Philippe Clay

Born Philippe Mathevet on March 7, 1927, in Paris, France, Philippe Clay was a singer, actor, and mime. After serving military duty in the Second World War, he returned to France and enrolled at the Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique. There, he learned diction and mime and acted in several plays between 1945 and 1949. In 1950, he began a three-year stint at the Théâtre du Palais de Chaillot. Discovered in 1947 during a talent competition, he began to perform in cabarets before moving on to perform at Trois Baudets and La Fontaine des Quatre Saisons at the dawn of the 1950s. There, he would perform songs composed by then-unknown songwriter Charles Aznavour. Inspired by the success of French cancan films by Jean Renoir (1955) and the movie Notre-Dame-de-Paris (1956), he began befriending many of the literary and artistic characters of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Philippe Clay performed songs by Boris Vian, Jacques Prévert and other songwriters during his four appearances at the Olympia, two of which were recorded: Philippe Clay Á L’Olympia (1957) and A L’Olympia (1962). His recordings included Aznavour’s "Le Drowned Assassinated" (1954) and Jean-Pierre Moulin’s "Le Danseur de charleston" (1955) as well as “Festival d'Aubervilliers" (1956), "Julie la rousse" (1957), and Serge Gainsbourg’s "Avec ma gueule" and "Chanson pour tézigue." While his music career was building, Philippe Clay also appeared in many films during this period including Nathalie (1957), En bordée (1958), Bell, Book, and Candle (1958), Des femmes disparaissent (1959), The Bureaucrats (1959), and many others. His music success continued into the 1960s with duets with Serge Gainsbourg (1964) and “La Complainte des Apaches,” the theme song to the soap opera Les Brigades du Tigre in 1966. His controversial 1971 single “Mes Universités” became a great success and sold over a million copies, making it one of the most popular songs in his repertoire. After decades of success, his music and film careers came to a crawl in 1982. Philippe Clay died on December 13, 2007, at the age of 80.

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