Famed mime Marceau joins luminaries buried at Pere Lachaise

Hundreds of mourners descended on Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris Wednesday to pay their final respects to French mime Marcel Marceau.

The performer was buried in a simple ceremony at the famed Parisian landmark, where many other notable figures have also been laid to rest.

Rabbi Rene-Samuel Sirat, the country's former chief rabbi, led the ceremony, which included prayers in French and Hebrew. He noted that Marceau, a French Jewwhose real name was Marcel Mangel, had died on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

Marceau, who died Saturday at the age of 84, is widely credited with reviving the art form of mime after the Second World War,during which he avoided Naziinternment camps and worked with the FrenchResistance.

Over his more than 50-year career, he silently conveyed the range of human emotion onstage. Behind the scenes, however, he was famously chatty. Inspired by Charlie Chaplin, Marceau in turn inspired performers such as Michael Jackson.

He continued to tour the world and perform up until 2005, when hevisitedSouth America.

In the late 1940s, Marceau created his most famous character: Bip, a sad, white-faced clown dressed in a striped top and battered brown hat adorned with a red flower. On Wednesday, that iconic hat sat on a stand next to Marceau's coffin, which was draped in the French flag.

Other famous people interred at Père Lachaise include Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Frédéric Chopin, Honoré de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Isadora Duncan, Edith Piaf and Marcel Proust.