Item 1123 - Ne le dis à personne

French composer and conductor Charles Chobillon wrote songs and music starting in the early 1900s; he first became a member of SACEM (Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique) in 1907. He wrote for musical revues for two decades in the 1930s and 1940s, including at the Théâtre des nouveautés. His best-known work was as conductor of the orchestra of the Concert Mayol, a popular Parisian cabaret that after World War II became notorious for its sexy nude spectacles. At Concert Mayol in the late 1930s he composed and conducted for various revues and tableaux, including for Charles Cluny and Victor Vallier. In 1934 the orchestra accompanied the “revues nus” of André Denis and Paul Lefebvre. He scandalized some when he arranged for his daughter Simone’s debut as a dancer in one of the Mayol shows. Simone later became an actress and singer, appearing in several films. Post-war, Chobillon composed a “Marseillaise” operetta.

Jane (or Jeanne) Dumont, was born Jeanne Lucie Breton in 1887, in Chaux-de-Fonds, Switerland. She married lyricist Ernest Francois Dumont, best known for his collaborations with Louis Benech in 1909. In 1923 she appeared in the silent film, “L’enfant roi,” filmed at Versailles; in the cast listing she is named as “Madame Dumont.” The newspaper Figaro mentions her in connection with another performance at the Théâtre de la Madeleine in 1925. Her husband formed a music publishing company, “Benech et Dumont,” with his collaborator, who died in 1925. When she was widowed in 1941, she took over the company with the help of Guy Sella. She herself began writing lyrics, often with Sella. Perhaps the first was “Sonnez les clochers de France” in 1943. The catalogue list on the back of the sheet music they brought out for “C’est la France de demain” (1946) cites over 60 titles. There is confusion about the date of her death. The archives of the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique (SACEM) have two other members who signed themselves “J. Dumont” from approximately the same period: Jules Dumont, another lyricist and Jan Dumont, an illustrator.