Biography
Born Yvonne Wignolle—rendered in certain records as Wigniolle or Wigniole—on 25 July 1895 in Ermont, Val d’Oise, within Île-de-France, the performer who would become known as Printemps died on 19 January 1977 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, also in Île-de-France. As a teenager she made her first appearances in French operettas, taking parts in Les Contes De Perrault (1913) and Le Poilu (1916). Although gifted with a fine soprano, she set singing aside after marrying the celebrated French actor Sacha Guitry and instead concentrated on straight theatre, quickly attaining both critical acclaim and widespread celebrity. That renown reached audiences beyond France once she performed the Mozart production that had premiered under her name in Paris in 1925; the same staging subsequently played in London and New York. After the marriage to Guitry ended, Noël Coward offered her the central role in his Conversation Piece (1934), a work composed expressly for her voice, which she used to memorable effect on several numbers, above all “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart.” The production succeeded both in London’s West End and later on Broadway. Printemps went back to Paris in 1935 for the stage version of Les Trois Valses and repeated the part on screen. Nevertheless, her strongest inclination remained dramatic work, and she devoted the balance of her career to it—so resolutely, in fact, that she declined the part of Aunt Alicia in the 1957 screen musical Gigi by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.
Singles
