Friday, June 17, 2011

Dranem Smiling, 1910

One of many postcards featuring 'Dranem,' French music hall, operetta, and cinema star (1869-1935). His real name was Armand Ménard; his stage name being an anagram of this last. His film career began in 1902, in the Gaumont silent film, "Bonsoir m'sieurs dames," directed by Alice Guy, and lasted through the early thirties. His specialty was comic songs. You can see him lip-syncing one of them, 'Five O'Clock Tea,' in this 1905 YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyQkmo9fUpM&feature=related

The 'high water' pants and peculiar too-small suiting Dranem favored were a trademark: one imagines a sort of Francophone Peewee Herman.

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