A music-hall comic, he had founded “L'Os à Moelle”. Jewish and a Resistance fighter, he reached London in 1943 and sang, to the tune of “La Cucaracha”, Jean Oberlé's refrain that the whole country took up: “Radio Paris ment, Radio Paris est allemand” — Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris is German. He popularised the Schmilblick, whose name stayed in the language.
The story
André Isaac, known as Pierre Dac, was born at Châlons-sur-Marne on 15 August 1893. A music-hall comic, he invented a logic of the absurd that belongs to nobody else, and founded in 1938 “L'Os à Moelle”, a satirical paper in which France laughed at itself on the eve of the war.
A Jew and a résistant, he joined Colonel Rémy's Confrérie Notre-Dame network, reached London and became one of the voices of Free France.
In 1943, on Radio Londres, he set new words to the tune of “La Cucaracha” and found the line the whole country would take up: “Radio Paris ment, Radio Paris ment, Radio Paris est allemand” — Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris is German. Three lines by a comedian, turned into a weapon of war.
After the Liberation he created “Signé Furax” with Francis Blanche, a radio serial broadcast from 1956 to 1960: a thousand episodes of methodical madness that a whole generation listened to as a family.
He also gave the language the Schmilblick, an object good for nothing and therefore good for everything; “faire avancer le schmilblick” is still said in France of anything that is going nowhere. He died on 9 February 1975; his ashes are in the columbarium, niche 4,462.
On site, do not miss
Niche 4,462 of the columbarium — and, in the same building, eight other names from this guide.
Visitors' questions
Where is Pierre Dac's grave?
In the Père-Lachaise columbarium, Division 87, niche 4,462 — these are his ashes, not a grave. The same building holds the niches of Max Ophüls, Jules Guesde, Paul Dukas and Georges Perec.
Max OphülsWho wrote “Radio Paris est allemand”?
Jean Oberlé, at Radio Londres; it was Pierre Dac who, from 1943, sang it to the tune of “La Cucaracha”: “Radio Paris ment, Radio Paris ment, Radio Paris est allemand” — Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris is German. Three lines that became one of the most quoted slogans of the Occupation.
Jules GuesdeWhat was “L'Os à Moelle”?
The satirical newspaper he founded in 1938, where he unleashed his logic of the absurd on the eve of the war. Later, with Francis Blanche, he created the radio serial “Signé Furax”, broadcast from 1956 to 1960.
Pierre BellemareWhat is the Schmilblick?
An object that serves no purpose whatsoever, invented by him and later turned into a television game show. The word entered the French language: “faire avancer le schmilblick” — to move the schmilblick forward — is still said of anything that is going nowhere.
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