SIMENON SIMENON. WHAT A PLEASURE WITH MAIGRET!

Still about the series with Rupert Davies 

SIMENON SIMENON. CHE PIACERE CON MAIGRET ! 

Ancora sulla serie con Rupert Davies 

SIMENON SIMENON. QUEL PLAISIR AVEC MAIGRET ! 

Encore à propos de la série avec Rupert Davies 

You might think I must have seen all of those Rupert Davies Maigret episodes at least ten times each, as a fan. But it's not like that, not at all, although there was the complete series on TV Channel Two in the sixties, then replays, then a long long time nothing. But from the mid nineties onwards one could get copies from the ZDF for much money; I made myself a list of the films that I would like best, and I bought copies each time I could afford some more of them, that's right, but I did not devour them. The Rupert Davies Maigret is something very special, you know. The best thing for me is to spread out the whole along all of my lifetime.

Last week, for example, a friend of mine sent me the DVD "Maigret und der Mann auf der Bank" ("Murder on Monday"), that I did not possess and that I had never seen before. I was very happy to hold it at last in my hands. But instead of watching it at once, I left it on the shelf for some days. I kept wondering whether that film would be that catching to me like the ones I watched on TV as a youngster in the sixties. I had some doubts, because another friend of mine recently told me, "Maigret" would have been thrilling to us only when we were kids and because those films were, partly, forbidden to us. So, starting to watch that film, I almost felt myself a boy again and was absolutely open to what would happen now. What do you assume - did I like that film, or not? It was a surprise for me, too: I had not seen a film that fascinating for a very long time! That story, all those fabulous actors, the music, the feeling of French atmosphere, as if it really was a French film! Well, it was a BBC production, and BBC always knew how to make perfect crime shows and documentations. This was Georges Simenon's opinion as well; in his "Intimate Memories" he expressly had admiring words concerning BBC, London. 

Sometimes it's hard to believe Rupert Davies was NOT a Frenchman. During his high times, very well known as Maigret by almost everyone, he tried to extract some fun out of this. Once, for example, when he opened the garden party in aid of Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare at St. Mary's, Bramber, - by the way, Davies was a vegetarian -, he began his speech using French words, just for fun. Not until he noticed a few blank looks from the crowd that had gathered, he changed to English.  

It would be wrong taking the BBC Maigret too seriously, I suppose. Of course, there do occur very exciting and serious moments in those crime films, still the series was supposed to have an absolute realistic touch to match the Simenon novels, but there is enough room and time for fun, too. In "Murder on Monday", for example, they took Stratford Johns to play the part of a suspect, exactly him of all actors, who, at those times, was famous on British TV screens as Detective Chief Superintendent Barlow in a different very long running BBC crime show series. He as a murderer in "Maigret" surely would turn things upside down! Or think of the dialogues between Maigret and Lucas, sometimes they are really very funny!  

Even Simenon had his fun writing his Maigret books: According to what I once read, he found the Maigrets a relaxing matter in comparison with his "really hard" novels. Writing Maigrets he could do even while whistling a tune! Well, I don't take him at his word, the Maigret novels are much too good compositions, they simply couldn't have been written in passing. But I do believe they were done each in a week or so.  

Berthold Deutschmann

SIMENON SIMENON. RUPERT DAVIES AND ME

A fan's memories about his discovery of the English series 

SIMENON SIMENON. RUPERT DAVIES E ME 

I ricordi di un fan sulla sua scoperta della serie inglese 

SIMENON SIMENON. RUPERT DAVIES ET MOI 

Les souvenirs d'un fan à propos de sa découverte de la série anglaise 

 

When I was a 12-year-old boy I was overwhelmed by the Rupert Davies Maigret; that was in 1965. My parents had procured a TV set that year and in our neighbourhood not all families had TV yet; for many it remained a dream for a few months or years longer to get one. Some people planned with friends to watch an attractive TV program, so did I in the years before 1965, for example watching "Lassie" together with a school friend. 

At that time, 1965, in West Germany there were only but two TV channels: channel 1 and the very new one, channel 2. Ch2 had a hard job to compete with the already established Ch1, and at highest TV times, on Saturday nights, they often had to compete against an enormously high rated TV show, an "international" quiz game. That's why Ch2 bought 21 selected episodes of the British TV Maigret, which was known to be very popular in England. They dubbed the English voices and had to change the music, because, unfortunately, there was no separate soundtrack of the original music by Ron Grainer. They entrusted a young composer, Ernst August Quelle, to create a new Parisian title melody and new background music for "Maigret". And they chose the Berlin Actor Hans Wilhelm Hamacher to be Maigret's voice. 

The success of those crime shows in West Germany was really great, maybe even greater than in England. The quiz show of Ch1 had to be satisfied with only about half of the entire TV audience, and Ch2, which is called ZDF, decided to buy 31 more episodes of "Maigret", to complete the series. Rupert Davies as "Kommissar Maigret" was to become a TV star and well-known on the other side of the English Channel, too. 

As a young boy, the first time I saw Maigret striking a match on a rough wall in the opening credits, was in June 1965, on a Saturday at 9 pm. Usually at that time I was already in bed, but that night was an exception. My parents and I were watching the quiz on Ch1, and, a few minutes to nine, my father switched to ZDF. The announcer, Victoria Voncampe, was saying: "The following program is not appropriate for juveniles". "Have you heard? You must go to bed now, this is not for children!" my father said to me. But the crime show was already beginning and I a saw a mysterious scene and then a man with a hat, lightening his pipe in the darkness, accompanied by a melody that instantly caught me. But I had to go to bed, wondering what would come up that I was not supposed to see. 

Next day I asked my father. "There are some things for which it is better for children not to see them, for example violence. After having watched a violence scene in a crime show you won't be able to sleep well", he explained. And my mother added: "That Maigret program is a good-for-nothing, for adults neither! There they show precisely how to commit a break-in and how to kill people! It is simply awful!" "But there is the Chief Inspector, who will catch the villains, and he never fails," my father argued. "Not all episodes of that series are that bad, some of them are rather funny, and, sometimes, one can learn good things from them, too. When there is no presenter beforehand pronouncing a ban for young people, you may watch a whole episode from time to time." 

I was lucky. About half of those films actually did not have an announcer, and when there was Victoria, she didn't always send me to bed. 

The aspect ratio of those classic black-and-white TV Maigret shows was 4:3, but here for once we can see Rupert Davies surpassing that limit up to 16:9. That scene I took from the 10th minute of the episode "The Experts", to create the "Maigret Smoke gif". 

Berthold Deutschmann 

Link
SIMENON SIMENON. UN MAIGRET BRITANNIQUE

http://www.simenon-simenon.com/2018/03/simenon-simenon-un-maigret-britannique.html

SIMENON SIMENON. RUPERT DAVIES IN COLORS

About TV magazines of the sixties 

SIMENON SIMENON. RUPERT DAVIES A COLORI 

A proposito di riviste televisive degli anni sessanta 

SIMENON SIMENON. RUPERT DAVIES EN COULEURS 

A propos de magazines des années '60 

In my 5th school year, that was in 1965, there was a small miscellaneous corner shop, "Budke's", quite close to the school, where I got my weekly comics, "Mickey Mouse" and "Fix & Foxy", if I could afford them with my pocket money. But since I had gotten to know "Maigret" from the TV screen, I had a better idea and, more and more often, preferred to buy instead the TV magazine "HÖR ZU" with a lot of pictures in it as well, which mainly illustrated articles concerning TV programs and actors. With a new HÖR ZU in my hands, first of all I opened the Saturday pages to look for Maigret. There, regularly, a quarter or one third of the ZDF page, marked off by a horizontal black dividing line, was dedicated to the Maigret evening crime shows. Every time I discovered a new picture of Rupert Davies as the Chief inspector Maigret or of Ewen Solon as Sergeant Lucas, his assistant, I actually was very pleased. I remember only one time, when I was not pleased at all with finding not a single Maigret picture, but many other photos, too many, referring to a national football match. On the other hand it once occurred that I was searching for the bottom one-third Maigret page section and did not find it at all, at first sight. And then I had to open my eyes widely discovering the whole page filled with Maigret. And, exceeding all my expectations by far, that page even contained two colour photos, one of Maigret, and the other one of Lucas. That happened in HÖR ZU 34/1965, illustrating the episode "Love from Felicie". 

Maigret colour photos in general were rare in those days. Every time striking one it was a big surprise for me. A few colour photos were taken by the BBC during the production of that series, once I discovered one of Helen Shingler as Madame Maigret, a rather small one, but in colour, that was in HÖR ZU 40/1965. By the way, you can order antique German magazines such as HÖR ZU at Historia Verlag in Freiburg. The magazines they offer are not used, they almost seem to have been printed yesterday! (There also does exist an inexpensive chance to take a look (and a photograph) of many Rupert Davies pictures from German antique magazines like "HÖR ZU", "Funk Uhr", "TV hören & sehen" and "BRAVO" in the national library Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Frankfurt on the Main). 

There were several colour photos of Rupert Davies published in other German magazines, when he had been interviewed for his part as Maigret, even some private ones, more or less, for example in "BRAVO". The ideas of presenting him photographically sometimes were pretty funny, such as the one that shows him as the detective spying through a hole of a newspaper, a hole big enough to see his entire face, smiling. That actor basically must have had a lot of humour! In Germany, there were a few cover pictures of him published, for example in "Constanze", that's why I once wrote to HÖR ZU asking them for a title page with "Maigret". At that moment, they didn't want, because they preferred to promote German actors, according to their answer. 

At Christmas time in 1965, my parents and I were visiting a big store in Osnabrück, "Woolworth". In the book department I located the word "Maigret" on a special offer cardboard sign. Instantly I went to it. It belonged to a box of Maigret books, black ones, but with colourful rough title illustrations (no photos). On the back cover of each book there was a black and white photo representing a man with a hat on and smoking a pipe. I was taken aback, because that was NOT Rupert Davies! Well, it was the author. Nevertheless I asked my parents, if I could get three of those books. They said yes. So I picked out "Maigret und der Verrückte" (The madman of Bergerac), "Maigret und der Clochard" (Maigret and the Bum), and, of course, "Maigret und der Weihnachtsmann" (Maigret's Christmas)). The books were a Kiepenheuer & Witsch publication, and the fabulous and brilliant title pictures were made by the ingenious illustrator Werner Labbé. At home, I started reading those books, although they did not have any inside illustrations at all. And now, at last, I understood perfectly Victoria Voncampe's repeated announcing words, when she said: "This film is based on a novel of the same title by Georges Simenon." Actually, the German version of those TV episodes did have the same titles as known from the Kiepenheuer & Witsch paperback edition. Typically, almost all titles began with "Maigret and ...". 

Berthold Deutschmann

Link 

SIMENON SIMENON. UN MAIGRET BRITANNIQUE

http://www.simenon-simenon.com/search?q=RUPERT+DAVIES

SIMENON SIMENON. A CHARMING MUSIC TUNE

http://www.simenon-simenon.com/2018/04/simenon-simenon-charming-music-tune.htm

SIMENON SIMENON. RUPERT DAVIES AND ME

http://www.simenon-simenon.com/2018/03/simenon-simenon-rupert-davies-and-me.html