Pierre Scize

Pierre Scize , of his true name Michel-Joseph Piot , born in 1894 in Pont-de-Chéruy, accidentally dead with Melbourne (Australia) in 1956, was large a Journaliste French with the prolific and eclectic talent.

Its vocation first leading it towards the theater, it took courses with the Academy of Lyon since 1912. But as of the first months of the First World War, an enemy shell was going to completely cut down it by the left arm and to put a brutal term at its projects of scene. After a long convalescence, it found the face of the operations with the title of manager of the Theater to the Armies.

The director and actor Jacques Chip having on the occasion to notice it, proposed to him after the Armistice to follow it, in same employment, in New York for a long round of post-war period which appeared triumphal. On his return, Michel-Joseph Piot (he was not yet Pierre Scize) had the idea to write the account of this voyage, this text fell under the eyes of the director of the newspaper the work , which proposed to publish it. Thus our man was born it with journalism.

The birth of its pseudonym is original. The large journalist Jean Piot (no relationship but much of friendship) wrote already with work. One of both Piot was to thus find another signature. The fate fell logically on most recently entered to the newspaper. One day that he strolled on the old quay Pierre Scize in Lyon, Michel Joseph thinks that he could make a first name and a name of it. Because at the origin, the quay Pierre Scize did not owe anything with a man but meant place known as: “sawn stone” (split rock, can be by the lightning, with the Middle Ages) sawn transforming itself into scize as old French, word undoubtedly resulting him even from Latin scitus (sawn). The quay was thus called perhaps in the beginning “quay of the stone scize”. It is undoubtedly the only example which a man takes the name of a quay instead of giving him. After Work, then Good evening, Maurice Marshal, founder and director of the Canard Enchaîné, was going to stick the talent already recognized of Pierre Scize. But in the 1933 this last was going to be spectacularly congédié of the weekly magazine satyric. Its crime? It had just received the Légion of honor, decreed on a purely military basis for the arm left with the field of honor. However any writer committed himself refusing any official decoration decreed on a purely basis professional or purely honorary, which was not the case in fact. But the Duck could not start to accept the exceptions. This rupture, largely with accompanying notes, was going to make date in the history of the French press of the 20th century.

Pierre Scize works then for Candide (critical cinema and theater) and for Paris Soir, where its great reports with the four corners of the world widen its notoriety. The Second world war finds it in Lyon, town of all its youth. It there enters very quickly Resistance, not armed but literary (many articles in the clandestine press and organization of networks of thoughts, all directed against the occupant) and weaves a network of friendship and comfort, material as much as moral, with the editorial team of the Barber, the national daily newspaper being voluntarily scuttled the day of the entry of the Germans in Paris and having promised with its readers to reappear only the day when France would have released itself from the yoke of the occupant.

Great lawsuits and Tour de France

This come day, Pierre Scize is quite naturally invited to join Le Figaro , become again a free and Parisian newspaper. He then will approach a new kind for him: the legal chronicle. He covers the great lawsuits of purification, those of Pétain, Nuremberg, the Doctor Petiot, later those of Marie Besnard, Gaston Dominici (see Affaire Dominici) and so much of others, legal reports which quickly make of it the first chronicler of its time, as will say it glorious successors, such as James de Coquet or Frederic Potecher. In parallel, it publishes in the Barber of great investigations on the societies' problems of the Post-war period.

But it will still give new evidence of its eclecticism. In 1953, Pierre Brisson, the director of the Figaro proposes to him like a friendly bet to write on the Tour de France! However, with share of the alpinism at the time of its two arms, it forever practiced the least sport. But it accepts and will write, three summers during, of tasty chronicles on the environment and the asides of the Turn, leaving of course the purely sporting part of the great test cyclist to specialized fellow-members. This rather new kind in the press will inspire to the large novelist Antoine Blondin twenty years of extraordinary chronicles in the Team .

In 1956, Pierre Brisson asks Pierre Scize to leave for Melbourne and to write on the Olympic Games the same kind of chronicles as on the Lathe. There still, it will take up the challenge. But the last day of the Plays, per hour even where Alain Mimoun gains the gold medal of the marathon, Pierre Scize is reversed by a car and dies a little later at the hospital, at the 62 years age.

Apart from its considerable journalistic production, Pierre Scize left some novels ( Gens of the Summits, Pernette and its love, the most beautiful drunkard of the district, the beautiful one of Cargèse, the gold of time ), of the tests and the accounts (Lyon in the Chains, With the grape harvest of Burgundy, Rencontrés on the road, Twenty Gods of Republic, free biography of Georges Clémenceau, At the great day of Sitted) and of the plays (do you Sleep? , People of the Moon) .

Pierre Scize had three children of his wife, born Camille Bardot: Michel (1939), to see after , Jacqueline (1946) and Francoise (1948). It rests with the cemetery of Bagnolet.

Three generations

The oldest son of Pierre Scize, also fore-mentioned Michel, and its grand-daughter, Helene Piot, are also journalists.

Michel Piot, gastronomical chronicler of reputation (it published innumerable articles in Le Figaro, where it held a weekly heading and often had whole pages), took its retirement, as a journalist " permanent" , but remains very active and related to the mediums of the table and the wine. He is honorary president of the APCIG, Professional association of the chroniclers and advisers of the gastronomy and the wine which he very actively chaired during 25 years. Michel Piot writes readily on the beaujolais wine, in particular in a booklet regularly published by Georges Dubœuf; he is member responsible for association Saveurs of France-Savors of Europe and for AAAAA. In addition " good painter of the dimanche" , it exposed and sold several works.

Helene Piot, member of the office of the APV, Press association of the wine , is the author of the Guide of the wines of the world (Marabout editions) and joint author of 1900-2000, One Century of Years (Fleurus editions). Also joint author of a collection of news, Seven girls in anger (edition Small Matin" , December 2006), she collaborates in several specialized publications or not (Le Figaro, Challenges…)

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