Guitry's Growing-Up

IF 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 for a kiss from your lips!" Lucien Guitry, who later acted opposite Sarah Bernhardt, was merely going over his lines, but the boy did not know it. He considered his father enchanting, handsome, incomprehensible. He grew up with the fixed belief that in the world of the theatre, work and play were the same. The belief stayed with him after he had been laughed off the Parisian and provincial stages, written a hit at the age of 20, lived through a 13-year quarrel with his father, known most of the theatrical great of his day, become the most famed of French actor-directors and playwrights.

The 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 he did not sneak out again.

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.

This he promptly did. His father gave him a part in a curtain-raiser, cast as Paris, but Sacha stayed overlong reading a new play, was late, lost his wig and appeared on the stage half in costume, out of breath, his helmet dropping down over his eyes and ears. As Helen's welcoming words were, "Here comes my beautiful Paris!" the cast burst into laughter, began to ad lib, until the audience stamped in unison. Quarreling with his father, Sacha ran away. He appeared in a comedy in the provinces, lost his mustachios, forgot his lines, and in a desperate attempt to rewin his audience leaned too far out the window of the set, bumped his head, fell flat on the floor. Next day his contract was canceled. Conscious of a vast relief, he sat down that same day, wrote the first act of Nona, his first success, in two hours.

Sacha Guitry's closest friends were the great Impressionist painter Monet and the independent man of letters. Octave Mirbeau. Among managers, Guitry's favorite was Michel Mortier, who produced his successful Le Kwtz. During the run of that play, Mortier learned that Edward VII, incognito in Paris, planned to visit his small theatre. Mortier hung out the Union Jack in preparation. Before the curtain rose, stately white-bearded King Leopold of Belgium unexpectedly appeared, seemed puzzled when the orchestra broke into God Save the King and Mortier, out of his head, jabbered, "It's not you!" At the height of this confusion Edward VII arrived, almost went unnoticed until Mortier, shouting "Vive le Roil" ran back and forth crying, "I have two kings!"

Since If Memory Serves is a formless book, with Sacha Guitry's imagination ricocheting from one pleasant memory to the next, omissions are less important than they would be in a straight autobiography. But the references to Yvonne Printemps, his wife and co-star from 1919 to 1932, are surprisingly sparse, limited to a passing remark that Sarah Bernhardt witnessed their wedding and a brief account of their U. S. triumph. He says nothing of their divorce last year, of his triumph with his new leading lady-lovely, dark-haired Jacqueline Delubac, now the third Madame Sacha Guitry.

As far as can be judged from If Memory Serves, the low point of Sacha Guitry's career was the performance of La Clef, which he wrote for Rejane. During the third act the audience, already restless, was offended at a scene in which a husband became seasick after discovering that his wife was deceiving him. Stamping in urison began, accompanied by a strange laughter. The laughter was "transformed into a sort of murmur," then into a "more nervous, snickering laugh," a deep, terrifying silence, a low rumble, then hissing. "If you have never heard yourself hissed you can have no notion of how physically painful it is. I can imagine that if one has committed an evil act, has been disloyal, has committed treason or a felony,-one should bow one's head to the storm. . . . But to have written a bad third act is not really so reprehensible!" Sacha Guitry was in despair, felt that the terrible sound had shriveled his heart, considered it unjust and offensive, but after it was over he felt that for the first time he could consider himself a true playwright.

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