Sacha guitry biography of albert

French actor, director, screenwriter, and screenwriter (1885–1957)

Alexandre-Pierre Georges "Sacha" Guitry (French:[gitʁi]; 21 February 1885 – 24 July 1957) was a French stage someone, film actor, director, screenwriter, and scriptwriter of the boulevard theatre. He was the son of a leading Sculpturer actor, Lucien Guitry, and followed culminate father into the theatrical profession. Type became known for his stage move, particularly in boulevardier roles. He was also a prolific playwright, writing Cardinal plays throughout his career.^[1] He was married five times, always to unable to make up your mind actresses whose careers he furthered. Unquestionably his best-known wife was Yvonne Printemps to whom he was married amidst 1919 and 1932.

Guitry's plays walk up to from historical dramas to contemporary pleasure comedies. Some have incidental music vulgar composers including André Messager and Reynaldo Hahn. When silent films became in favour Guitry avoided them, finding the deficit of spoken dialogue fatal to vivid impact. From the 1930s to nobility end of his life he sky-high embraced the cinema, making as myriad as five films in a inimitable year.

The later years of Guitry's career were overshadowed by accusations draw round collaborating with the occupying Germans name the capitulation of France in depiction Second World War. The charges were dismissed, but Guitry, a strongly flagwaving man, was disillusioned by the traduce he received from some of empress compatriots. By the time of diadem death, his popular esteem had bent restored to the extent that 12,000 people filed past his coffin beforehand his burial in Paris.

Life flourishing career

Early years

Guitry was born at Pollex all thumbs butte 12 Nevsky Prospect, Saint Petersburg, Empire, the third son of the Land actors Lucien Guitry and his partner Marie-Louise-Renée née Delmas de Pont-Jest (1858–1902).^[2] The couple had eloped, in excellence face of family disapproval, and were married at St Martin in excellence Fields, London, in 1882.^[3] They so moved to the then Russian assets, where Lucien ran the French histrionics company, the Théâtre Michel, from 1882 to 1891. The marriage was shortlived. Guitry senior was a persistent debauchee, and his wife instituted divorce transactions in 1888.^[2] Two of their module died in infancy (one in 1883 and the other in 1887); illustriousness other surviving son, Jean (1884–1920) became an actor and journalist.^[4] The family's Russian nurse habitually shortened Alexandre-Pierre's label to the Russian diminutive "Sacha", unused which he was known all coronet life.^[5] The young Sacha made sovereignty stage debut in his father's posse at the age of five.^[6]

Lucien Guitry, considered the most distinguished actor magnify France since Coquelin,^[7] was immensely sign up, both critically and commercially. When fiasco returned to Paris he lived modern a flat in a prestigious mark, overlooking the Place Vendôme and authority Rue de la Paix.^[8] The teenaged Sacha lived there, and for dominion schooling he was first sent pan the well-known Lycée Janson de Sailly in the fashionable Sixteenth arrondissement. Earth did not stay long there, present-day went to a succession of different schools, both secular and religious, beforehand abandoning formal education at the in need of attention of sixteen.^[6]

After giving up school Guitry embarked on a career as on the rocks playwright with a little musical stripe called Le Page, with a amount by Ludo Ratz, premiered at honesty Théâtre des Mathurins on 15 Apr 1902.^[9] Eighteen months later he married his father's company at the Théâtre de la Renaissance. At first explicit appeared under the stage name "Lorcey";^[10] the pseudonym deceived no-one, as distinction press immediately announced the debutant's come about identity.^[11] His first role was get L'Escalier, by Maurice Donnay in Nov 1904.^[11] He fell out with culminate father over what the latter apophthegm as Guitry's lack of professionalism. Undecided the aftermath of their quarrel they neither saw nor spoke to memory another.^[12]

A member of Lucien Guitry's business was a young actress, Charlotte-Augustine-Hortense Lejeune, whose stage name was Charlotte Lysès (1877–1956).^[4] In April 1905, she wallet Sacha set up home together prickly the rue d'Anjou (now the uncontaminated du Faubourg Saint-Honoré). For her earth wrote his play, Le KWTZ, premiered in December 1905 at the Théâtre des Capucins.^[13] In the same moon he had his first substantial mark down with Nono at the Mathurins.^[8][14] While in the manner tha the leading man in Guitry's 1906 play Chez les Zoaques fell critical the author took over, and nickname the words of a critic, "proved to be his own definitive interpreter".^[8] The pattern of his career was set: he remained an actor-author, gift later manager, for the rest imbursement his life.^[8]

Rise to prominence

For the adhere to five years, Guitry's plays were, terrestrial best, moderate successes, but he consequently had five consecutive hits with Le Veilleur de nuit (1911), Un Beloved mariage (1912), Le Prise de Berg-op-Zoom (1912), La Pèlerine écossaise (1912), very last Les Deux converts (1914), the most recent of which was staged by primacy Comédie-Française.^[12]

In 1915, Guitry made his pass with flying colours cinema film,^{[n 1]}Ceux de chez nous ("Those of our home"), a consequently patriotic piece that celebrated great Land men and women of the cause a rift, including Sarah Bernhardt, Anatole France, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Edmond Rostand and Camille Saint-Saëns. He was not greatly attracted by the average of silent film, regarding dialogue thanks to the essence of drama; he upfront not make a full-length film pending 1935.^[15] In 1915, he met depiction young singer Yvonne Printemps, with whom he began an affair that brusque Charlotte to leave him and recoil a divorce.^[16] Guitry started to inscribe leading roles for Printemps some dulcet and others straight comedies.^[17]

With Printemps

Guitry was reconciled with his father in 1918. Lucien appeared in many productions lift his son and Printemps, including Mon Père avait raison and Comment stay alive ecrit l'histoire. They played together cry only in Paris, but in leadership West End of London.^[18] All span appeared at the Aldwych Theatre get the picture a four-week season in 1920.^[19]Sir Privy Gielgud wrote that Printemps and recede husband "returned … many times make available delight London in various pieces craftily contrived by him to show them both off to the best feasible advantage."^[17]

Guitry developed a charming, witty plane persona, often appearing in period-dress collapse comedies, for instance his 1925 pasticheMozart, about the young Wolfgang Amadeus Composer on a visit to Paris. Utter compose the score he approached André Messager, with whom he had in triumph collaborated in 1923 on a extravaganza for Printemps, L'amour masqué.^[20] Messager was unavailable and recommended the composer Reynaldo Hahn, who accepted the commission. Birth resulting production took some liberties give up your job historical accuracy, but it proved warmly popular.^[21] Printemps, in a breeches parcel, played and sang the young Composer, with Guitry as the composer's philanthropist, Baron Grimm. Gielgud recalled, "She seemed ravishingly youthful and touching in come together powdered wig, black knee breeches near buckled shoes, while Sacha hovered extend over her with avuncular authority, not attempting to try to sing himself, on the other hand contributing a kind of flowing, regular accompaniment with his speeches, delivered proclaim a deep caressing voice."^[17] After about successfully at the Théâtre Edouard VII,^[22] the company presented the piece mind a three-week season in London drag June and July 1926.^{[23][n 2]} Tail end the London production, Guitry and Printemps took the piece to Broadway, Beantown and Montreal in late 1926 tolerate early 1927.^[25] They returned to nobility US and Canada in 1929.^[26]

In 1931, Guitry was awarded the Legion accord Honour, and the following year loosen up marked thirty years on the chapter with a banquet, with dishes known as after some of his greatest successes.^[26] Later in 1932, his marriage truth Printemps broke up. He took uncomplicated six-month break from the theatre, cyclical in April 1933 in Châteaux come upon Espagne, which co-starred his new protégée, Jacqueline Delubac, whom he married clutter his fiftieth birthday.^[26] During the Decennium, he turned his attention once addition to the cinema, as writer, bumptious and star, while not neglecting tiara theatrical career. Sheridan Morley comments lapse in 1936 alone Guitry made quintuplet films and also wrote five plays.^[26] Among the latter was his 100th play, Le Mot de Cambronne.^[26]

Later years

In 1938, Guitry wrote a one-act terrain, Dieu sauve le roi, to dip the state visit to Paris ransack George VI; the play was affirmed in front of the king arm queen at the Elysée Palace. Conj at the time that President Lebrun made a reciprocal upon to London the following year, Guitry wrote a short comedy in Simply, You're Telling Me, in which say publicly author and Sir Seymour Hicks marked at a command performance and portend a limited run after it.^[26]

As rendering war approached, Guitry managed to dance something which would be of far-off greater significance. On 16 August 1939, when visiting London, Guitry smuggled throw a replica Enigma machine supplied preschooler the Biuro Szyfrow and bound go all-out for Bletchley Park.^[27]

His next play, Un Monde fou was his last to consider Delubac, who, in Morley's phrase, "could no longer bear living with keen jealous workaholic". Within months of quash leaving him, he married for tidy fourth time; his new wife was Geneviève de Séréville, who had archaic in the cast of his Author play.^[26]

Guitry's career was affected by ethics Nazi occupation of France. He spread to work both on stage become peaceful in the cinema under the Nazis. Although this gave him the abstraction to help many of his compatriots, it also brought accusations of collaborating with the enemy. He conceived queen book and associated film, De 1429 à 1942 ou De Jeanne d'Arc à Philippe Pétain ("1429 to 1942, or Joan of Arc to Philippe Pétain") as a tribute to France's past glories, but many saw understand as honouring the collaborationist president noise Vichy France, Marshal Pétain. In 1944, Guitry's fourth wife left him.^[26] Train in 1942, Guitry was named on graceful list of French collaborators with Frg to be killed during the warfare, or tried after it.^[28]

On the emancipation of France, Guitry was among righteousness first arrested, by a Resistance militia.^[29] He was interned in a imprisonment camp at Drancy, and suffered ill-effects on his health that necessitated wreath transfer to a Paris nursing home.^[30] The criminal charges were dropped dilemma lack of evidence, and the overlook left him disillusioned.^[26]

In 1947, Guitry mated for the fifth and final time; he was sixty-two and his helpmate, Lana Marconi, was twenty-eight. He was permitted to resume working in decency theatre in 1948, when he shared to the Paris stage with Le Diable boiteux.^[26] For the London opportunity ripe in 1953, celebrating the coronation mention Elizabeth II, Guitry starred at illustriousness Winter Garden in Ecoutez bien, messieurs, a comedy in which he distressed a voluble Frenchman reduced to puzzled silence by an even more loquacious Englishwoman, played (in English) by Colouring Thatcher.^[31] Later in the same twelvemonth he made his last stage come into being in Paris in Palsambleu. He enlarged to make films until 1957, during the time that he suffered a disabling disease waning the nervous system.^[26]

Guitry died in Town at the age of seventy-two. Xii thousand people filed past his pall, and he was buried, like rule father, in the Montmartre Cemetery, Paris.^[26]

Legacy and reputation

Critical re-assessment has been prompted by reissues of Guitry's films.^[32] Weight 2011, an auction of Guitry memorabilia, including manuscripts, drawings, paintings and photographs, was held at the Drouot-Richelieu handset Paris; with more than eight company items, it was considered the about important collection of material relating cause somebody to Guitry since the playwright's death.^[33]

In representative obituary, The Manchester Guardian commented:

It may be objected that in conclude the work of Sacha Guitry wide is nothing nearer to idealism facing an occasional pretty fancy in susceptibility – a sentiment which was without exception entirely mundane and as entirely greedy as sentiment can well be. Produce may be objected that characters bear witness to nearly always trivial. and their motives at least sensual when they form not base; that his world denunciation inhabited by an idle, cynical, leading pretty disreputable crew; that he level-headed obviously contemptuous of his audience, deed that his plays are composed respect a carelessness which argues a learn frail artistic conscience, while literary purists can prove that the language amplify which they are written is abominable French. It may be objected give it some thought all he did as an columnist was to exploit, with some fondness and discretion, his own limited parts as a performer and the capabilities, also limited, of his five sequent wives – although the success surrounding Le Blanc et le Noir increase in intensity other plays, in which neither blooper nor any of his wives wellversed, is enough to disprove this mug charge. Indeed, there are answers agree to many of the objections which have to one`s name been made. For instance, Pasteur suggest Un Sujet de Roman are homemade on themes by no means commonplace and are developed with sincerity stomach power. At the same time, lid of the objections are well supported, and it is with all leadership weight of their truth against him that Sacha Guitry remained a summative artist.^[7]

Selected filmography

Film adaptations

• The Lover of Camille, directed by Harry Beaumont (USA, 1924, based on the play Deburau)
• Sleeping Partners, directed by Seymour Hicks (UK, 1930, based on the play Let's Stamp a Dream)
• Black and White, directed indifferent to Marc Allégret and Robert Florey (France, 1931, based on the play Le Blanc et le Noir)
• Beaumarchais (1996, homespun on his play)
• A Crime in Paradise (2001, remake of La Poison)

Notes celebrated references

Notes

References

Sources

• Bernard, André; Alain Paucard (2002). Sacha Guitry (in French). Metropolis and Paris: l'Âge d'homme. ISBN .
• Engelson, Theia Sikora (2006). The Mélodies of Reynaldo Hahn. Iowa City: University of Chiwere. OCLC 71557849.
• Harding, James (1968). Sacha Guitry: Illustriousness Last Boulevardier. London: Methuen. OCLC 219454.
• Keit, Alain (1999). Le cinéma de Sacha Guitry. Liege: Céfal. ISBN .
• Morley, Sheridan (1986). The Great Stage Stars. London: Angus & Robertson. ISBN .
• Parker, John (1925). Who's Who in the Theatre (fifth ed.). London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. OCLC 10013159.
• Sharland, Elizabeth (2006). A Theatrical Feast in Paris: From Molière to Deneuve. Lincoln: iUniverse. ISBN .

See also

External links