Schoolboy humor, legendary lines… Le Splendid, a café-theatre troupe formed in the early 1970s, has gone down in history with its cult film adaptations, “Les Bronzés” and “Le Père Noël est une ordure”.
Five men – Christian Clavier, Michel Blanc, Gérard Jugnot, Thierry Lhermitte and Bruno Moynot – and two women – Josiane Balasko and Marie-Anne Chazel – who would go on to lead successful solo careers.
But the seven friends remained very close and “friends for life”, the title of “Bronzés 3”.
The band would perhaps never have seen the light of day if Gérard Jugnot had not… repeated a class. It all begins in fact on the benches of the Pasteur high school in Neuilly, in a very chic Parisian suburb and in the excitement of May 68.
Friends since 5th grade and already crazy about cinema, Jugnot, the son of a plumber, and Clavier, the son of a doctor, become friends with Thierry Lhermitte and Michel Blanc, who died during the night from Thursday to Friday.
– “Rolled under the armpits” –
They put on their first shows, a little crazy. Schooled on the girls’ side, Marie-Anne Chazel quickly joined the party and soon became a couple with Christian Clavier.
With their baccalaureate in hand, they took drama lessons from actress Tsilla Chelton – the future “Auntie Danielle” – and in 1974 renovated a former pizzeria in Montparnasse to turn it into a café-theater, a little on the model of the Café de la Gare.
“Our first piece was called + My head is ill +, there were three people in the room!”, recalled Marie-Anne Chazel.
The troupe, called for a time “La Compagnie de la Turlutte”, adopted the name “Splendid” when it moved to rue des Lombards in 1976 in a former… banana ripening plant. They are now complete with the arrival of Josiane Balasko, who replaces Valérie Mairesse, and Bruno Moynot.
“We wanted to make a café-theater where we would be at home, not have to audition or be at the mercy of a director who could fire us, write whatever we wanted. We were a force, we was together”, Josiane Balasko recounted in July 2021 in Le Parisien.
After the lean cows, success arrived with “Amours, coquillages et crustaceans” (1977), a play inspired by memories at Club Med and transposed a year later to the cinema with “Les Bronzés”. The film has 2.3 million admissions…
“Les Bronzés sont du ski” did less well the following year – the film would become cult over time – but The Splendid succeeded in its plunge into the deep end of cinema.
He did it again with “Le Père Noël est une ordure” (1982), a new adaptation of their play released just after the permanent move, near the grand boulevards.
Zézette “wife
– “Contact case for 50 years!” –
The troupe then saw its last days as a “collective kolkhoz”, in the words of Gérard Jugnot. It became more difficult to write together. Michel Blanc was the first to slip away: “It wasn’t against my friends. I was wondering ‘do I exist or am I 1/7th of the Splendid?'”.
“That was the deal from the start: we moved forward together but everyone had their own career,” summed up Bruno Moynot, soon the only one to continue to manage the Splendid theater.
Until the big family reunion of “Bronzés 3” in 2006, we still found them in groups of 2, 3, or 4 on film sets or on stage.
With the “retrofits”, relations turned sour. As with Anémone and Dominique Lavanant, the beautician Christiane, who cut ties after “Bronzés 3”, her “worst filming memory”. “There was no more emotion at all, no more anything.”
The “historical channel” actors, however, remain united. And, in 2021, it’s the same people, still just as schoolboys, who come in groups to collect their honorary César rewarding the Splendid adventure. Their own Labor medal!
“We have been in contact for 50 years,” Gérard Jugnot summed up on stage.
