Félix Galipaux

Félix Galipaux(1860-1931) was a French actor, playwright, and humorist. He was known for his comic stage monologues, such as 'Communication Téléphonique' (1906). A few of these monologues were recorded.


French postcard in the Series Collection Artistique du Vin Désiles by S.I.P. Photo: Pergné. Caption: He who invented you, excellent Vin des Iles, was the great benefactor of mankind. I tell him the truth, he put the ten thousand(s) right in.


French postcard by Théâtre de l'Athénée, Paris. Photo: Boyer. Félix Galipaux in 'Le Boute-en-Train' (1908), a vaudeville play by Alfred Athis.


French Caricature postcard. Félix Galipaux, caricature by Zim. Eugene ‘Zim’ Zimmerman was a Swiss-born American cartoonist (1862-1935), who initially worked for Puck but from 1885 until his retirement in 1912 worked for Judge.

Subjects of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Félix Galipaux was born Félix Martin in Bordeaux in 1860 to unknown parents. He was recognised by his mother, Louise Fénélon-Galipaux, in 1866 and educated in Bordeaux and Paris. After winning first prize at the Paris Conservatoire, he preferred to go to the Palais-Royal theatre rather than the Comédie-Française. He then moved from the Palais-Royal to the Renaissance theatre.

He also wrote some forty plays produced in Parisian theatres. These were boulevardières plays, comedies, sketches, monologues and fantasies. He was also a newspaper columnist using the pseudonym Félix Mayran and collaborated with the writer Henri Pagat under the joint pseudonym Pagalipaux.

Galipaux and the actor Coquelin Cadet popularised the genre of music hall monologue acts in the 1880s. He and Gabrielle Réjane, in character as their roles in the play 'Madame Sans-Gêne, are the subjects of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's 1893 lithograph 'Réjane et Galipaux dans "Madame Sans-Gêne"'. Galipaux was also one of the founding members of the Cercle Funambulesque and was linked to the Incoherents movement.

In 1896 or 1897, the pioneering filmmaker Charles-Émile Reynaud filmed Galipaux performing his popular routine 'Le Premier Cigare'. The film, Le premier cigare / The First Cigar (Charles-Émile Reynaud, 1897) took six months to make.

Le premier cigare / The First Cigar was produced using Reynaud's complex process — requiring a negative to be filmed at 16 frames per second, selected frames of which were then developed and enlarged onto gelatine sheets and stencil-coloured to create a sequence running at three or four frames per second. The now-lost film, possibly depicted a schoolboy smoking his first cigar.


French postcard by Eclair in the Vaudeville series, no. 55. Photo: Nadar.


French postcard. André Lefaur, Louis Verneuil, André Alerme, Denise Grey, Félix Galipaux, Darzac and Gaby Morlay in the stage comedy 'Mademoiselle ma mère', performed at the Théâtre Femina in Paris in 1920, and starring Morlay as Jacqueline. Galipaux played the maître d'hôtel.

Hardly perceptible, but extraordinarily suggestive!

Félix Galipaux later acted in films by Ferdinand Zecca such as Le premier cigare du collégien (1902), and by Georges Méliès, such as Le Raid Paris-Monte Carlo en deux heures / An Adventurous Automobile Trip (Georges Méliès, 1905). In the latter, a man needs to get to Monte Carlo from Paris but finds out that a train will take 17 hours to get there. He decides to go with a man with a special car, who claims that he can get there in just two hours.

Like many of Méliès' fantastic films, there is a mix of animation, miniatures, painted backdrops, and optical effects. The cast includes members of the Folies Bergères, where the film was originally shown. At 13 minutes and packed with Folies Bergères celebrities, the film was an 'event' for the time and a big hit, but its cost limited distribution and untimely Méliès did not make as much money as he hoped.

The historian Georges Sadoul reported that Pathé Frères featured Galipaux in some of the first French sound films, such as La Lettre (1904) and Au Telephone (1905). Galipaux also made several spoken-word recordings for gramophone records. In the early 1910s, Galipaux did a few more films for Pathé, including Un monsieur qui a un tic (Albert Capellani, 1911) and Gorgibus et Sganarelle (Camille de Morlhon, 1912). His last part was in the Suzanne Grandais vehicle Lorena (Georges Tréville, 1918).

Georges Méliès said that Galipaux was one of the few stage-trained actors who adapted well to the cinema, because "he knows how to make himself understood without speaking, and his movements, even if deliberately exaggerated — which is necessary in pantomime and especially in photographed pantomime — are always appropriate." Méliès also reported that it was the monologues of Galipaux and Coquelin that inspired the comic style of his own productions.

Galipaux himself said about the art of comic pantomime: "The mime certain of pleasing the public is the one whose means are simple and varied, his gestures restrained, hardly perceptible, but extraordinarily suggestive!" For his work, Galipaux was awarded the title of Officier de l'Instruction Publique in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Félix Galipaux was married to Jeanne Lipmann. Galipaux died in Paris in 1931. He is buried in the 93rd division, under a monument decorated with his bronze bust, in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.


French postcard by ELD (Ed. Le Deley) GPL. Photo: Bert. Félix Galipaux as Le Merle (The Blackbird) in the play 'Chantecler' (1910). 'Chantecler premiered on 7 February 1910 at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris, with Lucien Guitry in the title role. Edmond Rostand wrote the play.


French postcard by ELD (Ed. Le Deley), no. 87. Félix Galipaux in the French stage play 'Chantecler' (1910), written by Edmond Rostand.

Sources: Wikipedia (English and French) and IMDb.