Yvonne Printemps
Philip Hope-Wallace
Reportedly full of resentment, as can be the case with a darling of the public when they get on a bit, elderly certainly, in her eighties —and that sounds old when your name means `Spring'—Printemps, tu peux venir, Agate was always quoting—the legendary Yvonne died last week. Should one feel sad ? I did. She was not a great artist by any stretch of the imagination, but 1 almost feel persuaded to call her the best minor performing artist I ever saw. With what, you
may ask ? The voice was minuscule but— note well—it was used with consummate skill, inflection, sustainment and appeal. The face was cheerful, commonplace, snub, suburban-Seine style, yet it was watched with fascination, abandonment even. By me at least, who sat open-mouthed in her presence. I was not the only one either. She married and quarrelled with Sacha Guitry but not before learning everything that stage wizard had to impart ; later another star, Pierre Fresnay; many lovers on the side too I believe, naturally enough. What an artist, what a charmer. No gramophone record she made, no performance of hers I saw on stage will ever fade in my memory.
I wish she had come to England more often (but she hated theChannel crossing). She and Guitry hit us full between the eyes with
Reynaldo Hahn's Mariette and the adorable piece about the young Mozart in the mid
'twenties; both stars came back to give an
evening in Lady Ludlow's drawing room (think of that, as a piece of London life,
rather like having Caruso and Chaliapine round after dinner to save your guests the bother of post-prandial small talk) and then
again she, on her own, came for the musical play Noel Coward fashioned for her, Conversation Piece, in which her hit number was 'I'll follow my secret heart' which can still be heard and makes me want to cry again.
Talking of which I must recall the first night of Les Trois Valses (confections of the Viennese Strauss tunes, to a sort of Summer Manoeuvres plot). At the Marigny or the Michodiere? I was miles high in the gallery.
At the first curtain, Yvonne the heroine, a cocotte loved by a handsome subaltern, had just seen him off to war, waved from the
window in the dawn, stepped down to the footlights and of course did a reprise of the love duet waltz they had barely [sic] finished. The lilt and emotion were absolute perfection. With long sight in those days saw real tears run over her cheeks. Ecstatic applause. I said : I'll never see anything like that again, she couldn't possibly repeat. But the French, qui veulent en avoir pour leur argent, insisted on a repeat. She did it and cried real tears all over again. Comment trouvez-vou.s cela ?
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