Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier

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Maritie (12 December 1922 – 23 November 2002) and Gilbert (20 March 1920 – 18 September 2000) Carpentier, a married couple, were artistic producers of very popular variety TV and radio shows in France and in many French-speaking countries, from the 1950s to the 1990s.

Biography

Family and studies

Gilbert Carpentier, born in 1920, was the grandson of the French inventor

In 1965, they asked Serge Gainsbourg to write a song to represent Luxembourg at the Eurovision Song Contest. Gainsbourg wrote Poupée de cire, poupée de son for the upcoming young French singer France Gall. The song won the contest and quickly became a world hit.

Until the 1980s and especially in the 1970s, they created and directed several of variety TV shows in France, being influential in making some French artists very popular in French-speaking countries, such as Charles Aznavour, Gilbert Bécaud, Jane Birkin, Georges Brassens, Petula Clark, Dalida, Joe Dassin, Sacha Distel, Jacques Dutronc, Claude François, Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall, Chantal Goya, Johnny Hallyday, Serge Lama, Thierry Le Luron, Mireille Mathieu, Eddy Mitchell, Nana Mouskouri, Michel Sardou, Sheila, Alain Souchon, and Sylvie Vartan, among others.

Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier's TV shows are easy to recognize by their unexpected duets of artists, by the actors singing and singers acting, by the creation of different sceneries each week, or even by the scripting of their shows. Also, Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier's TV shows were often broadcast live and did not include artists' promotional content. For most of them, since their beginnings in radio and until the 1980s, their shows were recorded in the mythic studio 17 of the

Some of their shows, the "Top à..." and "Numéro 1" series in particular, had an audience of 15 million viewers each week, and were being shown in 20 French-speaking countries.

Gilbert Carpentier was in charge of the technical part and the sceneries, while his wife Maritie Carpentier, sometimes nicknamed "la nounou des artistes" ("the artists' nanny"), was dealing with the artistic part.

In 1980, Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier won an

Detailed list of produced shows

Radio

• L’heure musicale, broadcast on
  Radio-Luxembourg
• Le Club des Vedettes, broadcast on
  Radio-Luxembourg
  and presented by Maurice Biraud
• Musique à la Clay, broadcast on
  Radio-Luxembourg
  and presented by Philippe Clay
• Les contes de l’aigle, broadcast on
  Radio-Luxembourg
• L’heure exquise, broadcast on
  Radio-Luxembourg
  and presented by Anne-Marie Carrière
• Le miroir aux Etoiles, broadcast on
  Radio-Luxembourg

TV

• Tréteaux dans la nuit (with Francis Blanche)
• La Grande Farandole (1961–1967)
• Teuf-Teuf (1963)
• Sacha show (1963–1971, presented by Sacha Distel)
• Les grands enfants (1967–1970)
• Jolie poupée (1968, with Sylvie Vartan)
• Les grands amis (1970, broadcast on
  ORTF
  2nd channel)
• Deux sur la 2 (1970, with
  ORTF
  2nd channel)
• Devine qui est derrière la porte ? (1973, with Roger Pierre and Jean-Marc Thibault)
• Les Rois maudits
  )
• Les Z'Heureux Rois Z'Henri (1974, cowritten by Maritie Carpentier, with Roger Pierre and Jean-Marc Thibault)
• Top à... (1972–1975, broadcast on
  ORTF
  2nd channel)
• Dancing star (1977, with Jean-Claude Brialy, Marie-Paule Belle, Sylvie Vartan, Carlos, Gerard Lenorman, Michel Sardou)
• Numéro 1 (1975–1982, broadcast on TF1)
• Number One (1980, USA, with Catherine Deneuve, Sylvie Vartan, Mireille Mathieu, Dalida, Julien Clerc and Chantal Goya)
• La poupée de sucre (1983, co-written with Jean-Jacques Debout, with Chantal Goya)
• La semaine enchantée de Chantal Goya (1984, co-written with Jean-Jacques Debout, with Chantal Goya)
• Les dessous chics de Paris (1986, featuring Jane Birkin)
• Embarquement immédiat (1987–1988, broadcast on
  FR3
  )
• Elsa sous la neige (December 1989, featuring Elsa)
• Mes amis, mes amours (1997, a tribute to Charles Aznavour, with Charles Aznavour and Michel Serrault, broadcast on France 2)

Tributes

• Top à Maritie et Gilbert Carpentier, broadcast on TF1 on 9 March 1996, and presented by Christophe Dechavanne
• Nos meilleurs moments, broadcast on TF1 in August 2000
• Nuit du patrimoine spéciale Maritie et Gilbert Carpentier, broadcast on Paris Première on 19 September 2009
• Chabada special Carpentier broadcast on 5 April 2010, on France 3
• Quand la musique est bonne special Carpentier, broadcast on
  TMC
  on 11 May 2010
• Maritie et Gilbert Carpentier is also the name of a tribute song to the married couple from the French singer Bénabar

Bibliography

• La Maillan racontée par ses amis, Editions N°1, 1993
• Merci les artistes !, Anne Carrière, 1999

External links

• (in French) Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier archive by the French National Audiovisual Institute
• (in English) Gilbert Carpentier on IMDb (incomplete)
• (in English) Maritie Carpentier on IMDb (incomplete)