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Mlle. Polaire, whose real name was Emile-Marie Bouchard, was born at Agha in Algiers on 13 May 1879. She was famous for her diminutive waist of thirteen inches. One of her first appearances took place at the Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, in 1902 playing the title role in her friend Colette's Claudine à Paris. This part she reprised in May 1921 at the Theatre-Marjal, Paris. In between Polaire made many appearances in Paris, and was also seen in London and New York. She was in a number of films. See also Aus Romi’s, Petite Histoire des Cafés Concerts, published in 1950.
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POLAIRE THE MAGNETIC
‘"Polaire is a great artist," a critic has said. One who knows this clever French woman, and has watched her work - her real work in Paris, and not only the little trifle she has been brought across the ocean to show to American audiences - is quite inclined to agree with this judgment.
‘Polaire is a great artist, because, first of all, she is a splendid type of the human animal. Not that anyone could be blind enough to declare her a raving beauty. Her physical shortcomings are obvious. The largeness of her feet has been overadvertised; yet there is truth in the press agent’s story, they are large, and in those American short-vamped slippers they look somewhat lumpy. Her hands are large, also - far from being elegantly formed - and so is her nose, long and pointed, and so is her mouth, wide and rather thick-lipped. And, then her waist! It has gained a reputation of its own! But why criticize the details when the effect of the whole is that of perfection in its own strange way?
‘It is interesting to search for the cause of this vivid ensemble impression, as it were, that Polaire infallibly makes off the stage as well as on. Does she cast a secret spell? No, it is not that. It is something of which she is unconscious which emanates from her independently of her own will. Let us call it magnetism! - sheer, animal magnetism, carried to the n-th power. So strong it is, that it sometimes hits you in the stomach like the well-applied punch of a boxer who takes his opponent unawares. Or it seizes you in the back, like the knife she thrusts between the shoulder blades of the "Visiteur" in her sketch. This extraordinary magnetic power is the secret of Polaire’s appeal. It "gets" everybody, the primitive as well as the cultured.
‘Her acting is essentially sensuous, with hardly a trace of mental effort, and nothing whatsoever of the spiritual. Yet it is not objectionable, because it is all in suggestion, and never borders on the crude. There is where the art of the French woman comes in. Or is it, rather than art, a sort of racial delicacy, common to the women of France, whatever their origin and their station in life may be? It is of everyone’s knowledge that French people can say and do "the most awful things" without being vulgar. Polaire is French, of course - a child of Paris, which is more. Nevertheless, it would be unjust to deny the existence of a carefully studied art in her stage work.
‘The New York critic who declared her a great artist, after seeing her do her short sketch in a Broadway music hall, is but an echo of what all the Parisian critics have said - those who have known her for years and watched her growth, from the little variety actress she was at the beginning to the position she now occupies as legitimate star.
‘The present writer saw her [in 1910] in "La Maison de Danse" at the Théatre du Vaudeville in Paris. Her impersonation of the Spanish dancing girl, La Estrella, was absolutely masterful. No attempt at making herself pretty for the gallery, when the character required rags and unkempt hair and dirty hands and slouchy walk in a pair of worn-out, heelless bedslippers. But magnetism enough to electrify ten audiences! And later in the play when, decked out in the gaudy silks of the cheap Spanish professional, she danced on a platform to an audience of rough men, half drunk, half crazed with lust - and then, when she passed among the tables to collect coins - what consummate animal witchery! And in the last act, full of red-blooded romance, passion and death, Polaire’s personality - or was it her art? - made such an impression upon the audience as no other actress of our time has ever succeeded in imparting. The possession of art and magnetism both is certainly a wonderful asset in any actress.
‘Polaire’s voice is like the rest of her, strange and compelling. It is deep, warm, with a queer "canaille" touch to it, especially in the higher tones. She does not sing, yet she sings; and the song, though its text remains mostly unintelligible to Americans, catches the audience. There is a significant line that returns at the conclusion of each stanza of her song in "Le Visiteur": "Et c’est cà qui me porte à la peau." Significant, because characteristic of Polaire. You feel that the things she mentions do "lui portent à la peau," and she herself unquestionably has the same effect upon you. If you are frank you’ll own to it.
‘"Glad to be back in New York?" echoed Polaire as she sat in her dressing-room, fastening her incredibly long black silk stockings with a multitude of little elastic strings - an invention of her own. "Not at all. The road was bad enough, the one-night stands and… and all! But New York is worse. I was shipped here - is that how you say? - before I knew what was happening to me. And no one knew I was coming… I don’t know. People are funny here. One never knows n’est-ce pas?
‘"After New York, I go to Canada. There my old sketch is all right, because I never was there before. But here, I wanted very much to play a new sketch, a good one… Oh, very, very good!"
‘"French, of course. But who is the author?"
‘"I, it is I. It is my idea, a very, very good idea! Too bad! They promised me to do it, and now they will not. Well, all right. Only eight weeks more, or ten, I don’t know, and then I go back to Paris, to play a real play in a real theatre. I don’t like music-halls - not at all! My art needs a real theatre."
‘"What induced you to leave the Boulevards and come over here, if all your preferences are for Paris and her real theatres?"
‘"The big money, of course!" with the most absolute frankness. "And, besides, I did not know what was to be when I signed the contract. You all knew here, because it was advertised. But even when I landed and had to fight those awful, terrible customs men, I did not know. But now I know."
‘"Know what?"
‘"Well, that thing, that combination, all that… Oh, it wasn’t right, no!"
‘Mr. Beckman, her leading man, peeped into the dressing-room and recommended haste. Polaire’s make-up was off, and the short, curly dark hair was promptly released from its red silk prison. As she slipped into a fascinating gown of luminous blue panne, she exclaimed with enthusiasm:
‘"How do you like him? He is good, very good, very terrible, very ‘voyou.’ Who would think he could be that on the stage, to see him on the street, so handsome, so elegant? I know you could not like me to-day. I played tired. I am tired, very, very with two performances every day; it leaves me all without strength."
‘There! The magnetism! She may know nothing about it, but the expenditure of it tires her, the end of the performance finds her all played out.
‘"When I come back to America…" she concluded, "you just wait! I am going to study English, like Nazimova, and then I shall appear in a big play in English, so that the people can understand what I say. Then they will see!!"’
(F.C.F., The Theatre, New York, December 1913, pp. 187 and 188)
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What appears to be Polaire’s entire recorded output has been reissued on CD on Chansophone 136 (‘Succès et raretés’ - Polaire and Eugénie Buffet.) Many thanks to Patrick O’Connor for this information.
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