Paris, Cabaret, and Folies Pigalle
An Excerpt From My Memoirs
Jean-Claude Merle opened “La Boite ā Merle,” with showman-actor Jean-Marie Rivière and Robert Auboynaud, a journalist, part of the team.
Jean-Claude Merle (who claimed my father had made him my surrogate guardian) hired me as a stage manager-actor.
Roaming improbably out-of-the-way locations with film director Claude Chabrol in search of bizarre talent, we found an extraordinary company of old actors and actresses who had never worked, of singers who couldn’t sing, and of dancers who couldn’t dance.
They performed the works of playwrights—whose plays had never been staged—in the large upstairs room of a Pigalle café. We hired them all and brought them to our club, which was instantly hugely successful, opening around 9PM and often remaining open until 8AM the next morning.