Today is the birthday, in 1873, of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, known as Colette. She was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her 1944 novella Gigi, which was the basis for the 1958 film and the 1973 stage production of the same name. Her short story collection The Tendrils of the Vine is also famous in France.
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born on 28 January 1873 in the village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in the department of Yonne, Burgundy. Her father, Captain Jules-Joseph Colette (1829–1905), was a war hero. Her mother, Adèle Eugénie Sidonie, was nicknamed Sido. Colette’s great-grandfather, Robert Landois, was a wealthy Martinican mulatto, who settled in Charleville in 1787.
In 1893, Colette married Henry Gauthier-Villars, an author and publisher 14 years her senior, who used the pen name “Willy”. Her first four novels – the four Claudine stories: Claudine à l’école (1900), Claudine à Paris (1901), Claudine en ménage (1902), and Claudine s’en va (1903) – appeared under his name. Fourteen years older than his wife and one of the most notorious libertines in Paris, he introduced his wife into avant-garde intellectual and artistic circles and encouraged her lesbian dalliances. And it was he who chose the titillating subject matter of the Claudine novels: “the secondary myth of Sappho.
Colette and Willy separated in 1906, although their divorce was not final until 1910. Colette had no access to the sizable earnings of the Claudine books – the copyright belonged to Willy – and until 1912 she conducted a stage career in music halls across France, sometimes playing Claudine in sketches from her own novels, earning barely enough to survive and often hungry and ill. To make ends meet, she turned more seriously to journalism in the 1910s.
During these years she embarked on a series of relationships with other women, notably with Natalie Clifford Barney and with Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise de Belbeuf (“Max”), with whom she sometimes shared the stage. On 3 January 1907, an onstage kiss between Max and Colette in a pantomime entitled “Rêve d’Égypte” caused a near-riot, and as a result, they were no longer able to live together openly, although their relationship continued for another five years.
Colette was 67 years old when France was occupied by the Germans. She remained in Paris, in her apartment in the Palais-Royal. Her husband Maurice Goudeket, who was Jewish, was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1941, and although he was released after seven weeks through the intervention of the French wife of the German ambassador.
In 1944, Colette published what became her most famous work, Gigi, which tells the story of the 16-year-old Gilberte (“Gigi”) Alvar. Born into a family of demimondaines, Gigi is trained as a courtesan to captivate a wealthy lover but defies the tradition by marrying him instead. In 1949 it was made into a French film starring Danièle Delorme and Gaby Morlay, then in 1951 adapted for the stage with the then-unknown Audrey Hepburn (picked by Colette personally) in the title role. The 1958 Hollywood musical movie, starring Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan, with a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and a score by Lerner and Frederick Loewe, won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Upon her death, on 3 August 1954, she was refused a religious funeral by the Catholic Church on account of her divorces, but given a state funeral, the first French woman of letters to be granted the honor, and interred in Père-Lachaise cemetery.
Colette, possibly around 1910
BADA BING
I tried making skimmed milk, but it was too hard to throw the cow across the lake.
A person learning English as a second language just asked me the difference between “burned” and “burnt”, and I just stared blankly back with a 404 error screen running through my brain.
You might be in a CULT if you buy a red hat made in China to support a felon who married an immigrant and has convinced you that all your problems are caused by immigrants and felons. Or maybe you’re just stupid.
(phone ringing) Boss: Why the hell aren’t you picking that up?! Me: I always answer on the third ring, makes me seem cooler. Boss: PICK IT UP! Me: Fine… 911 what’s your emergency?
BREAKING: The cold weather is set to last until it gets warmer.
I celebrate every touchdown my team makes by drinking nearly a liter of beer. That’s a two pint conversion.
What were electric eels called before electricity was discovered?
Me to dog: I’m out of treats. Dog: I’ll hold your beer ’till you get back.
Minute and minute shouldn’t be spelled the same. I’m not content with this content. I object to that object. I need to read what I read again. Excuse me but there’s no excuse for this. Someone should wind this comment up and throw it in the wind.
I saw someone with a tattoo that read, Comparison is the Thief of Joy. I’m going to get the same tattoo…but mine will be bigger!
How big is Greenland? It’s so big that it covers up 99% of the Epstein files.
I had a leak in the roof over my dining room so I called a roofer to take a look at it. “When did you first notice the leak?” he asked. I told him, “Last night, when it took me two hours to finish my soup!”
My brother thinks he’s a turtle. I’m taking him to the best terrapist in town.
Whoever said 10°F is better than 100°F better be sitting outside enjoying it today.
They say the machines of the future will be as smart as people. Okay, but which people? Because that’s gonna make a big difference. (Bilbo)
Smart people underestimate themselves and ignorant people think they’re brilliant.
When in grizzly territory, always hike in groups and carry sedative dart guns. Remember, there’s safety in numb bears.
Today is the birthday, in 1968, of Canadian musician singer songwriter, Sarah McLachlan, who had the 1997 US No.2 album Surfacing. McLachlan has won three Grammy Awards and has sold over 40 million albums worldwide. After becoming frustrated with concert promoters and radio stations that refused to feature two female musicians in a row, she founded the Lilith Fair tour in 1997. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSz16ngdsG0
