Patachou

Henriette Ragon (10 June 1918 – 30 April 2015), better known as Patachou, was a French singer and actress. She was an Officier of the Légion d'honneur. Born in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, Henriette Ragon began her working life as a typist, then a factory worker, a shoeseller and an antique dealer. In 1948, with her husband Jean Billon she took over a cabaret-restaurant in Montmartre, called Patachou. (Their son Pierre Billon had some success as a singer in the 1970s and wrote J'ai oublié de vivre for Johnny Hallyday.) She began to sing in the bistro, and journalists began to call her Patachou after the name of her cabaret (pâte-à-choux means cream puff dough). Georges Brassens sang there, and together they sang the duet "Maman, papa". She was the first to interpret other songs he composed such as "Le bricoleur", "La chasse aux papillons", etc. The evening she sang them for the first time, she suggested her audience stay to the end of the show and meet the writer of these songs, and Brassens went up on to the Patachou stage for the first time and sang Le Gorille and P..de toi. Sometimes she would collect half-ties (she would snip the neckties of customers reluctant to join in the singing and immediately staple them to the ceiling, a habit which has created a very original decor of the place - hundreds of neckties hanging above) – Thomas Dewey and Errol Flynn were among her victims. Her first records were released in 1952. She appeared at the Bobino, a Montparnasse music-hall, toured in France and then further afield. From 1953 onwards, she could be seen on-stage at the Palladium, the Waldorf Astoria, and Carnegie Hall, and throughout the United States. From the beginning of the 1970s she toured Japan and Sweden where 'L'eternal Parigot', with her cheeky Parisian register, was popular. Patachou was made Officier of the Légion d'honneur on 1 January 2009. Patachou died on 30 April 2015 at the age of 96. Source: Article "Patachou" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Known For: Acting

Born: Paris, France, 1918-06-10

Died: 2015-04-30

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1953	Femmes de Paris	Self	65
2	1955	Napoleon	Madame Sans-Gêne	66
3	1955	French Cancan	Yvette Guilbert	71
4	1986	Faubourg St Martin	Mme Coppercage	53
5	1987	La Rumba	Meyrals	46
6	1987	With Feeling		0
7	1988	The Man Who Lived at the Ritz		40
8	1990	The Carpathian Mushroom	Madame Ambrogiano	52
9	1990	Les matins chagrins	Alice	0
10	1993	Wild Target	Mme. Meynard	65
11	1993	Open Season	Madame Cygne	63
12	1995	Le Cœur étincelant		0
13	1996	Tendre piège	Madeleine	0
14	1996	Hold-up en l'air	Emilie Sagglia	40
15	1999	Pola X	Marguerite	54
16	2000	Actors	Blind old lady	58
17	2000	Adventures of Félix	Mathilde Firmin	58
18	2001	Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre	Geneviève	46
19	2001	Les Petites Mains	Marguerite	80

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1948	The Ed Sullivan Show	Self	68
2	1959	Discorama	Self	0
3	1962	The Merv Griffin Show	Self	58
4	1963	Es spielt für Sie...	Self	0
5	1968	À bout portant	Self	80
6	1972	Le Grand Échiquier	Self	80
7	1972	Midi trente	Self	60
8	1975	Système 2	Self	0
9	1975	Numéro un	Self	60
10	1982	L'Académie des 9	Self	0
11	1984	La Chance aux chansons	Self	40
12	1987	Sacrée soirée	Self	65
13	1990	Orages d'été, avis de tempête	Marthe	80
14	1994	Les Cordier, juge et flic	Mrs. Lemoine	54
15	2001	Pierre or The Ambiguities	Margherite	70

Patachou

Film

Television