This soundt Things of life , for which he had co-written the script and the lyrics of the beautiful CHanson Hanson. A few days after the actor Michel Piccoli, who carried the film with Romy Schneider and described him beautifully as an author “Melanchomic”, Jean-Loup Dabadie died on Sunday, May 24, at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. “From a disease other than Covid-19 “, said his agent, Bertrand de Labbey. He was 81 years old.
“A complete artist”
“He was a complete artist, who had succeeded in all the arts” , he said rightly. Even if it is the words of his songs, first, that go back to memory. Jean-Loup Dabadie had put his pen to the service of so many interpreters that the list makes you dizzy … Serge Reggiani, for these two masterpieces that are The little boy and Italian ; Julien Clerc, for Women I love you, My preference ; Michel Polnareff for a series of dizzying tubes (Letter to France, We will all go to paradise, All the boats, all the birds, In the empty house…) And then Dalida, Michel Sardou, Barbara, Jacques Dutronc, more recently Johnny Hallyday and Isabelle Boulay. He even managed to (almost) put Jean Gabin to music (the unsung text of Now I know, it’s him.)
Jean-Loup Dabadie had someone to take care of: he was a lyricist’s son. His father, Marcel Dabadie, had put his words into the mouth of Maurice Chevalier and the Jacques brothers.
Novel, television and sketches
Born in Paris in 1938, raised by his grandparents in Grenoble, the young Jean-Loup, bachelor at 16, was first passionate about literature. He wrote two novels at 19 and 20 years old; at the same time embraces a journalist career, thanks to Pierre Lazareff, writing for television, the delicious surreal shows by Jean-Christophe Averty, and the sketches by Guy Bedos…
The birth of the author’s and comic’s companionship reflects a time in the 1960s when everything was possible, provided of course you had talent. And a bit of cheek. When he discovered the facetiousness of Bedos reformed for “mental illness”, the young Dabadie who was doing his military service in Tarbes, among the paratroopers, was so seduced that he sent him illico two sketches by mail: Happy birthday Paulette and The boxer. We know the rest.
“A certain spirit of childhood brings us together. We have neither forgotten the child we have been, said his old friend Bedos of him in 2008 to our colleagues in The Obs. This spirit is obvious An elephant that deceives a lot and We will all go to paradise, by Yves Robert, whose screenplay was later signed by Dabadie. He mischievously defined them as “The very agitated chronicle of the troubles of certain men with certain women who are not necessarily theirs” . But melancholy pierced under the lightness.
His entry to the French Academy
2008 is also the year when Jean-Loup Dabadie entered the French Academy, with 473 works listed in Sacem mixing songs, plays, sketches for Sylvie Joly, Muriel Robin, Pierre Palmade film script for Claude Sautet always (César and Rosalie, A simple story) or François Truffaut (A beautiful girl like me).
“I will continue to do what I have done since I can read and write, that is to say to work for the defense and illustration of the French language”, had promised when entering under the dome the new Immortal, also expressing his pleasure at the idea of ” meet at the French Academy (his) professor of Greek at La Sorbonne, Jacqueline de Romilly “.
The elegant Jean-Loup Dabadie with a bright smile under the silver hair had dressed for the occasion a Cerruti costume and wore a sword on which he had had the lyrics of the song engraved. My preference. Tribute to a woman? This father of three, long married to writer Genevieve Dormann, had shared his life since 1997 with a discreet woman who, like him, did not like light.
“A man gifted for happiness”
Unless these engraved words show his preference for a particularly well-crafted song? The former head of the class who (always) wrote in pen, surrounded by his dictionaries, swore that he had never been able to distance his “Old fear of not getting there” .
It even seems that he still wrote “Come on my little guy”, in blue in the margin of its colored paper blocks to give courage. His last years, his pen was less in the wind. However, he had just completed the film adaptation of a novel by Georges Simenon, The green shutters, whose first role was to be played by Gérard Depardieu.
To Gilles Jacob the last word. The former president of the Cannes Film Festival yesterday highlighted the place occupied by the Sautet-Dabadie couple in a profitable period of French cinema: “Dabadie filled the audience of French cinema in the 1970s and 1980s: women, guys, bistros, cars, weekends. Jean-Loup softened Claude’s pessimism with soft writing and the delightful charm of a man gifted for happiness. “
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