Jacques Tati - Entertainment Debut

Entertainment Debut

Although he had likely played music hall engagements before, his act was first mentioned in 1935, when he performed at the gala for the newspaper Le Journal to celebrate the French victory in the competition to set the transatlantic crossing record from Normandy. Among the honourable spectators was the influential writer Colette. Tati's act also caught the attention of Max Trebor, who offered him an engagement at the Theatre-Michel, where he quickly became the star act. After his success there, Tati tried to make it in London, playing a short season at the Finsbury Park Empire in March 1936. Upon his return to Paris in the same year, he was immediately hired as top billing at the A.B.C alongside the singer Marie Dubas, where he would work uninterrupted until the outbreak of the Second World War. It was for Tati's performances of his now finely-tuned Impressions Sportives at the A.B.C that the previously impressed Colette wrote,

"From now on no celebration, no artistic or acrobatic spectacle can do without this amazing performer, who has invented something quite his own…His act is partly ballet and partly sport, partly satire and partly charade. He has devised a way of being both the player, the ball and the tennis racquet, of being simultaneously the football and the goalkeeper, the boxer and the opponent, the bicycle and the cyclist. Without any props, he conjures up his accessories and his partners. He has suggestive powers of all great artists. How gratifying it was to see the audience's warm reaction! Tati's success says a lot about the sophistication of the allegedly "uncouth" public, about its taste for novelty and its appreciation of style. Jacques Tati, the horse and rider conjured, will show all of Paris the living image of that legendary creature, the centaur."

During the 1930s he also performed at the Scala in Berlin between 1937 and 1938, and began to experiment with film acting in the following shorts:

• 1932 : Oscar, champion de tennis directed by Jack Forrester written by and starring Jacques Tati (film lost);
• 1934 : On demande une brute directed by Charles Barrois, with Jacques Tati as (Roger), Enrico Sprocani as le clown Rhum (Enrico);
• 1935 : Gai dimanche directed by Jacques Berr, wrote and starring Jacques Tati and Enrico Sprocani; and
• 1936 : Soigne ton gauche directed by René Clément, starring Jacques Tati (Roger), Jacques Broido (sparring partner), Max Martel (the postman).