Marie Dubas

Performer of the classic "Mon légionnaire", Marie Dubas was one of France's greatest music-hall stars. Born in Paris into a family of Polish Jewish origin on September 3, 1894, she made her stage debut at the age of fourteen, in 1908, and set her sights on opera and operetta. After dance lessons and studies in singing and acting at the Conservatoire d'art dramatique, Marie Dubas appeared alongside Yvonne Printemps in the operetta L'Amour masqué by Sacha Guitry and André Messager (1923), and the following year in La Danse des libellules after Franz Lehár at the Bataclan. However, vocal cord problems reduced her range and forced her to convert to popular song. Marie Dubas thus turned to the cabarets of Montmartre, and distinguished herself in a whimsical style at the Revue Wagram at the Folies-Wagram in 1928. The creator of such classics as "Le Doux caboulot", based on a text by Francis Carco (1931), and "Mon légionnaire" by Raymond Asso and Marguerite Monnot (1936), Marie Dubas established herself as one of the leading figures of pre-war music-hall, and her success led to five appearances at the ABC, the Casino de Paris and Bobino. At once a realist and a singer of humorous tunes, an excellent stage performer with suggestive postures and a high-pitched timbre, the interpreter of "Tango stupéfiant" (1936), who toured America in 1938 and went into exile in Switzerland during the Second World War, for which she was banned from the French airwaves, resumed her career on the ABC stage on January 19, 1945, where she was greeted with triumph. Due to health problems, her appearances then became rarer, at the reopening of the Paris Olympia in 1954 and the following year with Damia, before she retired on May 12, 1958. In Quebec, where she performed at the end of her career, her 1933 "Prière de la Charlotte" was a classic. A source of inspiration for Édith Piaf, who gave her own versions of "Mon légionnaire", "Le Fanion de la Légion" and "Monsieur est parti en voyage", Marie Dubas continued to record, notably "La Chanson de Marguerite ", and to sing on the radio, but suffered from Parkinson's disease in her final years. She died in Paris on February 21, 1972 at the age of 77.

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