Jacqueline Delubac
Who was Sacha Guitry 's spouse in Aug 1937?
Sacha Guitry Alexandre-Pierre Georges Sacha Guitry ( ; 21 February 188524 July 1957 ) was a French stage actor , film actor , director , screenwriter , and playwright of the boulevard theatre . He was the son of a leading French actor , Lucien Guitry , and followed his father into the theatrical profession . He became known for his stage performances , particularly in boulevardier roles . He was also a prolific playwright , writing 115 plays throughout his career . He was married five times , always to rising actresses whose careers he furthered . Probably his best-known wife was Yvonne Printemps to whom he was married between 1919 and 1932 . Guitrys plays range from historical dramas to contemporary light comedies . Some have musical scores , by composers including André Messager and Reynaldo Hahn . When silent films became popular Guitry avoided them , finding the lack of spoken dialogue fatal to dramatic impact . From the 1930s to the end of his life he enthusiastically embraced the cinema , making as many as five films in a single year . The later years of Guitrys career were overshadowed by accusations of collaborating with the occupying Germans after the capitulation of France in the Second World War . The charges were dismissed , but Guitry , a strongly patriotic man , was disillusioned by the vilification by some of his compatriots . By the time of his death his popular esteem had been restored to the extent that 12,000 people filed past his coffin before his burial in Paris . Life and career . Early years . Guitry was born at No 12 Nevsky Prospect , Saint Petersburg , Russia , the third son of the French actors Lucien Guitry and his wife Marie-Louise-Renée née Delmas de Pont-Jest ( 1858–1902 ) . The couple had eloped , in the face of family disapproval , and were married at St Martin in the Fields , London , in 1882 . They then moved to the Russian capital , where Lucien ran the French theatre company , the Théâtre Michel , from 1882 to 1891 . The marriage was brief . Guitry senior was a persistent adulterer , and his wife instituted divorce proceedings in 1888 . Two of their sons died in infancy ( one in 1883 and the other in 1887 ) ; the other surviving son , Jean ( 1884–1920 ) became an actor and journalist . The familys Russian nurse habitually shortened Alexandre-Pierres name to the Russian diminutive Sacha , by which he was known all his life . The young Sacha made his stage debut in his fathers company at the age of five . Lucien Guitry , considered the most distinguished actor in France since Coquelin , was immensely successful , both critically and commercially . When he returned to Paris he lived in a flat in a prestigious spot , overlooking the Place Vendôme . and the Rue de la Paix . The young Sacha lived there , and for his schooling he was first sent to the well-known Lycée Janson de Sailly in the fashionable Sixteenth arrondissement . He did not stay long there , and went to a succession of other schools , both secular and religious , before abandoning formal education at the age of sixteen . After giving up school Guitry embarked on a career as a playwright with a little musical piece called Le Page , with a score by Ludo Ratz , premiered at the Théâtre des Mathurins on 15 April 1902 . Eighteen months later he joined his fathers company at the Théâtre de la Renaissance . At first he appeared under the stage name Lorcey ; the pseudonym deceived no-one , as the press immediately announced the debutants real identity . His first role was in LEscalier , by Maurice Donnay in November 1904 . He fell out with his father over what the latter saw as Guitrys lack of professionalism . In the aftermath of their quarrel they neither saw nor spoke to one another . A member of Lucien Guitrys company was a young actress , Charlotte-Augustine-Hortense Lejeune , whose stage name was Charlotte Lysès ( 1877–1956 ) . In April 1905 she and Sacha set up home together in the rue dAnjou ( now the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré ) . For her he wrote his play , Le KWTZ , premiered in December 1905 at the Théâtre des Capucins . In the same month he had his first substantial hit with Nono at the Mathurins . When the leading man in Guitrys 1906 play Chez les Zoaques fell ill the author took over , and in the words of a critic , proved to be his own definitive interpreter . The pattern of his career was set : he remained an actor-author , and later manager , for the rest of his life . Rise to prominence . For the next five years Guitrys plays were , at best , moderate successes , but he then had five consecutive hits with Le Veilleur de nuit ( 1911 ) , Un Beau mariage ( 1912 ) , Le Prise de Berg-op-Zoom ( 1912 ) , La Pèlerine écossaise ( 1912 ) , and Les Deux converts ( 1914 ) , the last of which was staged by the Comédie Française . In 1915 , Guitry made his first cinema film , Ceux de chez nous ( Those of our home ) , a short patriotic piece that celebrated great French men and women of the day , 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 medium of silent film , regarding dialogue as the essence of drama ; he did not make a full-length film until 1935 . In 1915 he met the young singer Yvonne Printemps , with whom he began an affair that led Charlotte to leave him and obtain a divorce . Guitry started to write leading roles for Printemps some musical and others straight comedies . With Printemps . Guitry was reconciled with his father in 1918 . Lucien appeared in many productions with his son and Printemps , including Mon Père avait raison and Comment on ecrit lhistoire . They played together not only in Paris , but in the West End of London . All three appeared at the Aldwych Theatre in a four-week season in 1920 . Sir John Gielgud wrote that Printemps and her husband returned … many times to delight London in various pieces artfully contrived by him to show them both off to the best possible advantage . Guitry developed a charming , witty stage persona , often appearing in period-dress light comedies , for instance his 1925 pastiche Mozart , about the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on a visit to Paris . To compose the score he approached André Messager , with whom he had successfully collaborated in 1923 on a show for Printemps , Lamour masqué . Messager was unavailable and recommended the composer Reynaldo Hahn , who accepted the commission . The resulting production took some liberties with historical accuracy , but it proved highly popular . Printemps , in a breeches role , played and sang the young Mozart , with Guitry as the composers patron , Baron Grimm . Gielgud recalled , she seemed ravishingly youthful and touching in her powdered wig , black knee breeches and buckled shoes , while Sacha hovered over her with avuncular authority , not attempting to try to sing himself , but contributing a kind of flowing , rhythmic accompaniment with his speeches , delivered in a deep caressing voice . After playing successfully at the Théâtre Edouard VII , the company presented the piece for a three-week season in London in June and July 1926 . After the London production , Guitry and Printemps took the piece to Broadway , Boston and Montreal in late 1926 and early 1927 . They returned to the US and Canada in 1929 . In 1931 , Guitry was awarded the Legion of Honour , and the following year he marked thirty years on the stage with a banquet , with dishes named after some of his greatest successes . Later in 1932 his marriage to Printemps broke up . He took a six-month break from the theatre , returning in April 1933 in Châteaux en Espagne , which co-starred his new protégée , Jacqueline Delubac , whom he married on his fiftieth birthday . During the 1930s he turned his attention once more to the cinema , as writer , director and star , while not neglecting his theatrical career . Sheridan Morley comments that in 1936 alone Guitry made five films and also wrote five plays . Among the latter was his hundredth play , Le Mot de Cambronne . Later years . In 1938 Guitry wrote a one-act play , Dieu sauve le roi , to mark the state visit to Paris of George VI ; the play was given in front of the king and queen at the Elysée Palace . When President Lebrun made a reciprocal visit to London the following year Guitry wrote a short comedy in English , Youre Telling Me , in which the author and Sir Seymour Hicks starred at a command performance and for a limited run after it . As the war approached , Guitry managed to do something which would be of far greater significance . On 16 August 1939 , when visiting London , Guitry smuggled over a replica Enigma machine supplied by the Biuro Szyfrow and bound for Bletchley Park . His next play , Un Monde fou was his last to feature Delubac , who , in Morleys phrase , could no longer bear living with a jealous workaholic . Within months of her leaving him he married for a fourth time ; his new wife was Geneviève de Séréville , who had been in the cast of his London play . Guitrys career was affected by the Nazi occupation of France . He continued to work both on stage and in the cinema under the Nazis . Although this gave him the opportunity to help many of his compatriots it also brought accusations of collaborating with the enemy . He conceived his book and associated film , De 1429 à 1942 ou De Jeanne dArc à Philippe Pétain ( 1429 to 1942 , or Joan of Arc to Philippe Pétain ) as a tribute to Frances past glories , but many saw it as honouring the collaborationist president of Vichy France , Marshal Pétain . In 1944 Guitrys fourth wife left him . In 1942 Guitry was named on a list of French collaborators with Germany to be killed during the war , or tried after it . On the liberation of France , Guitry was among the first arrested , by a self-appointed militia . He was interned in a detention camp at Drancy , and suffered ill-effects on his health that necessitated his transfer to a Paris nursing home . He was completely cleared of all accusations of collaboration , but the experience left him disillusioned . In 1947 Guitry married for the fifth and last time ; he was sixty-two and his bride , Lana Marconi , was twenty-eight . He was permitted to resume working in the theatre in 1948 , when he returned to the Paris stage with Le Diable boiteux . For the London season in 1953 , celebrating the coronation of Elizabeth II , Guitry starred at the Winter Garden in Ecoutez bien , messieurs , a comedy in which he played a voluble Frenchman reduced to baffled silence by an even more voluble Englishwoman , played ( in English ) by Heather Thatcher . Later in the same year he made his last stage appearance in Paris in Palsambleu . He continued to make films until 1957 , when he suffered a disabling disease of the nervous system . Guitry died in Paris at the age of seventy-two . Twelve thousand people filed past his coffin , and he was buried , like his father , in the Cimetière de Montmartre , Paris . Legacy and reputation . Critical re-assessment has been prompted by reissues of Guitrys films . In 2011 , an auction of Guitry memorabilia , including manuscripts , drawings , paintings and photographs , was held at the Drouot-Richelieu in Paris ; with more than eight hundred items , it was considered the most important collection of material relating to Guitry since the playwrights death . In an obituary , The Manchester Guardian commented : 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 Lets Make a Dream ) - Black and White , directed by Marc Allégret and Robert Florey ( France , 1931 , based on the play Le Blanc et le Noir ) Notes and references . - Notes - References