Mime Marcel Marceau Speaks

New Play Offers Homage To Chaplin's Tramp

(CBS)  Marcel Marceau, the world's most celebrated mime, has transformed silence into art in a career that has spanned more than half a century.

The 77 year old is currently on tour with his one man show, performing over 200 shows a year. He has no plan to retire.

Marceau is beginning a three-week run in New York City which includes the American premiere of The Bowler Hat, featuring 12 mimes he trained, mostly at his school in Paris.

Marceau, before performing a scene from The Bowler Hat on The CBS News Early Show tells Anchor Bryant Gumbel his act remains fresh because he is "a witness of my time.

He says some of his sketches "champion tradition in a certain way," and other
"relate to what is happening in our time," such as the nuclear threat.

He says mime has moved to the level of art because "It's beyond words and it's like dance, in a certain way, because it can express everything, every thought, with the weight of the heart."

The Bowler Hat is somewhat of a tribute to Charlie Chaplin's character The Tramp, often seen as the older brother of Marceau's most famous character Bip.

Since childhood, Marceau has been an admirer of Chaplin, who was a decisive influence in his choice of career.

Marceau created Bip in 1947, and first toured the United States in 1955, playing to standing-room only crowds in San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

Marceau's mime company was founded in 1992.

The Bowler Hat, its third play, is both a comic fantasy and a love story, set between the two world wars in London. The main character in Jonathan Bowler, who wears a bowler hat just as all his colleagues do. When visiting a local pub, he falls for a girl, and buys a striking Spanish-style hat to impress her. But his bowler won't come off his head, giving Jonathan endless grief and setting the stage for various surrealistic dream sequences.