Lys Gauty

Alice Gauthier, real name Lys Gauty, was born in Levallois-Perret on February 14, 1900. Born into a modest family, she learned to sew and type, then worked as a hat saleswoman at Galeries Lafayette in Paris and for a milliner. Noticed for her beautiful voice as a child, she took lyric singing lessons and began her career in 1924 at the Chez Fryscher cabaret, accompanied by pianist Georges Van Parys, before moving on to the Olympia the following year. Married to her impresario Gaston Groëner, owner of the Théâtre de Dix-Heures in Brussels, she recorded her first sides in 1928 for the Belgian Gramophone label. After her film debut in Maurice Gleize's Jour de noces in 1930, Lys Gauty went on to enjoy a string of successes both on record and on stage. In addition to her own cabaret, opened in 1933, she performed at the Boîte à Matelots, Bobino, Alhambra and A.B.C., where she performed her classics recorded for Columbia or Polydor, including the waltz "Le Chaland qui passe", "J'aime tes grands yeux" and "À Paris dans chaque faubourg" (1933) or "La Chanson de Barbara" and "La Fiancée du pirate", from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's L'Opéra de Quat'sous, which won the Grand Prix du Disque in 1933. Her heyday continued throughout the decade and into the post-war years, with arias such as "Le Bonheur est entré dans mon cœur" and "Infidèle " (1938) and "Boléro d'amour " (1949). Known for her silhouette draped in long white dresses, the singer's repertoire was both realistic and sentimental, and she toured England, the Netherlands and as far afield as South America in 1939. She played the title role in Fernand Rivers' film La Goualeuse (1938) and returned to the Alhambra in 1946, after the war, when she was criticized for giving concerts in Germany. She hired the young Léo Ferré as her pianist, and in 1950 staged Ma goualeuse at the Casino-Montparnasse. She ran the Casino de Luchon in the Pyrenees, where she founded the Festival de la Voix, and retired from the stage in 1953 to run a cabaret and set up a singing school in Nice, then a real estate agency in Monaco. Lys Gauty died in Cap-d'Ail on January 2, 1994 at the age of 93, and is buried in the Saint-Gengoux-de-Scissé (Saône-et-Loire) cemetery.