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Rue Chantecoq – What an odd name!
rue Chantecoq, Fontenay le Vicomte
I’m not sure where this name comes from, roughly translated as “Singing Cockrell Street”, but this is in the oldest part of the village where I live. The house on the right was occupied by cinema poster artist, Roger Soubie, back in the 50′s & 60′s. People of a certain age here can remember his Citroën Traction Avant parked outside, ready to take his latest designs to the big studios in Paris.
Now it is a very calm throughfare which links the village lavoir with the Grand Rue. It makes a nice walk though, like this morning, as I pushed my daughter along in her pushchair.
8 pages… Roger Soubie
Yes now up to 8 pages on the Roger Soubie project, the maire adjoint will be round tomorrow to sort out the next block of 4 pages to be typeset. In all there are 20 pages which will need to be completed before Christmas (preferably). Although that doesn’t count proof checking and any further changes.
The deadline is for the 10th January. Would be nice to get it all done before the festivities so it doesn’t hang over my head.
Tomorrow my other half has taken the day off, one of a few RTT’s she has booked before Christmas. So hopefully I’ll be able to advance a bit with the magazine, although for the rest of the week I’ll have to try to work while my son naps.
Back to cinema artist Roger Soubie for the local mairie
Back in July, I had started work on a magazine for my local mairie liasing with Monsieur le Maire Adjoint.
Between then and now a lot has happened, not least the fact my external drive with some of the work I had started on this project, becoming corrupted.
The drive was despatched to a colleague of Thumpah’s for a recovery session, but stayed with them a little longer than intended. Meanwhile in September I worked on a magazine for “Les journées du patrimoine” for the mairie.
The HD eventually came back with files such as photos mostly recovered, however the Photoshop file I had created for the cover plus the Publisher file for the main magazine (yep, the mairie use Publisher for everything… not a good choice) were still corrupted.
This is by no means an “official” project, but more a part of the local history group named “La Grenouille Verte” – which has released magazines in the past concerning the liberation of the village in WW2 and “l’affaire Ben Barka” to name but just a few subjects covered.
However, this particular project is going to be tied in with local rag “Le Républicain” in Evry, which should give the magazine more coverage, especially given the subject matter. The publication will concentrate on the artist himself – a character who kept himself to himself despite his work on prestigeous posters for French cinemas, being something really in the limelight at the time. This extended to many of the big American blockbusters of the 50′s & 60′s too.
Also covered will be the long gone small local cinemas in the area here in Essonne – a sort of “then & now”… many of them since becoming warehouses or in many cases raised to the ground to create car parks!
So yesterday, not feeling “en forme” I was a little surprised to get a phone call from Mr le Maire Adjoint, who wanted to come round that afternoon for a meeting. He wants to get the job done in 3 weeks, although the actual deadline is the 10th January 2010. My wages so far…? A 6 pack of Leffe…
Roger Soubie
After, it seems being taken off working on the village magazine (the first I knew was receiving the last issue in my letterbox), it seems that I’ve now been kindly asked to work on the local history magazine “La Grenouille Verte“, which is produced by the group of the same name run by Monsieur-le-Maire-Adjoint. Subject being Roger Soubie.
Roger Soubie was an artist born in 1898 and who at first produced posters for the SNCF, advertising excursions to such places as Vichy and Dijon… that was in the 1920′s and 30′s.
By the 1950′s he was designing cinema posters for all the latest American blockbusters and French films of the time. He produced 1,000′s of posters, some of which he produced while he lived here in Fontenay-le-Vicomte from about the mid 50′s to the mid 60′s. In fact Monsieur-le-Maire-Adjoint now lives in the house next door to where Roger Soubie lived, which alone has been in his family for at least 3 generations. The neighbour now living in Roger Soubies house stumbled upon a folder of preparatory sketches and photos in their attic, which were used to produce various cinema posters. It was this that started the idea of producing the magazine.
So far I have only worked on the cover, but it is hoped that by Autumn this year the rest of it will be released and apparently this will be in conjunction with local newspaper le Républicain de l’Essonne.
While talking to my French father in law, I was surprised to learn that he actually knew “Monsieur Soubie”, which would tie in with his arrival in 1961 to become the directeur d’école in the village. Monsieur Soubie apparently kept himself to himself with the majority of the local villageois being totally ignorant to the fact that there was a famous artist living in their midst!
