(2 of 2)
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.