Georgius

Singer, songwriter, actor and writer, Georges August Charles Guibourg dit Georgius was born in Mantes-la-Ville on June 3, 1891. The son of a schoolteacher and journalist, he grew up in Paris and took piano lessons, before working in a fur workshop. His passion for singing, popular arias and operettas, won him over, and in 1908, Georgius was hired at the Concert du XXe Siècle, a café-concert in Ménilmontant, before touring the capital's cabarets. While he honed his comic repertoire, his impresario Dalos found him engagements at the Alhambra, the Univers, the Concert des Bateaux, the Fauvette, Chansonia, the Casino de Montmartre, Chez Pacra and the Gaîté-Montparnasse, where he signed a one-year contract, eventually staying for three years. During the First World War, he had a string of successes, most notably "Les Archers du roi" (The King's Archers). From 1916 onwards, he wrote a dozen plays, founded his own troupe Les Joyeux Compagnons in 1919, and created revues such as Fais-moi rire (1920), where he sang "Le Fils-père". As early as 1922, he recorded some of his hits, including the classic "La Plus bath des javas ", and continued to perform until the triumph of "Sur la Route de Pen'zac" in 1930. The man nicknamed "l'Amuseur public n° 1" appeared in the cinema with Fernandel in Pas de femmes in 1932, and went on to appear in a dozen films. Another major success awaited him in 1936 with "Au lycée Papillon", followed two years later by "On n'peut pas plaire à tout le monde". Director of the Studio d'Art Comique (formerly Gaîté-Montparnasse) and three theaters, l'Étoile, Théâtre Antoine and l'Ambigu, Georgius performed during the Second World War at the A.B.C. and l'Européen. Subsequently banned from the stage for a year, he wrote detective novels under the pseudonym Jo Barnais, then, between two stints at Bobino, created a final revue at Casino Montparnasse with Jane Aubert in 1946. He left the stage in 1951 and recorded his last album in 1964. On January 8, 1970, Georgius died at the age of 78, having written over 1,500 songs and 2,000 sketches.