32 Facts About Sacha Guitry

Sacha Guitry was the son of a leading French actor, Lucien Guitry, and followed his father into the theatrical profession.

Sacha Guitry became known for his stage performances, particularly in boulevardier roles.

Sacha Guitry was a prolific playwright, writing 115 plays throughout his career.

Sacha Guitry was married five times, always to rising actresses whose careers he furthered.

When silent films became popular Sacha Guitry avoided them, finding the lack of spoken dialogue fatal to dramatic impact.

The later years of Sacha Guitry's career were overshadowed by accusations of collaborating with the occupying Germans after the capitulation of France in the Second World War.

Sacha Guitry was born at No 12 Nevsky Prospect, Saint Petersburg, Russia, the third son of the French actors Lucien Sacha Guitry and his wife Marie-Louise-Renee nee Delmas de Pont-Jest.

Sacha Guitry senior was a persistent adulterer, and his wife instituted divorce proceedings in 1888.

The young Sacha Guitry made his stage debut in his father's company at the age of five.

Lucien Sacha Guitry, considered the most distinguished actor in France since Coquelin, was immensely successful, both critically and commercially.

The young Sacha Guitry lived there, and for his schooling he was first sent to the well-known Lycee Janson de Sailly in the fashionable Sixteenth arrondissement.

Sacha Guitry 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.

Sacha Guitry fell out with his father over what the latter saw as Guitry's lack of professionalism.

In 1915, Sacha Guitry made his first cinema film, Ceux de chez nous, 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-Saens.

Sacha Guitry 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.

Sacha Guitry started to write leading roles for Printemps some musical and others straight comedies.

Sacha 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.

In 1931, Sacha 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.

Sacha Guitry took a six-month break from the theatre, returning in April 1933 in Chateaux en Espagne, which co-starred his new protegee, Jacqueline Delubac, whom he married on his fiftieth birthday.

Sheridan Morley comments that in 1936 alone Sacha Guitry made five films and wrote five plays.

In 1938, Sacha 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 Elysee Palace.

When President Lebrun made a reciprocal visit to London the following year, Sacha Guitry wrote a short comedy in English, You're Telling Me, in which the author and Sir Seymour Hicks starred at a command performance and for a limited run after it.

On 16 August 1939, when visiting London, Sacha Guitry smuggled over a replica Enigma machine supplied by the Biuro Szyfrow and bound for Bletchley Park.

Sacha Guitry's career was affected by the Nazi occupation of France.

Sacha Guitry continued to work both on stage and in the cinema under the Nazis.

Sacha Guitry conceived his book and associated film, De 1429 a 1942 ou De Jeanne d'Arc a Philippe Petain as a tribute to France's past glories, but many saw it as honouring the collaborationist president of Vichy France, Marshal Petain.

In 1942, Sacha Guitry was named on a list of French collaborators with Germany to be killed during the war, or tried after it.

Sacha Guitry was interned in a detention camp at Drancy, and suffered ill-effects on his health that necessitated his transfer to a Paris nursing home.

In 1947, Sacha Guitry married for the fifth and final time; he was sixty-two and his bride, Lana Marconi, was twenty-eight.

Sacha Guitry was permitted to resume working in the theatre in 1948, when he returned to the Paris stage with Le Diable boiteux.

Sacha Guitry continued to make films until 1957, when he suffered a disabling disease of the nervous system.

In 2011, an auction of Sacha 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 Sacha Guitry since the playwright's death.