Yvonne Printemps

Yvonne Printemps, born Yvonne Wigniolle on 25 July 1894 in Ermont, a northern suburb of Paris, was a French singer and actress who built a celebrated career on stage and screen in France, London, and New York. She died on 19 January 1977 in the Paris suburb of Neuilly at the age of 82 and is interred with the actor Pierre Fresnay in the Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery.

Printemps made her performing debut at the age of 12 in a revue at La Cigale in Paris, despite the reservations of what she later called her highly bourgeois family. At 13 she was dancing at the Folies Bergère, and it was her fellow chorus members who gave her the sobriquet Printemps, meaning springtime, in recognition of her sunny disposition; she adopted it as her stage name. The music critic J. B. Steane noted that a career at the Opéra-Comique had seemed possible given her voice's delightful quality and prodigious breath control, though that path did not materialize. She appeared in small roles in light musical productions such as Les Contes de Perrault in 1913, and writer Louis Verneuil, having seen her in one such show, insisted on casting her in the leading role of his 1915 revue.

That revue proved pivotal. In it, Printemps performed a parody of the actor-playwright Sacha Guitry, whose wife Charlotte attended a performance, was amused, and subsequently brought her husband to see it. In November 1915 Guitry cast Printemps in a new revue he directed, and a year later the two acted together in his comedy Jean de la Fontaine. She became romantically involved with Guitry, Charlotte Guitry left and divorced him in 1918, and in April 1919 Guitry and Printemps married. They worked closely together until their divorce in 1932. Guitry wrote numerous plays for her, both musical and non-musical, and the two performed together not only in Paris but repeatedly in the West End of London, including a four-week season at the Aldwych Theatre in 1920 that also featured Guitry's father, the eminent actor Lucien Guitry. Sir John Gielgud described Printemps as possessing a trim, elegant figure and appealing eyes, and contrasted her singing voice favorably with that of Gertrude Lawrence, calling her tones exquisitely delicate and true.

Among the productions Guitry created for Printemps was Mozart, a musical comedy built around the life of the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during his time in Paris in the 1770s. Guitry originally approached composer André Messager, with whom he had collaborated in 1923 on L'amour masqué for Printemps, but Messager was unavailable and recommended Reynaldo Hahn, who accepted the commission. In the production, Printemps took a breeches role, playing and singing the young Mozart, while Guitry portrayed the composer's patron, Baron Grimm. After a successful run at the Théâtre Edouard VII, the company brought the piece to London for a three-week season in June and July 1926, where critic James Agate wrote that audiences were observed to shed tears at her entrance and that she made conquest of the house. Guitry then brought Mozart to Broadway, Boston, and Montreal in late 1926 and early 1927, marking Printemps's Broadway debut. Mozart is among her verified Broadway credits, with her Broadway appearances spanning 1926 to 1934.

Following her separation from Guitry in 1932, Printemps formed a personal and professional partnership with actor Pierre Fresnay that lasted until his death in 1975. In February 1934 she appeared in London in Noël Coward's Conversation Piece, a role Coward had written specifically with her in mind. Because she spoke virtually no English, she learned the part phonetically. Her performance of the romantic number "I'll Follow My Secret Heart" was widely regarded as the highlight of the production. The Times called her enchanting, and The Observer praised the quality of her connection with her audience. Coward himself co-starred at the premiere before handing his role to Fresnay in April 1934. Conversation Piece is among Printemps's verified Broadway credits, with her Broadway activity documented through 1934.

Composers who wrote for Printemps included André Messager, Reynaldo Hahn, Noël Coward, and Francis Poulenc. In 1934 she and Fresnay appeared together on screen in Abel Gance's La dame aux camélias, and between that year and 1951 she made eight films alongside him. In 1937 she starred with Fresnay in Oscar Straus's Drei Waltzer, presented in French as Trois valses, both on the Parisian stage and in the film Les trois valses; critic Richard Traubner noted in 2006 that their performances still hung over any subsequent stage revival of the operetta. In 1946 Printemps appeared in Marcel Achard's Auprès de ma blonde, and in 1950 she played Hortense Schneider opposite Fresnay as Jacques Offenbach in Achard's film La Valse de Paris. She continued performing on stage well into her sixties and co-directed the Théâtre de la Michodière in Paris with Fresnay until his death in 1975.