Alexandre-Pierre Georges "Sacha" Guitry was a French playwright and actor, who wrote 115 plays and 29 motion picture scripts. He typified the Gallic "great lover" in plays he wrote himself and carried this role into private life by marrying five times.
Background
Alexandre-Pierre Georges "Sacha" Guitry was born on February 21, 1885 in Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation. He was the 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 family's Russian nurse habitually shortened Alexandre-Pierre's name to the Russian diminutive "Sacha", by which he was known all his life.
Education
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.
Career
Sacha Guitry achieved his first theatrical success with Nono (1905). This was followed by Chez les Zoaques (1906), Petite Hollande (1908), Le Scandale de Monte Carlo (1908), Le Veilleur de nuit (1911) - one of his best plays - and Un Beau Mariage (1911). It is difficult to draw an absolute distinction between his work as an actor and as a playwright, for his art was always to some extent in the nature of brilliant improvisation. His output was enormous: Sacha Guitry had over 90 plays produced out of 130 that he wrote. He wrote a number of serious plays for his father to act in, including Debureau (1918), Pasteur (1919), and Béranger (1920). Sacha Guitry wrote, directed, and acted in many motion pictures, of which the best known was perhaps Roman d’un tricheur (1936; "The Cheat"). His autobiography, Mémoires d’un tricheur (translated into English as If I Remember Right), appeared in 1935. He was made commander of the Legion of Honour in 1936 and elected to the Académie Goncourt in 1939.
Views
Quotations:
"An ideal wife is one who remains faithful to you but tries to be just as charming as if she weren't."
"When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her."
