The singer, actor and philanthropist Jean Lapointe, who was one of the founding personalities of the Quebec “star-system”, died Friday morning at the age of 86, announced his public relations house.
• Read also: “He was a loving father” – Anne-Elisabeth Lapointe
The former senator died at the Saint-Raphaël palliative care home in Montreal, surrounded by his loved ones, due to health complications.
“Losing our father is a terrible ordeal, but knowing that his artistic and humanist heritage will live on in the hearts of Quebecers is comforting for us,” said his son Jean-Marie Lapointe, also well known to the general public.
In addition to his influence in the cinema and on the boards, Jean Lapointe has also made himself known for his fight once morest alcoholism, he who has precisely suffered from this disease.
His foundation, La Maison Jean Lapointe, was created in 1982 and celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Jean Lapointe was present at an event marking this anniversary on October 5th. Maison Jean Lapointe has helped hundreds of people overcome their addiction, whether to alcohol, drugs or gambling.
Karl Tremblay / Le Journal de Quebec
“Our father always said that his greatest pride has always been Maison Jean Lapointe. His departure saddens us, but we know that he will remain the soul of our establishment,” said Anne Elizabeth Lapointe, daughter of Mr. Lapointe and general manager of Maison Jean Lapointe.
Jean Lapointe is survived by his wife Mercédès, his seven children Danielle, Michelle, Marie-Josée, Maryse, Jean-Marie, Catherine and Anne Elizabeth, his two grandsons Olivier and Jean Auguste, as well as his sisters Huguette and Suzanne.
Senator for nine years, Jean Lapointe was a monument of Quebec popular culture, involved in the community.
Jean Lapointe had revealed in 2014 to suffer from lung cancer, then, in 2017, to have been diagnosed with cancer nodules in the right lung. “Maybe it’s time for me to rest,” he told the magazine “Echos Vedettes”.
Listen to the interview with Jean-Marie Lapointe on Benoit Dutrizac’s show broadcast live daily via QUB radio:
Also a comedian and songwriter, Jean Lapointe, born on December 6, 1935 in the municipality of Price, in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, touched on everything during his career, which began in the early 1950s, when he was only 14 years old.
As a teenager, Jean Lapointe took part in an amateur contest on CHRC, a Quebec radio station, where he was already noticed through songs and imitations. He then learned regarding cabarets on the boards of Café Caprice in Montreal.
In 1955, the formation, with his accomplice Jérôme Lemay, of the duo Les Jérolas, marks an important milestone in his career. The Jérolas make the weather rain or shine in the cabarets of Montreal, alternating sketches and songs. Their first appearance on television dates back to January 1956, on the program “Music Hall”, hosted by Michelle Tisseyre, on Radio-Canada.
The duo of comic singers triumphed everywhere in Quebec, but also outside our borders: they performed on the glorious stage of the “Ed Sullivan Show”, in the United States, in 1963, and at the Olympia in Paris two years later. . With us, he provided the first part of a concert by Charles Aznavour at Place des Arts in 1968.
From the Jérolas legacy, which has some twenty records, we will retain, among others, the songs “Méo Penché” and “Charlie Brown”, and the adaptation of Elvis’ hit “Love Me Tender”, which has become in French “L ‘love and me’.
In 2011, Jean Lapointe and Jérôme Lemay teamed up once more for a few performances of the show “Le grand retour des Jérolas”. Their return to Montreal at the Théâtre Maisonneuve, however, did not go as planned: Jérôme Lemay had collapsed on stage at the end of the first part, victim of a malaise. The performance was interrupted, and Jérôme Lemay died a few days later, on April 20.
The professional separation of Jean Lapointe and Jérôme Lemay, which marked the end of the Jérolas, occurred in 1974 (but the two friends met a few times on special occasions in the decades that followed). The road which then began in solo for Lapointe was to be filled with successes.
As an actor, he quickly established himself in the cinema in “La pomme, la queue et les pépins” (1974) by Claude Fournier, “Les Ordres” (1974) by Michel Brault, “L’eau chaud, l’eau frette” (1976) by André Forcier, “JA Martin photographe” (1977) by Jean Beaudin, and we will remember his unforgettable interpretation of former Prime Minister Maurice Duplessis, in the series “Duplessis” by Mark Blanford, scripted by Denys Arcand, in 1978.
More recently, we were able to appreciate the talents of Jean Lapointe on the small and big screen in “Les beaux malaises”, “At the origin of a cry”, “Forever, the Canadians”, “The last tunnel”, “The Immortals” and “The Bottle”.
In music, Démaquillé (1976) is the first album in a long series of opuses and almost as many shows, including many at Place des Arts, for the singer-songwriter. He bequeathed to our cultural heritage immortal titles such as “Sing your song”, “It’s in the songs”, “If we sang together”, “You are juggling with my life” and “My uncle Edmond”. He was part of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste celebrations on Mount Royal in 1976.
In the mid-1980s, France opened its doors to Jean Lapointe. He made several stays there for shows and promotional activities, including a two-week presence at the Olympia in Paris in 1985.
In total, the Internet portal of the Maison Jean Lapointe indicates that the entertainer has produced a hundred shows, of which he has given more than 15,000 performances in Quebec and Europe, and recorded 18 albums. He has also played in twenty films and fifteen series.
Jean Lapointe has never hidden his difficulties with alcohol. From the beginning of the 1960s, the artist struggled with the adrenaline that the boards gave him and he abused drink. The Maison Jean Lapointe website says that its founder attended a first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1962.
The man then alternated periods of sobriety and relapses. Jean Lapointe’s addiction to alcohol is not unrelated to the reasons that led to the end of the Jérolas. At the turn of the 1970s, his excesses led to significant consequences, such as fights, arrests and hospitalizations.
In 1974, following a new drift, he entered the Beaver Center, an organization offering treatment once morest alcoholism, where he remained for six weeks. He will then remain sober until the end of his life and will use his notoriety to help people struggling with addictions.
