Imaginary interview with Georgius
by Charactorium · Georgius (1891 — 1970) · Performing Arts · Music · 7 min read
Cramped dressing room at the Théâtre de l'Européen, one evening in 1938. Between sets, a man removes his makeup before a mirror ringed with bulbs, a bowler hat resting on a pile of sheet music. Georges Guibourg, known to all Paris as Georgius, pushes aside a sequined costume to make room for us.
—How did this dictation for dunces that made all France laugh come about?
Au Lycée Papillon, it's 1936, and I swear I didn't put much philosophy into it. I simply thought back to my own schoolboy pranks, that teacher who quizzes and those kids who answer anything with the nerve of a general. The refrain “À la queue leu leu” isn't even a word, it's a playground rhyme we chant without knowing why. That's my secret: I take the classroom, that place where you're ordered to be serious, and I fill it with happy foolishness. The public understood right away. They tell me kids sing it in the playgrounds, teachers hum it on the sly. Nothing flatters me more: I turned punishment into laughter.
I take the classroom, that place where you're ordered to be serious, and I fill it with happy foolishness.
—Why does school lend itself so well to comic song?
Because everyone has been through it, sir! The banker's son and the kid from the suburbs have all known dictation, the blackboard, the sputtering pen. When I sing my imaginary school, everyone finds their old terror and finally laughs at it, belatedly. That's popular comedy: you have to aim at what the whole audience has experienced. And school has the advantage of being full of absurd rules, big Latin words, ridiculous sternness — a real pantry for a songwriter. I don't invent foolishness, I pick it up where it lies, on the benches. The teacher who takes himself seriously, that's my best character: just let him talk and he becomes funny.
—You're presented as a pioneer of zany song. What do you put behind that word?
Loufoque is a nice slang word for saying logic has taken a leave. Take Le Bébé fumeur: a baby smoking a pipe, where is the sense? Nowhere, and that's exactly where the laughter lies. I go on stage dressed as something-or-other, an extravagant costume, a silly prop, and I rattle off things that don't hold up with the seriousness of an academician. Nonsense, you have to fully commit to it, without a wink, otherwise it falls flat. Many tell me I'm breaking ground that others will cultivate after me. Perhaps. I just follow my instinct: when an idea is perfectly absurd, I know it's good, and I sing it.
When an idea is perfectly absurd, I know it's good, and I sing it.
—You give huge importance to the costume. What role does it play in your comedy?
The costume is half the song before I even open my mouth! I come on stage decked out in an outlandish, garish, impossible outfit, and the audience is already chuckling. A bowler hat askew, a cane I don't know what to do with, and there I am transformed into a character. Sometimes I change outfits three times in a single set, at top speed, backstage, out of breath like a horse. That excess isn't coquetry: it's my language. The popular audience at the Européen wants to see as much as hear. So I give them a visual spectacle, a ridiculous silhouette that already tells a story. Under my sequins, there's a very serious principle: you don't make people laugh only with words, you make them laugh with a costumed body.
—Over fifteen hundred songs: how do you keep up such a writing pace?
By working in the morning, when Paris still sleeps and yesterday's music-hall has finally fallen silent. Shows end in the dead of night, so I get up late, but as soon as I'm up, I fill notebooks. Lyrics, music, everything comes at once, like a tap turned on. My typewriter never rests: it's typed my songs, my sketches, and even my detective novels. Fifteen hundred titles seems prodigious, but it's arithmetic: one idea a day for forty years, and you're there. I'm not a poet who waits for inspiration like rain. I'm a worker of laughter. Comedy is made at set hours, between morning coffee and afternoon rehearsal.
I'm not a poet who waits for inspiration like rain. I'm a worker of laughter.
—You also wrote detective novels and an autobiography. What did you seek outside of song?
A song lasts three minutes; sometimes a story demands three hundred pages. The detective novel allowed me to unfold a plot, set traps for the reader, which a musical set doesn't allow. I've always loved red herrings, shady characters, all that theater of suspicion. As for my autobiography, Un chançonnier, I wrote it because the world of cafés-concerts and music halls I knew is fading away. The caf'conc' of my youth are closing one by one. I wanted to capture on paper the smell of those halls, the clink of drinks, the backstage comrades. A songwriter who doesn't tell his era lets a treasure evaporate. So I put down my pen as a witness, not just an entertainer.
—Managing the Théâtre de l'Européen — isn't that a strange fate for an entertainer?
I'm often told that, with a smirk. The comic who becomes a boss seems like one more joke! And yet, managing the Théâtre de l'Européen means learning the flip side of laughter: paying fees, printing posters, making or losing money. I discovered that music-hall is not only an art, it's a fragile business, dependent on a one-night audience. Choosing acts, building the program, alternating the torch singer and the comedian — it's a trade in itself. It didn't extinguish the artist in me, on the contrary: I understand my profession better now that I know its accounts. A songwriter who has run a till never looks at an empty hall the same way again.
—You sang at Bobino, the Concert Mayol, the Européen. Did each of these venues have its own soul?
Each hall has its smell and its audience, believe me. Bobino, on the Left Bank, is the warm, popular crowd, an audience that comes to have a good laugh and isn't shy about letting you know. The Concert Mayol smelled of the great era of café-concert and revue, with its scenic tableaux, its girls, a whole spectacle. You don't sing the same way in a smoky caf'conc' where people clink glasses as in a music-hall where the revue demands express-train pace. An artist must feel the hall like a sailor feels the wind. I learned this trade as a kid, back in 1906, on the stages of Parisian cafés-concerts. Since then, I can sniff out a hall as soon as I walk in: I know in three seconds whether the laughter will come naturally or whether I'll have to go fetch it.
—Tell us about that Plus Bath des Javas: where does it come from?
It comes from the pavement, sir, from the Paris pavement! La Plus Bath des Javas is from around 1926, and I just picked up what was already dancing in the suburban dance halls. The java, that three-step dance you hold close with small steps, was the queen of the guinguettes, Saturday night, when workers forgot the workshop. The word “bath” means swell, great, it was everyone's slang back then. I didn't invent any of that language: I took it from people's mouths and sent it back in music. That's what I love about popular song: it's not above the people, it comes from the people. A good java smells of sweat, accordion, and white wine, and that's just fine.
—That suburban slang, why do you care so much about bringing it on stage?
Because it's a living language, hearty, full of spice, and it was looked down upon in the salons! When I sing “bath” or evoke the java of the suburbs, I bring into the music-hall the speech of the working-class areas, the language of dances and realist song. That Paris of the common people deserves songs, not just syrupy tunes for high society. Slang has its finds, its images, a poetry that proper French doesn't know. By putting it in my refrains, I give back to the suburbs what they lent me. And besides, a well-placed slang word makes people laugh more surely than a long tirade: it snaps, it surprises, it smells of the street. It's my raw material, and I've never been ashamed of it.
That Paris of the common people deserves songs, not just syrupy tunes for high society.
—Do you remember the kid from Mantes-la-Jolie you sometimes mention?
Georges Guibourg, born in Mantes-la-Jolie in 1891 — that's my real name, the one on the birth certificate, before “Georgius” covered it up. That kid never imagined he'd write hundreds of songs or run a Parisian venue. He arrived very young on the caf'conc' stages around 1906, dazzled by the lights and terrified of the audience. When I think back to him, I measure the journey: from the provinces to the billboards of the great music halls, from the rowdy schoolboy to the prolific songwriter. There's a lot of chance in it, and a stubbornness like a mule. But if one thing remains of that kid in me, it's the taste for making people laugh, that almost physical need to hear a hall explode. It has never left me, and I hope to die with it.
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This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Georgius's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.