Early Signed Theaterical Stage ACTRESS Icon GABRIELLE REJANE RPPC Photograph

Description

EARLY SIGNED THEATRICAL STAGE ACTRESS GABRIELEE REJANE RPPC PHOTOGRAPH POSTCARD
Signed RPPC Photograph
Autograph
photograph RPPC postcard signed of the French singer, actress, and dancer that was internationally known for her beauty and acting prowess.
Circa 1910-1915 image shows actress in thick blonde curl hair and a Gay 1890's dress and large feather lace hat.
Image dated early in the actresses career and is inscribed in large flowing black ink - "Rejane"
Wear to card consistent with age and use.   Two minor creases to lower left hand corner.
Please see all photos as they are part of the description.  Signature executed in
script.  Guaranteed authentic.
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LIFE & CAREER -  EARLY LIFE
Réjane aged 16
Réjane was born in Paris on 6 June 1856. Her fa­ther, a for­mer actor, was on the front-of-house staff of the Théâtre de l'Am­bigu-Comique.  He died when Réjane was about five, leav­ing his widow in strait­ened cir­cum­stances. She ob­tained a post at an­other Parisian the­atre, and the young Réjane painted fans to aug­ment the fam­ily in­come. In 1870–71 her ed­u­ca­tion, at the Pen­sion Boulet, was in­ter­rupted by the Siege of Paris and the bloody events of the Com­mune.[5] After the fight­ing ended she re­turned to her stud­ies and was ap­pointed as a paid as­sis­tant to look after the younger pupils.
Réjane had am­bi­tions to go on the stage, and, hav­ing ob­tained a re­luc­tant con­sent from her mother, she suc­cess­fully ap­plied to François-Joseph Reg­nier, a dis­tin­guished actor and teacher, for ad­mis­sion to his class at the Paris Con­ser­va­toire. In 1874 she won the Con­ser­va­toire's deuxième prix (sec­ond prize) for com­edy. The critic Fran­cisque Sarcey held that she de­served the pre­mier prix, but "A first prize car­ries with it the right of en­trance into the Comédie-Française, and the jury did not think Made­moi­selle Réjane, with her lit­tle wide-awake face, suited to the vast frame of the House of Molière".
Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial reg­u­la­tions, Réjane, as a win­ner of the deuxième prix, was re­quired to join the com­pany of France's sec­ond na­tional the­atre, the Odéon, but she pre­ferred the reper­toire and bet­ter pay at the Théâtre du Vaude­ville, and the Odéon man­age­ment did not press the point. She made her debut at the Vaude­ville in 1875 in the pro­logue to the Revue des deux-mondes, by Clairville, mak­ing an im­me­di­ate im­pres­sion. A re­viewer com­mented, "She has the arch and sprightly air of a Parisian grisette, a flex­i­ble voice of an agree­able tone, and per­fect self-pos­ses­sion – qual­i­ties more than suf­fi­cient to suc­ceed on the stage". Later in the year she had her first sub­stan­tial suc­cess, as Ni­quette in the com­edy Fanny Lear by Henri Meil­hac and Lu­dovic Halévy. She re­mained at the Vaude­ville for eight sea­sons, at­tract­ing good no­tices. The es­tab­lished star at the the­atre, Julia Bartet, had the lion's share of lead­ing roles, but Réjane made her mark. The critic Dauphin Me­u­nier later wrote:
Shall I show her as the sly soubrette in Fanny Lear? as the woman in love, "whose ignorance divines all things", in Madame Lili? as the comical Marquise de Menu-Castel in Le Verglas? Shall I tell of her first crowning success, when she played Gabrielle in Pierre?
In 1877 Réjane made the first of many ap­pear­ances in London. Parisian the­atres cus­tom­ar­ily closed for a few weeks dur­ing the height of summer, and in July, with Vaude­ville col­leagues, she played at the Gai­ety The­atre in the West End in the come­dies Per­fide comme l'onde, Nos alliées and Aux cro­chets d'un gendre.[n 3] The Athenaeum ap­plauded "a dis­play of vi­vac­ity and espièglerie quite ex­cep­tional on the part of Mdlle Réjane", and The Morn­ing Post found her "in­fi­nitely diverting".
Variétés and stardom
As Riquette in Ma cousine, 1890
In 1882, the year after the re­tire­ment of Hort­ense Schnei­der, star of the Théâtre des Variétés, Réjane was en­gaged as lead­ing lady there.   Her con­tract at the Variétés al­lowed her to ap­pear in more se­ri­ous roles in other the­atres, and in 1883 Sarah Bern­hardt, who was then run­ning the Am­bigu, cast her in the cen­tral role of Jean Richepin's La Glu; in that part, and as Adri­enne de Bois­tulbé in Meil­hac's Ma camarade at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in the same year, Réjane at­tracted highly favourable crit­i­cal attention.
Over the next ten years Réjane ap­peared at six or more Paris the­atres, in an ex­cep­tion­ally wide va­ri­ety of plays, from new works by Ed­mond Gondinet (Clara Soleil, 1885), Meil­hac (Les demoi­selles Clochart, 1886, and Ma cousine, 1890), Vic­to­rien Sar­dou (Mar­quise, 1889) and Ed­mond Ha­rau­court (Shy­lock, 1889), to re­vivals of clas­sics by Beau­mar­chais (Le mariage de Fi­garo, 1889), Dumas (La Demi-Monde, 1890) and Aristo­phanes (Ly­sis­trata, 1892.She con­tin­u­ally showed the range of her abil­i­ties as an ac­tress: in 1887 in Allô-Allô she played a scene grap­pling with the dif­fi­cul­ties of the new-fan­gled tele­phone, which, Me­u­nier re­called, was so funny "that from the gallery to the stalls the the­atre was one roar of laugh­ter and applause".   In the fol­low­ing year she ap­peared at the Odéon in a stage adap­ta­tion of Ger­minie Lac­er­teux by the Goncourt broth­ers. The actor and di­rec­tor André An­toine de­scribed her per­for­mance:
... an unexpected, unrecognisable Réjane. Here was the elegant Parisienne, hunched and frumpish. in the clothes of a poor maid – so convincingly transformed into the shape of humanity that she had become Germinie Lacerteux herself. ... Above all in the second part, when Germinie, gradually decaying, growing old, trails her grief – is so truly of the people. It was then that the actress finally achieved greatness.
Among those who saw the per­for­mance was Mar­cel Proust who be­came a de­voted ad­mirer, and later friend; his char­ac­ter Berma, the great ac­tress in À la recherche du temps perdu, is partly based on Réjane.
In 1893 Réjane mar­ried Paul Porel, di­rec­tor of the Vaude­ville; they had two chil­dren – Ger­maine and Jacques. She ap­peared at the Vaude­ville in a se­ries of suc­cess­ful plays; two of the ear­li­est pro­duc­tions demon­strated her range. In Oc­to­ber 1893 she cre­ated the role with which she was most closely as­so­ci­ated dur­ing the rest of her ca­reer: Cather­ine, the out­spo­ken wash­er­woman-duchess in Sar­dou and Moreau's his­tor­i­cal com­edy-drama Madame Sans-Gêne. The crit­i­cal and pub­lic re­sponse was en­thu­si­as­tic. In Le Fi­garo, Henry Fouquier judged that Réjane had turned an ar­ti­fi­cial char­ac­ter into some­thing de­li­cious, fem­i­nine and overwhelming. An­other re­viewer wrote:
As Catherine, Duchesse de Dantzig, in Madame Sans-Gêne Madame Réjane, who played the extremely difficult title rôle of the piece, gained a distinct personal triumph by sheer dint of clever acting. She invested the character of the vulgar but honest Duchesse de Dantzig with a thousand sympathetic and laughable traits, many of which were conceived in the highest spirit of comedy. She was by turns fascinating and espiègle ... pathetic ... subtly diplomatic ... proud almost to sublimity ... and all the time she never ceases to be the restless, talkative gamine of the Paris streets. ... People will crowd to the Vaudeville if it is only for the purpose of seeing Réjane in the character of Madame Sans-Gêne.
Six months later Réjane played Nora in the French pre­miere of Hen­rik Ibsen's A Doll's House ("Une mai­son de poupée"). Ibsen had never suc­ceeded with Parisian au­di­ences until now, but to his de­light the pro­duc­tion was a triumph. Les an­nales du théâtre et de la musique recorded, "Nora's role is over­whelm­ing; Made­moi­selle Réjane took the op­por­tu­nity of one of the great­est suc­cesses of her ca­reer. She was able to high­light the very com­plex char­ac­ter of the role, and with a rare sim­plic­ity of means she demon­strated in the fa­mous taran­tella scene an ad­mirable dra­matic power. Need­less to say, it was acclaimed".
An­other con­tem­po­rary critic wrote:
The range and delicacy of her playing were equally remarkable, and it was extraordinary with what consummate ease she passed from the lightest gaiety and espièglerie through a thousand varying and contrasting phases of passion and sentiment to the final tragic heights of her soul-awakening when she perceives the mistake of her life and refuses any longer to be a mere doll dandled in the strong arms of her somewhat coarse-grained husband. So complete, incisive, and at the same time exquisitely charming an exposition of Ibsen's subtly drawn character of Nora has probably never been given before.
LONDON & NEW YORK
In 1894 Réjane re­turned to the West End. Since her first ap­pear­ance there, in 1877, she had been in a pro­duc­tion of Alphonse Daudet's Le Nabab at the Gai­ety in 1883. Her re­views then had been good, but her re­turn in June 1894 in Madame Sans-Gêne prompted su­perla­tives from the crit­ics and drew full houses, even with the counter-at­trac­tion of a Bern­hardt sea­son at Daly's The­atre. Réjane's sea­son had to be ex­tended by a fort­night to meet demand.
A Doll's House, included in Réjane's 1895 New York season. In Feb­ru­ary 1895 Réjane opened at Abbey's The­atre in New York for a sea­son com­pris­ing Madame Sans-Gêne, Divorçons, Sapho, Ma cousine and A Doll's House. Re­views for Réjane were ex­cel­lent, but less so for the plays, and au­di­ences were un­re­spon­sive: as an Amer­i­can com­men­ta­tor put it, "The lan­guage was, of course, one stum­bling block, for a keen un­der­stand­ing of the for­eign tongue was more nec­es­sary for a taste for Réjane than for the broad ef­fects, say, of a Bernhardt".    Among those in the au­di­ence who un­der­stood the words there was a sub­stan­tial sec­tion whose broad­ness of mind did not ex­tend to the con­tent of French plays. The New York Times later com­mented that Réjane was "ham­pered by the moral bias of Amer­i­can audiences."
Réjane was so dis­gusted at the lack of ap­pre­ci­a­tion that she vowed never to return. She took her com­pany back to Paris via Lon­don, where they played a sea­son of most of the same plays to full houses at the Gar­rick The­atre. Madame Sans-Gêne was once again an im­mense suc­cess, and Sir Henry Irv­ing ne­go­ti­ated the rights to stage an Eng­lish ver­sion, which he pro­duced at the Lyceum The­atre with Ellen Terry in Réjane's role two years later.
Réjane even­tu­ally re­lented and agreed to re­turn to the US, but not until 1904, by which time she had been seen by au­di­ences in Bel­gium, Den­mark, the Nether­lands, Ger­many, Rus­sia, Aus­tria, Ro­ma­nia, Italy, Spain and Portugal. In the mean­while, at home her mar­riage was dis­in­te­grat­ing, and in 1905 she and Porel were di­vorced. The chil­dren re­mained with her. The Vaude­ville, under Porel's man­age­ment, being now closed to her, Réjane de­cided to go into man­age­ment on her own account.
Théâtre Réjane AND LATER YEARS
Réjane was not long with­out a the­atri­cal base. In 1906 the writer Arnold Ben­nett, then res­i­dent in Paris, wrote:
She took hold of the Nouveau Théâtre, the unlikeliest and one of the most uncomfortable theatres ... She removed everything from within its four walls, and presently frequenters of the Rue Blanche observed that the legend Théâtre Réjane had been carved on its façade. ... [Audiences] went, and discovered the wonderfullest theatre in the town, incredibly spacious, with lounges as big as the auditorium, wide corridors, and a scheme of decoration at once severe and splendid. Réjane was written all over it, even in the costumes of the women attendants. Paris was charmed, astounded, electrified; and now Réjane flames a more brilliant jewel than ever in the forehead of the capital.
At the Théâtre Réjane its pro­pri­etor ap­peared in twenty new plays and re­vivals by play­wrights rang­ing from the grandiose Cat­ulle Mendès to the chic Sacha Gui­try be­tween 1906 and 1910 – "none of them, per­haps, a new Sans-Gêne or Mar­quise", ac­cord­ing to her bi­og­ra­pher For­rest Iz­zard, "but each serv­ing to keep in vig­or­ous use one of the rarest tal­ents of the time".  Réjane did not ap­pear in every pro­duc­tion at her the­atre; she was not in the cast of the French pre­miere of Mau­rice Maeter­linck's play The Blue Bird ("L'oiseau bleu"), given at the Théâtre Réjane in March 1911.  How  did she con­fine her ap­pear­ances in Paris to her own the­atre; in 1911 and 1916 she ap­peared at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Mar­tin in Henry Bataille's L'en­fant de l'amour and L'ama­zone.
As well as her base in Paris, Réjane hoped to found a French reper­tory the­atre in Lon­don. A first step was made in 1906 with a sea­son at the Roy­alty The­atre, but the plan was not taken further. Réjane sold her Paris the­atre in 1918, after which its name was changed to the Théâtre de Paris.
Réjane took part in six silent films. Two were ver­sions of Madame Sans-Gêne, the first di­rected by Clément Mau­rice, 1900, and the sec­ond by André Cal­mettes, 1911. The oth­ers were Bri­tan­ni­cus (Cal­mettes, 1908), L'As­so­moir (Al­bert Capel­lani, 1909), Al­sace (Henri Pouc­tal, 1916) and Mi­arka (Louis Mer­can­ton, 1920).
Dur­ing the First World War, Réjane de­voted much ef­fort to help­ing the Al­lied cause, and she ap­peared at the Royal Court The­atre, Lon­don, in a pa­tri­otic drama called Al­sace, and at the Lon­don Col­i­seum in a war-play en­ti­tled The Bet.  She was made a Cheva­lier of the Le­gion of Ho­n­our, an event cel­e­brated in Feb­ru­ary 1920 by a lun­cheon at the Théâtre de Paris, presided over by Pres­i­dent-elect Paul De­schanel.
Réjane died of in­fluenza in Paris on 14 June 1920, aged 64.  The fol­low­ing day the front page of Le Figaro bore the words, "Réjane est morte... Du si­lence, messieurs et mes­dames du Paris de 1920, un peu de si­lence. Et pour nous, des larmes. Nous per­dons l'âme de Paris". – Réjane is dead. ... Si­lence, gen­tle­men and ladies of Paris, 1920, a lit­tle si­lence. And for us, tears. We lose the soul of Paris".
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Image measures 3 3/8" x 5 3/8" including borders.
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