Polaire  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Mlle. Polaire and Pauline Polaire were the stage names used by French-Algerian singer and actress Emilie Marie Bouchard (born May 14, 1874; died 1939).

Born at Agha, Algiers, Algeria, she began her show-business career as a café singer, at age 15. At 17, she joined her older brother in Paris, France. Eventually adopting the stage name Polaire, she worked as a music-hall singer; in 1895, her fame increased significantly when Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's sketch of her appeared in the satirical magazine Le Rire; in 1900, attention grew again, when she was painted by Leonetto Cappiello.

Polaire went on to act in the theatre. Her first major appearance was in 1902, at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, in the title role of a play based on Colette's Claudine à Paris. A gifted comedic actress, she became one of the major celebrities of her day.

At a time when tightlacing among women was in vogue, she was famous for her tiny, corsetted waist, which was sometimes reported to have a circumference no greater than 14 inches (35.6 centimeters). This accentuated her large bust, which was said to measure 38 inches (96.5 centimeters). She stood 5 feet and 3 inches (160 centimeters) tall. Talk of her figure and her lavish overdressing in fur coats and dazzling jewels preceded her appearances wherever she went. Jean Lorrain said of her

Polaire! The agitating and agitated Polaire! The tiny slip of a woman that you know, with the waist slender to the point of pain, of screaming out loud, of breaking in two, in a spasmically tight bodice, the prettiest slimness ... And, under the aureole of an extravagant masher's hat, orange and plumed with iris leaves, the great voracious mouth, the immense black eyes, ringed, bruised, discoloured, the incandescence of her pupils, the bewildered nocturnal hair, the phosphorus, the sulphur, the red pepper of that ghoulish, Salome-like face, the agitating and agitated Polaire!
What a devilish mimic, what a coffee-mill and what a belly-dancer! Yellow skirt tucked high, gloved in open-work stockings, Polaire skips, flutters, wriggles, arches from the hips, the back, the belly, mimes every kind of shock, twists, coils, rears, twirls...trembling like a stuck wasp, miaows, faints to what music and what words! The house, frozen with stupor, forgets to applaud.

In 1911, as Pauline Polaire, she was cast her in her first silent-film role. In the next year, she was offered a role in a film by the up-and-coming young director Maurice Tourneur; she appeared in six of his films in 1912 and 1913. She then returned to the musical stage and began a tour of the United States, after which she appeared at the London Coliseum. Polaire returned to films in 1922; she performed in ten between then and 1935, some of them talkies.

She died in 1939, at age sixty-five; her body was buried at the Cimetière du Centre, in the eastern Paris suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne.

She also posed for French sculptor Rupert Carabin.

She sang renditions of Tha ma ra boum di hé (her biggest hit), La Glu (after a poem of Jean Richepin), Tchique tchique by Vincent Scotto, and did a version of La Charlotte prie Notre-Dame de Jehan Rictus.

Discographie

78 tours :

• Tchicke Tcchike (Scotto) - Odéon 75143 - 1923
• Pour être heureux (Yvain) - Odéon 75143 - Matrice K1-510 - 1923
• Allo ! Chéri (Boyer - Stamper) - Pathé 4970 - Matrice 2485 - 8. Mai1918
• Pour être heureux (Yvain) - Aérophone - No. 1467 - 1920
• La Glu (Richepin - Fragerole) - Aérophone - No. 1468 - 1920
• Nocturne (Nozière) - Gramophone K-5798 - Matrice BS 4432-1 et 4433-2 - 1929
• La Glu (Richepin - Fragerole) - Polydor 521531 - Matrice 2170 BK - 1929
• Le P'tit Savoyard - Polydor 521531 - Matrice 2170 BK - 1929
• Le Train du rêve (Aubret - Lenoir) - Parlophone 22716 - Matrice Pa 106124-2 - 1930
• Le Premier Voyage (Lenoir) - Parlophone 22716 - Matrice Pa 106165-2 - 1930
• La Prière de la Charlotte (Jehan Rictus - arr. Warms) - Cristal 6263 - Matrice CP 2082 et 2083 - 1936

Réédition en CD :

• Eugénie Buffet & Polaire : Succès et Raretés 1918-1936

Filmographie

• Moines et guerriers (1909)
• La Tournée des grands ducs de Léonce Perret (1910) (La danseuse)
• Le Visiteur de René Leprince (1911)
• Le Poison de l'humanité de Victorin Jasset (1911)
• Ma gosse (1912)
• Le Friquet de Maurice Tourneur (1912) (Le Friquet)
• Soeurette de Maurice Tourneur (1913)
• Les Gaîtés de l'escadron de Maurice Tourneur et Joseph Faivre (1913)
• Le Dernier pardon de Maurice Tourneur (1913)
• La Dame de Monsoreau de Emile Chautard (1913)
• Monsieur Lecoq de Maurice Tourneur et Gérard Bourgeois (1914)
• Le Masque du vice (1917)
• Un Punto nero (1922)
• Il Controllore dei vagoni letti (1922)
• La Locanda delle ombre (1923)
• Saetta impara a vivere (1924)
• Maciste e il nipote d'America (1924)
• Caporal Saetta (1924)
• Maciste all'inferno (1925) (Graziella)
• Amour... amour... de Robert Bibal (1932) (La chiromancienne)
• Âme de clown de Marc Didier (1933)
• Arènes joyeuses de Karel Anton (1935)

Bibliographie

• Polaire par elle-même. Autobiographie, Figuière, Paris, 1933
• Éric Walbecq : Jean Lorrain, Colette, Willy et Polaire. Correspondance et souvenirs, Du Lérot, Tusson 2005