Color Comes First (Chinese Edition)

Color Comes First (Chinese Edition)

Le Cirque Pinder Jean Richard / Region 2 PAL DVD / French / Pinder Cirque, Jean Richard / 90 minutes It was surely a On April 18, 1921, in Bessines, near Niort (France), Jean Richard (1921-2001) was born at a farm named "The Menagerie." His early encounters with circus performers (particularly Martha-la-Corse, a lion trainer) triggered in him an enduring passion for animals, especially big cats. When he was as young as ten years old, he was known to tell "When I grow up, I'll have a lion or a tiger in my garden!" In high school, Richard, who had a gift for drawing, began trying his hand at he would soon sell his cartoons to local newspapers. After World War II, Richard organized German tours for French theatrical companies. He began to make a name for himself performing in a famous postwar Parisian cabaret, L'Amiral. There he developed a successful comic character, that of a jovial and na?ve peasant from the small imaginary village of Champignol. He also began to work as an actor—in the movies, in the theater, and in comedies that were sometimes a little cheap. During his long career, he appeared in about eighty films. His ever-growing popularity allowed him to purchase a vast property in Ermenonville, north of Paris, where he began to gather all sorts of wild animals. His menagerie quickly reached impressive proportions. In order to continue maintaining it, he had to open it to the public in 1956. His private zoological collection, the Zoo d'Ermenonville, became the most important in the country. His passion for the circus never abated, though. An amateur animal trainer, he presented, in 1955, Rolf Knie's group of African elephants at the Cirque Medrano in Paris. The following year, he presented the liberty horse-act of Alexis Gruss at the Gala de l'Union des Artistes. (The Gala de l'Union, as it was known, was a "circus of the stars" type of event—an extremely chic Parisian fundraising event benefiting elderly actors.)