Philippe Bouvard

Philippe Bouvard was in Coulommiers, France. His father left his mother, Andrée Gensburger, on the day of his birth. In Paris in 1939, she remarried to Jules Luzzato, a tailor of Italian-Lorraine origin, who adopted Philippe. Andrée came from a Jewish family in Alsace. After the Nazi Occupation of France in World War II, Luzzato, an early French Resistance fighter, was arrested by the Gestapo and held in the prison of La Santé. He was freed with the help of relatives. Philippe witnessed his adoptive paternal grandparents being arrested and deported; they were later murdered at Auschwitz. He and his mother survived in hiding in the southern zone of the country, moving frequently. After the war, Philippe attended a series of lycées (high schools) in Paris, being expelled by some for non-attendance or lack of discipline. Having failed the baccalauréate exam three times, and with only his primary school certificate, he enter the Centre de formation des journalistes (CFJ) training school for in 1948, from which he was dismissed after a few months after the administration noticed that he was being paid by his classmates to write their assignments. He did his required military service in Germany and became editor-in-chief of the regimental magazine. He then held various jobs, selling encyclopedias or sunglasses. In 1953, he married Colette Sauvage, with whom he had two daughters, but he concealed his Jewish origins from his wife for a time. A friend helped get him a job as a courier for the photo department at Le Figaro. He obtained an internship at the paper, which allowed him to write photo captions. He won his press card in 1953, and rose to become deputy general manager. He won the Prix de la Chronique parisienne in 1957. From 1962 to 1973, he directed the Paris city pages of Le Figaro, then became editor-in-chief, director, and finally a columnist at France-Soir, between 1973 and 1998.
He also became a famous television and radio presenter. Since 2014, he has hosted the radio program Allo Bouvard on RTL. He has appeared in several films, sometimes as himself. Bouvard also has published some two dozen books, including memoirs and works on politics, society, and humor.