News | Death of actor Robert Castel, father of blackfoot humor, at the age of 87

By La Provence (with AFP)

Comedian, humorist and musician Robert Castel, known as the father of “pied-noir” humor, died Saturday in Paris at the age of 87, his family told AFP.

It is “died today at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital” (AP-HP), in Paris, following a “long illness”, she said.

Born on May 21, 1933 in Bab El Oued, Robert Moyal, whose real name was, made himself known with the play “The Hernandez family”, edited in 1957 with the actresses Lucette Sahuquet and Marthe Villalonga.

The play, which is a huge success in Algeria and then in Paris, allows the metropolis to discover folklore and the typical expressions of the Pieds-Noirs.

In 1962, he left the newly independent Algeria for good and moved to Paris with Lucette Sahuquet, whom he married.

The latter died in 1987 at the age of 60. Robert Castel then remarried. He did not have children.

He then continued sketches on stages and on television, and supporting roles in the cinema, until the early 2000s.

Robert Castel had returned to the stage in 2007 with the musical project “El Gusto”, an orchestra of Jewish blackfoot musicians and Algerian Arabs, before a last one-man-show in 2013, “Nostalgérie”.