Word: sacha
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...MEMORY SERVES-Sacha Guitry- Doubleday, Doran ($3). By the time Sacha Guitry was five years old he had become accustomed to the strange passions that periodically seized his father. During a quiet dinner the boy would be startled to observe Lucien Guitry frown fiercely, cry out for no reason such things as, "My lord, you are a nobleman and I am but a commoner, yet I dare tell you that any man who insults a woman is a coward!" Or. with a melting tenderness, the father would stare unseeingly at his son and murmur, "Clementine, I would give my life...
...scene of young Guitry's bewilderment was St. Petersburg in 1890. At that time his parents were getting their divorce. His mother had been given custody of the two children, but Lucien Guitry had kidnapped Sacha, taken him to Russia, hiding him at frontiers and introducing him to the theatre almost as soon as he could talk. Sacha was petted, spoiled, teased by such individuals as Douroff. great St. Petersburg clown, who singled him out of circus crowds and by Tsar Alexander III, before whom his father appeared...
Last week Sacha Guitry offered a volume of reminiscence and anecdote in which such childish experiences were interwoven with buoyant observations on the theatre, genius, great actors and great hams; on the perils and joys of playwrighting; on travel, success and the frightful ordeal of being hissed after a complete and overwhelming flop. Although it traces the main outlines of his career, the chief distinction of If Memory Serves is its abundance of good stories, some sentimental, some hilarious, but each swift, effective, written with a neat black-out ending...
...Sacha went to twelve schools, got in trouble at all of them, was generally considered backward. He never got out of the first form. At his last school, the master wanted to expel him, could not because the 17-year-old boy had not been at home or at school for five days. His first attempt to sow wild oats was frustrated. When he picked up a dancer at the Moulin-Rouge, she discovered he was Lucien Guitry's son, gave him a good talking-to, took him back to school, standing by to see that...
...Sacha was frequently embarrassed by his father's fame. Besides such eminent figures as Sarah Bernhardt, Edmond Rostand, Henry Bernstein. Rejane, Anatole France, Eugene Brieux, Paul Bourget, he knew droll and pompous nobodies, devoted lovers of the theatre, all of whom impressed on him the constant fear that he might, from lack of talent, dishonor the name he bore...