Marcel Marceau : Master of mime

 French mime artist. He was a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur and received many other honours.

Born in Strasbourg, Marceau began his career as a member of Jean-Louis Barrault's company in 1945. In 1946, however, he began to devote himself entirely to mime, appearing for the first time as the white-faced Bip, a character he developed from the French nineteenth-century Pierrot, at the Théâtre de Poche, Paris. As Bip, the central character of many of his sketches, he gained universal recognition and acclaim. He directed his own company (1948–64) and toured the world on numerous occasions.

Marceau also created several mime-dramas, including Mort avant l'aube (1947) and Le Manteau (1951), based on Gogol, and several pantomimes. His Don Juan was produced at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris (1964) and the ballet Candide at the Hamburg Opera House (1971). Other notable performances included Jardin public (1949), in which he played ten characters. In 1978 he founded the École de Mimodrame de Paris at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, but he remained mostfamous for his solo mimes, of which he sometimes gave three hundred performances a year. 

Marcel Marceau died on September 22, 2007, at the age of 84. His personal assistant, and former student Alexander Neander, announced the news to the world.

The world-renowned mime artist died in the southwestern French town of Cahors, where he had moved after retiring from the stage in 2005. No cause of death was given at the time and almost 15 years later further details surrounding his death have still not been made 

HE HELPED SMUGGLE JEWISH CHILDREN OUT OF NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

Marcel Marceau was born to a Jewish family on March 22, 1923, in Strasbourg, France. His family name was Mangel but he changed it to Marceau and moved to Paris with false papers after the Nazis invaded France to avoid being identified as Jewish. His father was deported to a concentration camp by the Germans in 1944 where he was killed.

Until the liberation of Paris, Marcel worked in the Resistance, hiding Jewish children from the Gestapo and the French police, who helped round up Jews for deportation. Along with his cousin Georges Loinger, he smuggled Jewish children across the border into Switzerland.

Marcel used mime to keep the children relaxed and quiet during the high-risk missions and ultimately saved at least 

In 1947, Marcel Marceau created one of the most recognizable characters in history, Bip the Clown. The iconic character wore a striped shirt, white face paint, and a battered tophat with a flower in it. He traveled the world entertaining huge crowds without uttering a HITC on Twitter