Friday, September 18, 2020

RIP Roger Carel

 


Death of the actor, legend of French dubbing, Roger Carel

The actor of theater and cinema was one of the great dubbing in France. He was the voice of Asterix, the droid C-3PO from "Star Wars" or the serpent Kaa from "The Jungle Book" ... He died on September 11, at the age of 93.

Le Monde

By Stéphanie Pierre

September 18, 2020

He was the voice of Asterix and that of the droid C-3PO in the Star Wars sagaRoger Carel, one of the great dubbing in France, died on September 11, at the age of 93, and was buried in the strictest privacy in Villejesus in Charente, Thursday, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) his son Nicolas.

His real name Roger Bancharel, Roger Carel was born August 14, 1927 in Paris. His childhood is marked by his years of pension spent in the severe college Saint-Nicolas, in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine), where students are only allowed to speak during recess. Roger Carel already finds the opportunity to develop his comic talent. By imitating the voice of his teachers, he provokes the hilarity of his comrades. Despite his entertaining side, he discovered, after these years of religious education, a vocation for the priesthood, to the point of entering the minor seminary, before changing his mind. To please his father, an employee of the CMP, ancestor of the RATP, he then enrolled at the Central Electricity School, but ultimately only spent a few months there; the desire to play the pincer.

 

Helped by his aunt Jeanne, Roger Carel meets Jean Marchat, co-director of the Parisian theater of Mathurins. On the advice of this one, he enrolled in the drama course of Andrée Bauer-Thérond, where he rubbed shoulders with Michel Piccoli, Anouk Aimée, Françoise Arnoul, then during Simon until 1949. He began on boards in La Dame aux camélias, in 1950, then in Les Femmes savantes, with the company Noël Vincent. Roger Carel then took part in the tour of the play Le Petit Café in North Africa alongside Albert Préjean. On his return, he joined the Grenier-Hussenot company, with which he performed plays for seven years.

From the theater to the big and small screen

From 1952, the first cinema contracts multiplied. He appears in Le Vieil Homme et l'Enfant (1967), by Claude Berri, Elle cause plus… elle flingue (1972), by Michel Audiard, Papy fait de la resistance (1983), by Jean-Marie Poiré. He never stops playing. “In one day, we went from a recording studio to a movie or TV set. In the evening, we were at the cabaret or the theater. " In 1959, he participated in nearly 1000 performances of Gog and Magog at the Theater of Michodière in Paris, alongside Francois Perier and Jacqueline Maillan. On television, he notably plays Commissioner Guerchard in the Arsène Lupine series , aired in the early 1970s.

Roger Carel refuses to enter the Comédie-Française on two occasions, under the administration of Pierre Descaves and then Maurice Escande. "Stability, too much security leading to monotony, even in the event of alternation, did not suit my temperament" , he admits in his autobiography, I admit that I laughed well (JC Lattès, 1986).

His debut in dubbing

It was by chance that Roger Carel made his debut in dubbing. In 1954, after a performance of Robert Hossein's play Limited Responsibility, at the Fontaine Theater, a spectator approached him. His voice corresponding to that of a character played by Peter Lorre. He offers him to dub the actor in the musical La Belle de Moscow (1958), by Rouben Mamoulian. “Being a voice actor is the opposite of acting. You have to forget what you can do. There is no question, as in the theater or the cinema, of putting a role to your measure. You must honestly reproduce someone else's work. I always took it as a game, ” says the French voice of Benny Hill and Hercule Poirot.

Thanks to this mischievous and changeable voice, capable of taking on all accents, he is approached by Disney and becomes inseparable from around forty cartoon characters, such as the Kaa snake from the Jungle Book . In Winnie the Pooh, he manages to play both the famous little bear and Coco Rabbit and Piglet at the same time. Alf in the eponymous television series, Kermitt the frog from the "Muppet Show", Fred Flintstones, Maestro in the Once Upon a Time ... series, or even the droid C-3PO from the Star Wars saga are all characters to which Roger Carel lends his voice.

From 1967, he is the voice of Asterix in the animated adaptations. “It was Goscinny who guided me to the voice of this painful little Frenchman, who discusses and disputes. He wished him charming… but sensitive! " In 2013, he announced that Asterix plays for the last time in The Mansions of the Gods . “I had a wonderful job, I had the chance to play a lot. Theater, television, dubbing. And when we have happiness, we age less quickly, but we get older ... "

 

CAREL, Roger (Roger Henri Eli Bancharel)

Born: 8/14/1927, Paris, Île-de-France, France

Died: 9/11/2020, Aigre, Charente, France

 

Roger Carel’s westerns – voice actor, dubber:

The Man from Nowhere – 1966 [French voice of Roberto Camardiel]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – 1969 [French voice of Strother Martin]

Lucky Luke: Daisy Town – 1971 [French voice of the Mathias Bones, cavalry colonel, vulture]

Lucky Luke: The Ballad of the Daltons – 1978 [Ming Foo Lee, Mathias Bones]

Zorro (TV) - 1981 [Sergeant Gonzales)

Lucky Luke: The Daltons on the Run – 1983 [Jolly Jumper, Winston Van Ogan]

Lucky Luke (TV) – 1983-1984 [Jolly Jumper, Frank James]

Asterix in America – 1994 [French voice of Astérix]

Davy Crockett (TV) – 1994 [French voice of Sheriff Brady]

True Grit – 2010 [French voice of Colonel Stonehill]

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