Do you remember the winner of the Palme d’Or in 1978? It is not certain. You should therefore know that it was awarded unanimously to L’arbre aux sabots, directed by Ermanno Olmi, who represented Italy. Released a few months later, the film hardly passed the milestone of one million admissions and left no more traces in the collective memory than this Cannes edition. We measure it with this extract from La Lorgnette that Madelen invites you to discover or rediscover.
At the end of May of that year, Jacques Martin and Stéphane Collaro shot a 10-minute sequence, which deserves to be included in a hoax anthology. Anxious to remedy the sadness of the atmosphere on the Croisette, they organized the first and only edition of their own festival in Cannes-Ecluse, a commune in Seine-et-Marne of around 2,000 inhabitants.
They formed a prestigious jury which included, among others, Jean Yanne, Jean Lefebvre, Jean-Claude Brialy, Eddie Barclay and Maria Pacôme. They all came to award themselves prizes, to the applause of a hilarious local crowd. “I continue to make jokes, even if today I am no longer paid,” says Collaro, who is enjoying a happy and sunny retirement on the island of Saint-Martin, in the West Indies.
At 80 years old, or more exactly at 20 years old and four times rather than one, he retains a humor that viewers of the 70s and 90s have largely acclaimed. He owes the departure of this notoriety to Jacques Martin. They met in the late 60s and immediately discovered commonalities. This is how a complicity was born which turned into an eternal friendship.
Stéphane Collaro was then a sports journalist who, in particular, provided commentary on legendary car races, starting with the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Witnesses of the time assure that he happened, during certain direct, to show a certain distraction, even a lack of knowledge of the brands in competition. As soon as he saw a green car, he assured that it was a Jaguar and nothing else, and when a red racing car appeared on the Mulsanne straight, he greeted the advance of a Ferrari.
Of course, this was far from always the case. The legend assures that one year, after a lunch that had lasted longer than expected, he took the microphone again, and commented on the progress of a pilot who had given up during his absence. No one has ever held it against him, starting with his fellow journalists. They always had a hard time staying serious while listening to his resolutely humorous remarks.
It is to say if Collaro did not hesitate a moment when Jacques Martin proposed to him to integrate the team of the Small Rapporteur. Already having a thousand sports reports to his credit, he began by focusing his subjects around this theme. The first of them broadcast on January 19, 1975 is an apparently extremely serious interview, mixing the remarks of an official of the Footballers’ Union and a lemonade on the themes of the price of halfbacks and bribes . Over the weeks, he extended his palette to other universes, before continuing to learn his new job by co-presenting variety shows with Jacques Martin.
At the end of the 1970s, the disciple became a master. He began a journey which, for fifteen years, made the beautiful evenings of what was not yet called prime time access on TF1. There was, among others, Co-Co Boy, “Cocoricocoboy, with its “Coco-girls” and especially the Bébête Show, written with the complicity of Jean Amadou and Jean Roucas. This daily rendezvous with puppets making fun of current events was freely inspired by the Muppet Show, which Collaro was one of the first to discover. The episodes featuring Kermit and his gang originated in Jacques Martin’s Good Sunday. He was one of its pioneers and pillars, without imagining for a moment the fate that television would have in store for him.
