Pierre Repp

Pierre Repp — Biography

Mock stammering was the basis of the comic style of Pierre Repp, a French comedian and actor. Born Pierre Alphonse Léon Frédéric Bouclet, he played a speaker who, while trying to finish a sentence, keeps swapping the word he wants for another. French writers describe this gift as that of a "bafouilleur", a master of splutter. His best-known routine was the sketch Les crêpes, in which he explained a recipe this way, garbling an ingredient's name, trying to correct it, and ending the half-finished sentence by pouring in chocolate.

He trained at the Regional Conservatory of Lille. The core of his career was music-hall and cabaret work in Paris and on tour, alongside many stage plays and television appearances. In cinema he appeared in about forty films, mostly in third-billed supporting parts. His screen work began with M'sieur la Caille (1955) and Bonjour sourire (1956); he later played a bank clerk in Crésus and Ravanel in A King Without Distraction. In Jacques Demy's Peau d'Âne, alongside Catherine Deneuve and Jean Marais, he was the steward Thibaud, and in I Don't Know Much he was the deputy director Bernier. Cartouche and The 400 Blows (The 400 Blows) are also among his credits.

Repp was born on 5 November 1909 in Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise in the Pas-de-Calais and married Ferdinande Alice Andrée Bouclet in Lille on 14 August 1930. He died in Le Plessis-Trévise on 1 November 1986, days before his seventy-seventh birthday.