Yvonne Printemps

Music hall and operetta singer Yvonne Wigniolle, known as Yvonne Printemps, was born in Ermont-Eaubonne on July 25, 1894. Born into a modest family, she was noticed at the tender age of ten by Marie Marville, wife of the former director of the Moulin-Rouge in Paris, P. L. Flers, while performing in an amateur play. Four years later, she appeared in a music-hall revue at La Cigale, Nue Cocotte, before replacing a singer at the Folies-Bergère the following year, where she remained for four years. She earned the nickname "Mademoiselle Printemps" and starred alongside Maurice Chevalier in the revue Ah! les beaux nichons (1912). Her pretty face, intelligent acting, mischievous look and beautiful tone of voice delighted audiences at the Palais-Royal, where Yvonne Printemps appeared in two revues and the operetta Le Poilu. Composer André Messager, like Sacha Guitry, and librettist Albert Willemetz fell under her spell, writing musicals, plays and revues for her. In 1916, the singer and actress made her debut at the Bouffes-Parisiens in Jean de la Fontaine, starring opposite the author, whom she married three years later, after a romance with aviator Georges Guynemer. Sacha Guitry, screenwriter of the film Un roman d'amour et d'aventures, cast her in her first film role in 1918. He went on to write dozens of tailor-made stage roles for her, from Mon père avait raison (1919) to Françoise (1932), including Béranger (1920), Faisons un rêve (1921), L'Accroche-cœur (1923), Mozart (1925), Désiré (1927), La Jalousie (1930) and Nono (1931). After the musical Conversation Piece (1934) with Noël Coward for songs in English in London and New York, Yvonne Printemps sang in Oscar Straus's operetta Trois valses, based on a libretto by Léopold Marchand and Albert Willemetz, which was a huge success from its premiere in 1937. Pierre Fresnay, his companion since Guitry's Franz Hals (1931) and partner in eight films, including Fernand Rivers and Abel Gance's La Dame aux camélias (1934), Marcel L'Herbier's Adrienne Lecouvreur (1938), Le Duel (1939), La Valse de Paris (1949) and Le Voyage en Amérique (1951), was asked to direct. In 1940, the equally enchanted composer Francis Poulenc wrote her one of his most beautiful melodies, Les Chemins de l'amour (1940). During the war years, Yvonne Printemps also performed in plays by Jean Anouilh, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Édouard Bourdet, then later by Marcel Achard and Curzio Malaparte, until her last one in 1958, still with Fresnay, with whom she retired in their final years. Two years after his death, she fractured the neck of her femur and died in her turn on January 18, 1977, at the age of 82. Both are buried in the old Neuilly-sur-Seine cemetery.

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