Charles Deburau
French actor · France · On the map · Actors · Lived 1829 to 1873 · aged 44
Jean-Charles Deburau was an important French mime, the son and successor of the legendary Jean-Gaspard Deburau, who was immortalized as Baptiste the Pierrot in Marcel Carné's film Children of Paradise (1945).
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Nadar: Charles Deburau as Pierrot, c. 1855
The Théâtre des Funambules in its last year on the Boulevard du Temple. Deburau stars in The Golden Bough, 1862.
Portrait of Deburau by Jean Pezous
Louis Rouffe as Pierrot, c. 1880, in Séverin, L'Homme Blanc (Paris, 1929)
Séverin as Pierrot, c. 1896, in Séverin, L'Homme Blanc (Paris, 1929)
Happichy: Séverin in Mendès's Chand d'habits!, poster of 1896About this person
After his father's death in 1846, Charles kept alive his pantomimic legacy, first in Paris, at the Théâtre des Funambules, and then, beginning in the late 1850s, at theaters in Bordeaux and Marseille. He is routinely credited with founding a southern "school" of pantomime; indeed, he served as tutor to the Marseille mime Louis Rouffe, who, in turn, gave instruction to Séverin Cafferra, known simply as "Séverin". But their art was nourished by the work of other mimes, particularly of Charles's rival, Paul Legrand, and by earlier developments in nineteenth-century pantomime that were alien to the Deburaux' traditions.
