Jean Arnulf
(CHANTEURS ET CHANTEUSES)
8 Rue de Mouzaïa, 75019 Paris, France

In the 1950s Jean Arnulf worked as an actor in his native Lyon with Roger Planchon, and then at Jacques Fornier’s Théâtre de Bourgogne, in Beaune. He moved to Paris in 1963, where he performed in the cabarets of Montmartre and the Left Bank. He was awarded the Académie Charles Cros (Prix Révélation ou Premier album) in 1966 for his debut album, Point De Vue. He was married to the French actress and singer Martine Merri, who wrote many of Arnulf’s songs. In the 1980s, Arnulf focussed on French song broadcasts on a free radio station, 998 FM (now Canal 9).

Aime Doniat – Baritone
(ARTISTES LYRIQUES)
48 Rue du Général Brunet, 75019 Paris, France

Baritone Aime Doniat was a prolific recording artist, with a repertoire of operetta and French light songs. Born in Guelma (Algeria) in 1918 he was the first student at the Montpellier Conservatory to obtain 6 prizes in the same year. He was taken prisoner at the start of WW2, but managed to escape and return to France. Soon he was a popular voice on the radio and performed in revues at the theatre. In the 1950s he performed with the Radio Algérie opera troupe, and with the orchestras of Marcel Cariven and André Grassi. During the 1960s he released a number of albums on Jean Bonfanti’s label Vega.

Milosz Magin
(CHANTEURS ET CHANTEUSES)
31 Rue David d’Angers, 75019 Paris, France

Born in Lodz (Poland), Milosz Magin studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory and would go on to become an international concert pianist-composer. During the 1950s, he won prizes in several international competitions. From 1957 to 1959 he lived in London, and in 1960 he settled in Paris, where he taught the piano class at the Conservatoire Serge Rachmaninoff. His career as an internationally renowned pianist was interrupted by a serious car crash in 1963. Together with his wife he founded the International Piano Competition Milosz Magin, which takes place in Paris biennially. He died of a heart attack in 1999 and is buried next to Chopin’s grave in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery.

Maurice Porterat
(COMÉDIENS)
2 Av. de la Prte Brunet, 75019 Paris, France

A long and distinguished career in the theatre took actor Maurice Porterat from the music halls of Paris to the heights of the Comédie-Française, the oldest active theatre company in the world. In the 1930s as an accomplished mimic, singer and dancer he could be found rubbing shoulders with the chansonniers (the great all-rounders of the stage) at popular haunts such as the Le théâtre des 2 Anes. Although he made a few theatre appearances in the 1920s it was post WW2 that Porterat made a big impact in the theatre world, appearing in over 60 productions at the Comédie-Française. He acted in a handful of films but made a bigger impact as a dubbing artist, doubling French voices in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), The Thing from Another World (1951) and famously the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Gina Manès
(COMÉDIENNES)
18 Rue de Périgueux, 75019 Paris, France

Gina Manès began her career in Parisian variety shows before making her film debut in The Man Without a Face (1919), directed by Louis Feuillade. She then worked under the directors René Navarre and Jean Epstein, and rose to become one of the leading French screen stars over the course of the 1920s. She reached the peak of her popularity in 1927 as Joséphine de Beauharnais in Abel Gance’s film Napoleon. At the height of her fame, Gina Manès left France with her husband, actor Georges Charlia, to run a canteen and later an acting school in Morocco. She developed a tiger training act which she presented at the Cirque d’Hiver and Medrano Circus, but in 1942 one of the wild animals seriously injured her. Manès continued to act in films, though in lesser roles. Her last screen appearance was the heist movie Pas de panique in 1966. She died in 1989 and donated her body to science.

See an object related to Gina Manès HERE.

Jacques Krier
(REALISATEURS DE TELEVISION)
18 Rue de Périgueux, 75019 Paris, France

Jacques Krier was a French television film producer and director. A communist, he directed many mini-series of television documentaries about the living conditions of French workers, including janitors, as well as Arabs in French Algeria and immigrants from Mali. He was the author of several literary works and his novel, L’Idéale, won the 2000 Prix Roger Vailland. Krier joined the Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française in 1953, where he first worked as an assistant to Maurice Failevic. He directed a number of documentaries in the 1960s, including Cinq colonnes à la une, 40 000 voisins, Ouvriers noirs de Paris, and Mémoires d’un vieux quartier. It wasn’t all documentaries, he also directed the TV movies Un matin à Glisolles (1964), L’auto rouge (1964), and L’homme d’Orlu (1971).

Jo Moutet
(CHEFS D’ORCHESTRES)
22 Av. de la Prte Brunet, 75019 Paris, France

French accordionist, pianist, bandleader and composer Jo Moutet was born into a family of musicians. His father played the clarinet and accordion, while his mother was a pianist and singer. After studying at the Conservatoire de Lyon he started his career by hosting popular accordion balls. He moved to Paris, taking up residence at the Théâtre l’Européen, where he was the musical director for the operetta Baratin. He created a ballet with Charles Aznavour and he wrote an operetta with Marc Cab, SO6, a pastiche of James Bond. Moutet was the accompanist for many stars of the day including Lily Fayol, Caterina Valente, Antoine, Jacques Dutronc, Alice Dona, Georges Jouvin, Bourvil, Georges Guétary, Suzanne Gabriello and François Deguelt. Some of his best work can be heard on screen, film scores for Sale temps pour les mouches (1966), Béru et ces dames (1968), and Comme un pot de fraises!.. (1974), are much sought after by collectors.

Dominique Combette (poète)
26 Av. de la Prte Brunet, 75019 Paris, France

Portraitist, traveller, moralist, chronicler and critic, Dominique Combette was the winner of the Prix Émile Hinzelin in 1956 for his Le bol de jade poems. Created in 1945, the Prix Émile Hinzelin is an annual prize awarded to an author whose published verse conforms to the rules of French prosody, and demonstrates a love of France in their work. Combette published a number of poetic works including Orphée et les robots, in 1955, and was an editor for the famous literary and artistic review Les Soirées de Paris.