RIP Pierre Tchernia

TV Announcer Pierre Tchernia has died

By Masha Sery

10/8/2016

He was "Mr. Cinema " and "Public Friend No. 1". The way this issue well befitted his wide smile and jovial character. The director and journalist Pierre Tchernia died at the age of 88 years, announced his agent Saturday 8th October.

Retrace his career is to go back sixty years in the history of television, the RDF (French Broadcasting) to DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television). As three other Pierre - Desgraupes, Dumayet, Sabbagh - Tchernia was one of the pioneers of this new media that is tentatively called in French homes; those who, Cognac-Jay, associated their names to the first television news in 1949 and multiplied emissions as writer, director and animator. Not yet an industry, just a craft. The young cinephile jack of all amused himself by inventing images how instruct lightly, distract with gaiety. He performed skits and animation games for young and old. He loved his job, specifically for the diversity and freedom it gave him.

Son of a Ukrainian immigrant worker in France, Pierre Tcherniakowski was the last in a family of four children. He grew up in Courbevoie and discovered early a passion for the 7th art cinema in his neighborhood. He was twelve years old when he was bedazzled in 1940 by John Ford’s “Stagecoach”. After graduation, he enrolled at the Technical School of Film and photography business. He obtained a pass mark in sensitometry but managed to integrate in the second year the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies (IDHEC currently FEMIS). His promotion had Claude Sautet and Alexandre Tarta.

In 1947, Pierre Tchernia made his radio debut in Test Club, led by Jean Tardieu. For listening in "Un mauvais quart d’heure à passer," Pierre Sabbagh looking for employees recruited him for the news. He commented on 16 mm silent pictures, for a few thousand viewers. The young reporter covered the Auto Shows and household arts. He celebrated the arrival of spring and Valentine's Day. During the first fifteen years he spent in television, until the onset of the second string, Pierre Tchernia was multi-dimensional: voice of health magazines and variety shows. When direction was invented, Pierre Tchernia realized in 1956, major reports of a mine shaft in Lens, in a peasant top of a lighthouse in the Express Paris - Lille . "la pure télévision ", "la télévision dont on avait envie," he said. He also animated the first color broadcast, " Arc-en-ciel", dedicated to a parachute regiment.

He then collaborated on " L’Arroseur arrosé", "Cinq colonnes à la “une”". He replaced Jean Nohain to "36 chandelles" and succeeded in 1965 to Gilles Margaritis "La Piste aux étoiles." The same year, he designed with his friends, Robert and Jacques Grello Rocca, the first satirical news program. In "La Boîte à sel" appearing with the young Poiret and Serrault, Raymond Devos and Philippe Noiret. It appeared on Sunday at noon,  live from Buttes Chaumont. Too sassy for the Ministry of Information of the time who demanded to read the texts in advance. The team refused, and decided to stop rather than bend to censorship. Period of boldness and enthusiasm: "It was a pretty special time for all the world was hooked: the public to see, us to see. All children of the local school of the Third Republic, we were smiling teachers, "he wrote in his memoirs published in 2003.

With him, we discovered the joys of the circus, the productions of Walt Disney television series “Zorro”. Pierre Tchernia loved Tex Avery and the fireworks, the music hall and the right words. "We cannot, even forcing his ugly nature, do not like Pierre Tchernia because it is a man - nay, it is a man is a child - a child whose pass time is primarily to us to share enjoyment, his tastes, his friendships, "wrote Henri Jeanson Dialogue in Aurora December 24, 1968. he added:" From the child his candor, illusions and dreams . He still believes in Santa Claus. To think, he just has to look in her mirror."

He knew how to make catching his love of cinema and in 1949, thanks to the program series "Les Rois de la nuit". Created at the initiative of the leader of the Centre National Cinematography (CNC) to address the disaffection of the spectators, he led for more than twenty years, "Monsieur cinéma" (1966-1988), who mixed film clips, interviews and games. On his show marched all types of actors and French directors. A just reward: the program appears in a scene for Night François Truffaut. Him succeed "Jeudi cinéma" and "Mardi cinéma".

"I belong to the generation that made TV because the movies did not open their doors. And by television, we did not know we were going to hurt the cinema we loved so much. (...) The TV has stolen enough audience for that tried to render him a little, "tell Pierre Tchernia in May 1987. As Patrick Brion, Claude-Jean Philippe, Alain Bévérini and Henry Chapier, he managed to reconcile his love of the big and small screen, ensuring the promotion of the former by the latter. He introduced the Cannes Film Festival and the Césars for several years.

He was very popular with viewers, Pierre Tchernia erected friendship as a cardinal virtue. He honored the affection of Lino Ventura and René Goscinny who caricatured her figure imperator of 1.87 meter in five Asterix albums. For his friend, the trooper of Branquignols and filmmaker Robert Dhéry, Tchernia wrote the scenarios of American Beauty and Allez France! After the realization that cinema lovers did turn his old cabaret accomplice, Michel Serrault, in four feature films, social comedies benevolent tone. These stories of dual or split disordered by burlesque, these domestic conflicts bringing together the cream of French cinema, met a great success. In Le Monde, Jean de Baroncelli The Life annuity called it a "film noir tinged in pink."

For television, Stone signed Tchernia successful adaptations of Marcel Ayme, one of his favorite authors. From 1980, he no longer recognized television that he had loved so much. The obsession of the ratings. Too much money. Not enough to live. Pierre Tchernia hated zapping. "The best program is the Tour de France," he thought. Younger generations discovered this affable man who rocked the childhood of their parents through the "Children of TV" on TF1 where, from 1994, he presented the archives of the small screen. A second youth offered to respected dean the facilitator Arthur nicknamed "Magic Tchernia". In 2002, it reestablished with his acting debut in the role of narrator centurion and Caius Gaspachoandalus in Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra Alain Chabat. The legionary wore his beautiful quintal. Pierre Tchernia retired in 2006.

Born: 1/29/1928, Paris, Île-de-France, France

Died: 10/8/2016, Paris, Île-de-France, France

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