Wes Phillips

The Christian Science Monitor took the occasion of Marcel Marceau's death to reprint its 1974 interview with the mime.

I saw Marceau in 1972 and, like almost everyone who saw him perform, was captivated. However, the Marceau moment I remember as most shocking was when he performed "Youth, Maturity, Old Age, and Death" on The Tonight Show. It was as riveting there as it was live, but Johnny Carson was wise enough to say nothing when it concluded. That moment of reverent dead air was absolutely shocking at the time—and awed silence was precisely the coin with which that performance deserved to be rewarded.