In Search of Footit and Chocolat

[post 263]

I'm always on the lookout for rare footage of clowns from the early days of film, so I was excited to see an 1899 clip of Footit & Chocolat surface, even if it is only 42 seconds. (Thanks to Pat Cashin for the link!) Here's how I began my section on this legendary clown duo in my book Clowns:

"The popularity that the auguste clown enjoyed by the turn of the century may be attributed primarily to the extraordinary success of the clown-auguste team of Footit (1864-1921) and Chocolat (Raphael Padilla; died 1917). Their performances revealed, as none had before, the character contrasts and comedic potential inherent in the combination of the whiteface clown and the silly auguste."

When Italian film director Federico Fellini produced his semi-documentary, I Clowns (1970), he had some modern clowns play their great predecessors in several classic clown scenes, including this one of Footit & Chocolat. (The old man in the audience is portraying the clown James Guyon, who escaped from his hospital death bed to catch one last performance at the Nouveau Cirque, but the excitement led to a heart attack that killed him — or so the story goes.)

These attempts at historical reenactment did not convince French circus historians L. -R . Dauven and Jacques Garnier:

Is it not a mockery of the public to try to ask some of today's clowns whose talent is not in question to try to recreate the Fratellini trio? The scene — set in an insane asylum, for no particular reason — is unbearable. François, who was grace itself, has become a clumsy lout in the hideous mask of wickedness. Does this serve the truth? Antonet is no more "real," nor is Footit, who plays "Je cherche après Titine," a song composed well after his death, when another was clearly suggested: "A la maison, nous n'irons plus..."
(Cirque dans l'Univers, #81)

So here's the real thing, "Chaise en Bascule" (Rocking Chair), as shot by those pioneers of early film, the Lumière Brothers, in 1899. Presumably this was never seen by Fellini, otherwise he would have used it as is instead of bothering with a re-enactment. Since Footit & Chocolat worked together from 1886 through at least 1910, this clip would be mid-career.




Last and hopefully not least, here's the complete section on Footit & Chocolat from my Clowns book:

FOOTIT AND CHOCOLAT

The popularity that the auguste clown enjoyed by the turn of the century may be attributed primarily to the extraordinary success of the clown-auguste team of Footit (1864-1921) and Chocolat (died 1917), first at the Hippodrome du Champ de Mars (1894-1898), and subsequently at the Nouveau Cirque. Their performances revealed, as none had before, the character contrasts and comedic potential inherent in the combination of the whiteface clown and the silly auguste.


George Footit was a British equestrian, acrobat, and clown who became a part of the circus world at an early age as an apprentice to his father's Great Footit Allied Circus. He went on to perform with Sanger's Circus (the largest in England), whose route eventually took him to France, where he decided to become a clown after losing his horse in a card game. By the 1880s, he had already become one of the most famous whiteface clowns.

Footit reunited the great twin traditions of the talking and acrobatic clown. He could dazzle audiences either with his somersaults or his way with words — in English or in fractured French. He was particularly noted for his parody, in drag, of the circus equestrienne. He shared Billy Hayden's bizarre sense of humor and, like Hayden, Footit attempted to add new material to the clown's repertoire. According to his memoirs, however, he practically had resigned himself to performing traditional routines because he lacked a partner with whom he could explore new areas of clowning. He was to find the ideal auguste partner in Chocolat, a Cuban black born Raphael Padilla in Havana. Padilla was orphaned at an early age and sold into the service of a rich European, who took young Raphael back with him to Portugal. As a teenager, Padilla ran away to Bilbao, where he was discovered performing feats of strength for his friends in a cabaret by none other than Tony Grice. Grice brought him to Paris, where Padilla was employed both as the family servant and in the ring.


Padilla had no circus experience and was unskilled as an acrobat, but he soon was to become well known for his performance as the victimized auguste in Grice's popular entree, The Train Station. He was to imbue the auguste with his own idiosyncrasies to such a degree that Perrodil felt that Chocolat had created a new type of auguste who might henceforth bear his name — a "chocolat" rather than an "auguste." Later Chocolat left Grice to team up with Footit, with whom he fully developed his concept of the auguste.

Chocolat's auguste was a would-be man of the world, a fool attempting to appear dignified but rarely getting away with it. It was reasoned that if the auguste were meant to be on the receiving end of all the slaps and kicks, then these blows would be more amusing if the auguste were an impeccable gentleman. Accordingly, Chocolat's costume consisted of polished shoes, silk stockings, satin breeches, a red jacket with a flower in the buttonhole, and a stylish hat. Footit, on the other hand, was noted for his ugliness, which he cultivated and exaggerated with his many grimaces. With his conical hat, red lips, and the heavy eyebrows that accentuated his frequent frowns, he became the prototype of the authoritarian whiteface clown. "To think," their biographer wrote of Chocolat, "that this gentleman, who was so chic, was destined to be a victim of the impertinent slaps of the clown in multicolored tights, whitened face, and conical hat!"


Footit's bullying of Chocolat was almost totally arbitrary, a slapstick equivalent of a harsh social order. There was no real reason for the punishment and no need for the master to give a reason. "Monsieur Chocolat, I shall be obliged to slap you!" Footit angrily approaches Chocolat and repeats his message: "I warn you, Monsieur Chocolat, if you took something from me, I shall be obliged to slap you." He searches Chocolat's pockets and, satisfied that nothing is there, nevertheless says, "Monsieur Chocolat, I see that you have not taken anything from me, but I am going to slap you, because I believe that you took something!"

According to one contemporary commentator, their little dramas were open to all sorts of interpretations:


They each have their own character, which the public is familiar with beforehand: Footit is the despotic master, pigheaded, with an intelligence that is narrow-minded on some points, but quite good on others; ill-natured, goading, cowardly toward his superiors, bossy around those below him. Chocolat on the other hand is the hapless Negro scapegoat who obeys without complaining, but who still acts lazy and whose impassive mask leaves the spectator vague as to whether he has before him an absolute fool without a brain in his head, or an intelligent but unfortunate individual who is aware of his moral forfeiture, who understands everything, but says nothing, because . . . he knows it would not do any good! 


Sometimes Chocolat possessed the same naivete that we already have seen in Hayden's auguste partner. Another riddle:
FOOTIT: Listen to this, Chocolat, and try to guess the answer. Do you know anyone who is my mother's and father's child and who isn't my brother and isn't my sister . you can't guess? Someone who isn't my brother or my sister, and yet is the child of my father and mother . it's me!
CHOCOLAT: (Admiring this riddle, lie decides to try it on an equestrian,) It isn't my brother and isn't my sister and yet it is the child of my mother and father — who is it?
EQUESTRIAN: It's you.
CHOCOLAT: Not at all — it's Footit.


Footit and Chocolat were most noted not for these fairly traditional exchanges but for their parodies. Their originality was such that more than one critic maintained that Footit deserved to be taken seriously as a dramatist in his own right. Their repertoire included Grice's The Train Station, but what one writer labeled "a banal satire on the different social classes" took on a whole new dimension in the hands of Footit and Chocolat "because it was expressed with a feeling for irony, oppositions, contrasts, and delicately varied finesses." Footit's parody, "the death of Sarah Bernhardt," came close to being censored by the circus management, until the great lady herself showed up and found it quite hilarious.


Equally popular was their parody of the Montmartre chansonniers, whom we may imagine Footit found somewhat lacking in imagination. Advancing to the center of the ring, Footit solemnly bows and informs the patrons that he is about to sing "La Petite Maison." He then announces "first couplet" and begins his song:


A la maison nous n'irons plus,
A la maison nous n'irons pas,
A la maison nous n'irons jamais pas,
A la maison nous n'irons plus.
A la maison nous n'irons plus,
A la maison nous n'irons pas...

Chocolat approaches, his curiosity aroused, but Footit just keeps singing. Chocolat shows signs of impatience. He strikes Footit on the shoulder. Footit continues singing. Chocolat hits him harder. Footit stops singing long enough to slap Chocolat. Starting over, he again announces the first couplet and goes right on singing:


A la maison nous n'irons plus,
A la maison nous n'irons pas.


Again Chocolat approaches Footit, this time giving him a soft kick. Each successive kick is a bit harder. Ten kicks, 'twenty kicks, a hundred kicks, first with the right leg, then with the left all the while the imperturbable Footit never takes any notice, never for an instant interrupts his musical rendition — until Chocolat finally collapses from sheer exhaustion. Now Footit pauses, notices Chocolat on the ground, and gazes at him disdainfully. After an apologetic gesture to the audience, he again bows and announces the first couplet:


A la maison nous n'irons plus,
A la maison nous n'irons pas,
A la maison nous n'irons jamais pas.


At least two people are needed to carry Footit out of the ring. And still he keeps on singing. 


In order to see just one performance of Footit and Chocolat, in 1911 a very ill James Guyon — the "vrai gugusse" of the 1880s — slipped past his nurse, put on his clothes, sneaked away from the hospital, and ran off to the Nouveau Cirque. He enjoyed their act immensely but, so the story goes, all the excitement led to a heart attack that took his life.

"La Strada" Comes to the Stage

[post 208]

Federico Fellini's 1954 Academy-Award-winning, neo-realist film, La Strada, starring Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina (Fellini's wife), is one of my all-time favorites. The brutal depiction of a marginal showman's life, the stunning black & white cinematography, and the compelling acting of Quinn, Masina, and of Richard Basehart in the role of "the fool" all hold up very well indeed nearly a half century later. The clown's power to satirize  —and the limits of that power — struck a strong chord with me then that still rings true today. And according to our good friend Wikipedia, the movie was a source of inspiration for Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee."

Although the beautifully photographed roads and small towns of rural Italy play a key role in Fellini's story, this remains essentially a three-person drama, and thus suitable for stage adaptation. An attempt at a Broadway musical flopped way back in 1969, but a current NYC Spanish-language production directed by René Buch and Jorge Merced received good reviews and won some awards earlier this year, and is now back for another run through December 4th at the TBG Theatre.

Gerard Vazquez's stage adaptation is more of a clown show than a road show, setting the main plot as a story within a story, a tale concocted by three clowns who could be right out of Waiting for Godot. Once the main plot gets going, one of those clowns morphs into "the fool," the wirewalker and clown who cannot resist taunting the neanderthal strongman Zampano.

The dramaturgy gets a bit creaky at times, and I'm not sure it works as well as intended, but then it's hard to match the tragic dimensions of Fellini's epic. The clowning dominates the action well into the second act, and shows itself up to the task. With additional direction by clown consultant Audrey Crabtree, the trio of Winston Estevez, Maria Peyramaure, and Israel Ruiz prove themselves very adept at keeping the ball rolling as they play off one another as if they'd been on the road together for a very long time. Ruiz is also the wirewalker/fool and his animated (and award-winning) performance is worth the price of admission. Although not a clown by training, he's a gifted comic actor who uses all of his body all the time and keeps the show at a high energy.

Here are a couple of trailers. Sorry, no subtitles on the clips; the show is performed in Spanish but there are English supertitles projected onto a stage-right screen, which makes it easy enough to follow.







For more information and to order tickets, check out the company's web site here.

New Shoes: Today's Clowns in Europe

[post 116]

Finally a serious documentary about clowning!

But first some historical perspective:

When famed film director Federico Fellini produced I Clowns for Italian television in 1970, he created a pseudo-documentary, part nostalgia, part fantasy that seduced much of the public but offended many in the world of European clowning.  Fellini's premise was that clowning was dead, a conclusion he apparently came to before doing any serious research.

Somehow Fellini with all his resources could not even find any footage of classic clowns. Instead we get a futile visit to an archive to see a short clip of the great clown Rhum, only to have the film reel start to burn up in the projector. Clearly the past was lost. 

He either did not know or it did not fit his preconceived notions to mention that there was lots of footage of Charlie Rivel, that Grock's entire one-man show had been caught on film more than once, and that this very same Rhum had co-starred in a series of short films with Jacques Tati in the 30s! 

Enuf said, but if you want more on the controversy, here's the reaction the Fellini film got from the writers of the publication, Cirque dans l'Univers (#81):
Fellini'sClowns



Now comes along a new film that attempts to update clown history by covering performers in Europe who it credits with saving a lost art.  Here's their synopsis:

New Shoes: Today’s Clowns in Europe is a unique and original documentary about clowns of the turn of the century, from Carlo Colombaioni up to the present. It offers a vision of the contemporary clown from the point of view of the most renowned figures of the genre, who show us how they think and act, onstage and off. Through the play of two young clowns, we discover how these actors and the clowns they incarnate face the different aspects of life.

And here's their trailer for it:

The good news is that you can now see a short (54-minute) segment of the documentary on the web. Fundraising is continuing so as to release a full-length, 84-minute version on DVD, complete with special features.

Based on what I've seen, this is a substantial piece of work.  Although I might question the premise that just a few decades ago clowning was dead, only to be rescued by this film's featured performers, what it does do is provide insight into a significant development in the history of clowning: the migration of the clown not only from the circus to the theatre, but into our political and social fabric, as evidenced by such welcome phenomena as hospital clowning, more women in clowning, and Clowns without Borders.

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“The circus would give you 10 minutes and I wanted 2 hours.” 
— Carlo Colombaioni

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What I like most about the film is that it lets the clowns speak for themselves — performers and teachers such as Philippe Gaulier, Jango Edwards, Leo Bassi, Johnny Melville, Gardi Hutter, Peter Shub, Slava Polunin, Carlo Colombaioni, and many more — and they are all quite eloquent on issues of creativity, career, gender, and the essence of being a clown. What seems missing in this shorter version and I would hope to see in the final movie are more and longer performance clips.  I've seen a lot of these artists perform, but many potential viewers haven't.  I think there's a need for more evidence of what this new movement in clowning looks like, even granted that the best clowning can not be fully captured on video.

Though a documentary such as this only scratches the surface of a complex subject, I'm pretty sure you will find this work well worth your time.  And now you can view the 54-minute version at the clownbaret.tv web site by clicking here.

TECH NOTE:  I had problems getting the movie to stream when using the Firefox browser, but it worked fine with the Chrome browser.  It may have been network traffic rather than the browser, but if you have problems, try Chrome.

Like the movie, appreciate the great effort, want to help them complete the final version? Then consider making a donation at the clownbaret web site.