Ray Ventura

Ray Ventura

Born: April 16, 1908
Died: March 29, 1979
in Paris, France
Raymond Ventura (16 April 1908, Paris, France – 29 March 1979, Palma de Mallorca, Spain) was a French jazz pianist and bandleader. He helped popularize jazz in France in the 1930s. His nephew was singer Sacha Distel.

Ventura was born to a Jewish family. In 1925 he was the pianist for the Collegiate Five, which recorded as the Collegians for Columbia beginning in 1928 and for Decca in the 1930s. A year later he led the band, and it became a dance orchestra resembling a big band. His sidemen included Alix Combelle, Philippe Brun, and Guy Paquinet. In the early 1940s he led a big band in South America and in France during the rest of the decade.

One of his band's popular songs from 1936 was "Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise" in which the Marquise is told by her servants that everything is fine at home except for a series of escalating calamities. It was seen as a metaphor for France's obliviousness to the approaching war.

Source: Article "Ray Ventura" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Movies for Ray Ventura...

Title: La Chance aux chansons
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: March 26, 1984
Type: TV
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Title: Numéro un
Character: Self
Released: April 5, 1975
Type: TV
A French variety show.
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Title: Samedi soir
Character: Self
Released: January 9, 1971
Type: TV
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L'assassin connaît la musique
Title: L'assassin connaît la musique
Character: Lui-même (non crédité)
Released: October 16, 1963
Type: Movie
Lionel Fribourg, a great composer (at least that's what he thinks) has a problem with his noisy environment: he can't complete his unfinished symphony. Of course there is a market for unfinished symphonies but, for all he knows, only one became famous. So he had better find a way to finish it. At long last, he comes across Agnès, a divorced woman who agrees to let him her quiet home. Lionel, full of hope, resumes work...
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Title: Cinépanorama
Character: Self
Released: February 4, 1956
Type: TV
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Femmes de Paris
Title: Femmes de Paris
Released: May 17, 1953
Type: Movie
Professor Charles Buisson, astronomer and Nobel Prize winner, has just discovered a nova. He informs the other observatories by telephone. Just as he thinks one of them is calling back, he finds himself on the line with a young woman threatening suicide at the Ruban Bleu cabaret, if her lover hasn't joined her by midnight. Intrigued, the professor decides to go and prevent the unfortunate woman from committing suicide. One of his students, who earns her living as an understudy in a knife act, helps him in his investigation, while the school principal and a policeman suspect him of being a prankster or even of selling drugs. For the scientist, it's an opportunity to discover a world of music-hall that he'd never known before: "I thought I knew the sky chart by heart, but there's one planet that was totally unknown to me: Earth. I'll be back!
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One Hundred Francs Per Second
Title: One Hundred Francs Per Second
Character: Self
Released: January 9, 1953
Type: Movie
Philippe, an employee at the Bourdinet firm, having been caught kissing Jacqueline, his boss's daughter, is fired. Some time later, Bourdinet launches a radio quiz show to boost his business. Philippe then decides to compete in the hope of telling the thousands of listeners what he thinks of the industrialist. A blow on the head having given him a gift of second sight, the competitor becomes impeccable and wins astronomical sums to the great despair of Bourdinet. Everything will work out in the end and Philippe will be able to marry Jacqueline.
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Monte Carlo Baby
Title: Monte Carlo Baby
Character: Self
Released: November 22, 1951
Type: Movie
When a measles epidemic forces the temporary closing of a child care center, the son of a film star and her estranged husband, a concert pianist, is mistakenly delivered to a touring musician.
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We Will All Go to Paris
Title: We Will All Go to Paris
Character: Self
Released: February 8, 1950
Type: Movie
The film tells the story of three presenters on Radio X, an amateur clandestine radio station.
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Mademoiselle Has Fun
Title: Mademoiselle Has Fun
Character: Self
Released: January 30, 1948
Type: Movie
Christine, the daughter of a rich American, acquires from her father the jazz band of Ray Ventura who will be made responsible for accompanying her from morning till evening wherever she goes. From an endless number of amusing situations, the fiancée of the girl despairs. But soon the musicians rebel in in the face of the requirements of their patroness. More than a job, it is for them misery. Christine excuses them and she goes back to America with her band. Things go bad, degenerate, but the kindness of the musicians and the firmness of the fiancée of Christine really quiet down the moods of the young woman .
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Whirlwind of Paris
Title: Whirlwind of Paris
Character: Self
Released: December 15, 1939
Type: Movie
A gang of broke student musicians travel to Paris to take exams. But very quickly, the lack of money pushes young people to pass themselves off as professionals during the performance. They will then win the victory!
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Feux de joie
Title: Feux de joie
Character: Self
Released: February 1, 1939
Type: Movie
Once their military service is over, the instrumentalists of a regimental orchestra find themselves in civilian life and decide to run a hotel themselves on the Côte d'Azur.
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Quadrille
Title: Quadrille
Character: Himself (as Ray Ventura et ses Collégiens)
Released: January 29, 1938
Type: Movie
The battle of the sexes as drawing room social satire. Philippe, a middle-aged newspaper editor, has lived for six years with Paulette, a successful stage actress. He tells her friend Claudine, a realistic and enterprising reporter, that he's thinking of proposing. Into the mix steps Carl Erickson, a charming Hollywood matinée idol in Paris briefly. He meets Paulette, sees her act (his box seat compliments of Philippe), and sets out to seduce her. The next two days bring talk, tears, separation, despair, surprises, and, perhaps, reconciliation as characters speak "exactly half the truth." It's a quadrille of changing partners.
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Everything is Going Very Well Madame la Marquise
Title: Everything is Going Very Well Madame la Marquise
Released: December 3, 1936
Type: Movie
After he loses a servant job when his employer's mansion burns down, a yokel makes money entertaining tourists in Breton garb, lands up appearing in a Paris show ,and meets another property owning lady, this one of dubious reputation.
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Adventure in Paris
Title: Adventure in Paris
Released: November 24, 1936
Type: Movie
Michel Levasseur is a joyous reveler who does not care about the next day. So much so that one day a bailiff bursts into his Paris apartment and seizes his furniture on behalf of Raymond Sauvaget, his landlord, a rich food industrialist. But far from resenting Sauvaget's act of hostility, Michel ... becomes his friend. Now Raymond, although prosperous, does not know how to handle women. That is why he asks Michel, a regular Casanova, to give him lessons in seduction.