Michel Philippe-Gérard

Michel Philippe-Gérard , often just Philippe-Gérard , actually Philippe Bloch , (born September 13, 1924 in São Paulo , Brazil , † May 18, 2014 in Paris ) was a French orchestra leader, pianist , conductor , composer and songwriter. As a composer, he wrote for major French stars of the 1950s and 1960s such as Édith Piaf , Yves Montand , Juliette Gréco and Jeanne Moreau . His compositions Tango Magique and Le Chevalier de Paris , as When the World Was Young , became international successes. He wrote music for numerous film and television productions, including Rififi , one of the great films noirs of the era. In the late 1960s he caused a stir when he claimed the copyright for the Frank Sinatra world hit Strangers in the Night .

Live and act

Philippe-Gérard first studied music in France and was a student of Maurice Ravel , among others . During the Second World War he sought exile in Switzerland. In Geneva he met the French poet and writer Francis Carco , who had also escaped the war , with whom he wrote the first songs for Germaine Montero and Renée Lebas .

After the war he returned to France, where he was involved in the production of musicals and recorded his first record with his orchestra. He also wrote his first chanson for Édith Piaf . Through Piaf he met Yves Montand , for whom he composed the hits Le Chat de la voisine and Rengaine ta rengaine et surtout La Chansonnette . In the following years he wrote numerous other songs for many well-known performers such as Juliette Gréco , Eddie Constantine , Sacha Distel and Jeanne Moreau . On the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, he composed the song Oktober for the Soviet Red Army in Moscow . His composition Le Chevalier de Paris for Édith Piaf achieved international fame , which, with a text by Johnny Mercer as When the World Was Young, was included in the repertoire of Frank Sinatra (1961), Aretha Franklin and many others.

From the 1950s to the 1980s he also composed numerous film scores . In 1955, he contributed the song Le Rififi to the worldwide success of Rififi , which was interpreted by Lucienne Delyle . In addition to numerous films that were not distributed internationally, he also wrote the original music for Paradise of Love (1956, original title: Folies-Bergère ), Sunday friends (1958, original title: Les copains du dimanche ), Like father, like son ( 1963, original title: Bébert et l'omnibus ), The gentle man with the quick legs (1978, original title: La carapate ), Life is a novel (1983, original title: La vie est un roman ) and Mélo (1986). He also created the music for six episodes of the Franco-German television series Attention Customs! which aired in 1980.

In 1967, his conflict with the German composer Bert Kaempfert over the copyright for the world success Strangers in the Night attracted attention. Gérard complained that the melody for Strangers in the Night was borrowed from his Tango Magique (English title: The Magic Tango ), which he had published in 1953 through the New York music publisher Chappell Music and which at the time was written by Tino Rossi and Eddie Fisher , among others . 1954 together with Hugo Winterhalter , was interpreted. The latter reached number 22 in the US hit parade. In April 1971 a Paris court ruled that "many songs are based on similar constant factors" and ruled the matter in Kaempfert's favor, releasing him from royalties that had been frozen in an escrow account and accumulated in the millions.

His son Didier Philippe-Gérard , born in 1949, achieved prominence in France as a director of pornographic films . His daughter Catherine Philippe-Gérard worked as a writer and singer.

Web links

• Works by and about Michel Philippe-Gérard in the catalog of the German National Library
• Michel Philippe-Gérard in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Frédérick Blais: Philippe-Gérard , Les auteurs et compositeurs de la chanson francophone, February 11, 2002 (biography)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Charge is Holding Up "Strangers" Royalties , Billboard , April 15, 1967, p. 52
2. ↑ we7 - Tino Rossi - Tango Magique - Listen Free ( Memento of the original from August 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (30 second excerpt from the original version)
3. ^ Writer Loses "Strangers" Case , Billboard , Apr 17, 1971, p. 50
4. ^ Kai Sichtermann : Kultsongs & Evergreens. 55 hits and their story . Parthas-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86964-029-7 , here p. 240 f .; Marc Boettcher: Stranger in the Night. The Bert Kaempfert story. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-434-50523-7 , pp. 189 ff.
5. ^ Didier Philippe-Gérard. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 . 
6. ^ Catherine Philippe-Gérard. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .