Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier

The married couple Maritie (December 12th 1922 - November 23rd 2002) and Gilbert (March 20th 1920 - September 18th 2000) Carpentier were producers of very popular TV shows in France, from the fifties to the nineties.

Radio and music

Gilbert Carpentier, a classical musician and composer, starts working at the french radio Radio-Luxembourg (which will later become RTL) as an orderly, before becoming a radio technician. From 1946, he composes musical illustrations, then, with the help of his wife who writes the texts, they start to produce radio soaps. From the 1950s, Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier realize popular radio shows in France. On Radio-Luxembourg, they host six shows : "L’heure musicale", "Le Club des Vedettes", (presented by Maurice Biraud), "Musique à la Clay" (presented by Philippe Clay), "Les contes de l’aigle", "L’heure exquise" (presented by Anne-Marie Carrière) and "Le miroir aux Etoiles" presented every sunday by a different artist.

In 1957, they create Babar the Elephant disc series for the children. Maritie Carpentier adapts the texts from Jean de Brunhoff while Gilbert Carpentier composes the musics. Those discs are awarded the grand prix du disque from the L'Académie Charles Cros, the French equivalent of the US Recording Academy.

TV

Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier are more famous for being pioneers of variety TV shows in France.

From 1960, Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier head for TV by first creating numerous shows with their friends Roger Pierre and Jean-Marc Thibault, broadcast liveon the ORTF. Later on, others artists join, including Jean Poiret, Michel Serrault, Jacqueline Maillan or Jean-Claude Brialy.

Until the 1980s, they realize lots of others variety TV shows in France, being instrumental in making some french artists popular, such as Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin, Charles Aznavour, Sacha Distel, Claude François, Chantal Goya, Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan, Mireille Mathieu, Thierry Le Luron, Eddy Mitchell, Dalida, Alain Souchon or Joe Dassin, among others. They become pioneers of variety TV shows in France,

Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier's TV shows are recognizables by unexpected duets of artists, actors singing or singers playing, the creation of different sceneries each week, or even the scripting of their shows. Also, Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier's TV shows were often live broadcast and did not promoted artists' current events. For most of them, since their beginnings in radio and until the 1980s, their swhows are recorded in the mythic studio 17 of the Buttes-Chaumont studios.

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 Emmy Award for the best foreign TV show.

Anecdotes

• Gilbert Carpentier, alumni from the Conservatoire de Paris, was also a pianist, organist and composer. He was the grandson of the french inventor Jules Carpentier (manufacturer, with the Lumière brothers, of the first cinematographe device) and the french acoustician Gustave Lyon.

• Maritie et Gilbert Carpentier is also the name of a tribute song from the french singer Bénabar.

Some shows

• 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 Roger Pierre and Jean-Marc Thibault, broadcast on ORTF 2nd channel)
• Devine qui est derrière la porte ? (1973, with Roger Pierre and Jean-Marc Thibault)
• Les maudits rois fainéants (1973, with Roger Pierre and Jean-Marc Thibault)
• Top à... (1972-1975, broadcasted on ORTF 2nd channel)
• Numéro 1 (1975-1982, broadcasted 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)

Bibliography

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

External links

• Gilbert Carpentier on IMDb (incomplete)
• Maritie Carpentier on IMDb (incomplete)