Pilcer is mainly remembered for his association with French dancer and singer
Gaby Deslys who may have been his wife. According to
Fred Astaire's autobiography, Pilcer was a fellow student at Claude Alvienne's stage dancing and dramatic school in New York in 1905. Pilcer and Deslys appeared in four Broadway musicals together
Vera Violetta (1911),
The Honeymoon Express (1913),
The Belle of Bond Street (1914) and
Stop! Look! Listen! (1916). He composed Deslys's waltz
The Gaby Glide. As a dance team Pilcer and Deslys were contemporaries to
Vernon and Irene Castle, Florence Walton and "Maurice",
Dorothy Dickson and husband Carl Hyson, and Genevieve Lyon and her husband
John Murray Anderson. Pilcer and Deslys would probably have been the top dance team in both America and Europe had not
World War I intervened and Deslys's death during the
influenza pandemic in 1920. Pilcer also danced with
Mistinguett and Teddy Bernard. After 1922 Pilcer ran a school of dancing in Paris. He was also a famous Master of Ceremonies at the Casinos of
Deauville and
Cannes, as well as at leading Paris music halls. Pilcer co-starred with Deslys in her 1915 silent film
Her Triumph (1915). Pilcer died at Cannes of a heart attack January 14, 1961. ==Filmography==