Guilbert, Yvette

▪ French singer and actress

original name  Emma Laure Esther Guilbert 

born Jan. 20, 1867?, Paris

died Feb. 4, 1944, Aix-en-Provence, Fr.

      French singer, reciter, and stage and film actress, who had an immense vogue as a singer of songs drawn from Parisian lower-class life. Her ingenuous delivery of songs charged with risqué meaning made her famous.

      As a child Guilbert attended recitation school and was unsuccessful in small comic parts; however, she succeeded as a cabaret singer from 1896 (the Moulin Rouge and the Ambassadeurs, seven years; the Folies-Bergère, nine years). She was a popular recording artist from the mid-1920s as well. Notable among her films are Les Misérables (1934) and Pêcheurs d'Islande (1934). She was also successful on tour (from 1895) in Italy, the United States, and England. Fascinating to French audiences, she scandalized the English with her gaunt decadent appearance and risqué lyrics.

      Guilbert owed much of her success to Xanrof (Léon Fourneau) and to Aristide Bruant, who wrote songs for her. She is also remembered for a famous poster of her, showing her in her characteristic yellow dress and long black gloves, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de). She wrote How to Sing a Song (1928; L'Art de chanter une chanson), two novels, La Vedette and Les Demi-Vieilles (both 1920), and an autobiography, La Chanson de ma vie (1929; Song of My Life: My Memories).

Additional Reading

Bettina Knapp and Myra Chipman, That Was Yvette (1964), although dated, is one of the few biographies of Guilbert in English.

* * *