Michel Klein, a long life of the Jean Richard circus at the Club Dorothée

For the generation that grew up with Dorothée Clubthe name of Michel Klein remains associated with this show and, in particular, with a Sunday meeting Earth beware danger!. For 5 years, the most publicized veterinarian has multiplied concrete examples in order to raise awareness among young viewers of the defense of the environment and the protection of endangered animals. “When I talked about the risk of future ecological disasters, people took me for a crazy person”he used to say, specifying that during the years he was on the air, the audience for this meeting was the strongest of the day. A sequence, on Wednesday morning, where he presented an animal dear to his heart, was also very well attended.
Its beginnings on television date back to the time when our small screens were still in black and white. During a sequence of Dim dam domDaisy de Galard’s magazine, which Madelen invites you to discover or rediscover, he examines very small animals in his office, after having treated or caressed elephants and tigers behind the scenes of the Jean Richard circus, where he spent a long time officiated. At the time when no one disputed the presence of an animal on the star trail, he also worked for the Bouglione family and saved, in particular, Charly, a brown bear from the Urals.

Other images, particularly spectacular, have marked his long journey. On the occasion of the 500th animals of the worlda program offered between 1969 and 1990 by François de la Grange, he solves the dental problems of a monkey in front of the cameras. During a report broadcast on 8 p.m. newshere he is at the Thoiry zoo, putting a lion to sleep using a remote injection of a tranquilizer with a special rifle, before operating on a hernia. It is also there that he will do the same for an elephant with the help of two prestigious assistants, Prince Rainier and Princess Caroline. Other images, where he saves a female zebra, were filmed by Federico Fellini. Another filmmaker, Claude Autant-Lara, had hired him a few years earlier to paint the mare green in the film he was about to make, based on the novel by Marcel Aymé. “When we went to walk her, we came across stunned peasants, wondering if they hadn’t had a little too much to drink the night before”he said, laughing.

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He also spoke very regularly about Yorkshires with famous owners: that of Jean-Paul Belmondo, whose good health he ensured, as well as that of Elizabeth Taylor, whom he kept when the star and Richard Burton, then her husband , came to France to shoot The Sand Knight at the Boulogne-Billancourt Studios. The Lido also used his services. This is how, in 1966, he met two novice magicians, Siegfried and Roy. Their act consists of making white tigers disappear and then reappear, whose good health he will ensure. The duo then settled in Las Vegas where they triumphed in a cabaret for several decades.
In the secrecy of his office, Doctor Klein also worked to develop the first heart valves for animals and various tools, including a surgical bubble allowing operation in a completely sterile environment.

He is also at the origin of the first daycare service for animals, and especially the Paris guide dog school. It took him 5 years to find the location in the Bois de Vincennes and obtain the necessary authorizations for its construction. The day in 1987 when Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris, inaugurated it, remained, in his memory, one of the most beautiful of his existence. “If I could be useful for anything, it is to help the public better understand animals, to respect them”he confided shortly before leaving us. To achieve this, he never stopped working hard.