Sacha Guitry

Sacha Guitry

Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry (21 February 1885 – 24 July 1957), known as Sacha Guitry, 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.

Guitry's 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 Guitry's 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 he received from 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. 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 then 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 family's Russian nurse habitually shortened Alexandre-Pierre's name to the Russian diminutive "Sacha", by which he was known all his life. The young Sacha made his stage debut in his father's 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. ... Source: Article "Sacha Guitry" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Writing

Directing

Acting

1956

If Paris Were Told to Us
Movie

le narrateur et Louis XI

1955

Napoleon
Movie

Talleyrand

1953

The Virtuous Scoundrel
Movie

Self in the prologue / Narrator (uncredited)

1952

1951

Deburau
Movie

Jean-Gaspard Deburau

1950

Tu m'as sauvé la vie
Movie

Le baron de Saint-Rambert

1950

1949

Toâ
Movie

Michel Desnoyers

1949

Two Doves
Movie

Maître Jean-Pierre Walter

1942

Mlle. Desiree
Movie

Napoléon 1er

1939

Nine Bachelors
Movie

Jean Lécuyer

1938

Let’s Go Up the Champs-Élysées
Movie

Le Professeur, Louis XV, Ludovic, Jean-Louis et Napoléon III

1938

Bluebeard's 8th Wife
Movie

Man Leaving Hotel in France (uncredited)

1938

Quadrille
Movie

Philippe de Morannes

1937

1937

The Pearls of the Crown
Movie

Jean Martin / François Ier / Barras / Napoléon III

1936

My Father Was Right
Movie

Charles Bellanger

1936

The New Testament
Movie

Le Docteur Marcelin

1935

Production

Infos

Full Name
Sacha Guitry
Gender
Male
Date of Birth
2/20/1885
Date of Death
7/24/1957
Also Known As

Alexandre Guitry

Alexandre Georges-Pierre Guitry

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