Tonia Navar
Tonia Navar (1886–1959), also known as Melle Tonia Navar and Antoinette Lauzur,[1] was a French actress and playwright.
Major roles
[edit]She performed in 1927 at the Comédie Francaise in Saint-Georges Bouhélier's new play Les Flambeaux de la Noel.[2] In the summer of 1930, she played her first major role at the Comédie Francaise, Yanetta in Eugène Brieux's play La robe rouge (1900).[3] In the late 1930s, she often played the title role in Jean Racine's Phèdre.[4] She also had the title role in Racine's Britannicus[5] and in Baisers perdus in 1932.[6]
Navar also performed in films, among them The Road Is Fine (1930), directed by Robert Florey, and The Foreigner (1931), directed by Gaston Ravel.
Playwright
[edit]Navar wrote Un homme est venu and L'amour en coulisses. She is mentioned as an important French woman playwright in a study published in 2001.[7]
Teaching
[edit]In 1939, a journal reported that Navar's acting course, called "Cours Molière" was growing and had to move to larger facilities.[8] Navar's Parisian acting school prepared students for stage and film careers.[9] Jacqueline Maillan was one of her students.[10]
Personal life
[edit]She was befriended with the courtesan, performer and later princess, Liane de Pougy, with whom she exhanged letters in the 1930s.[11] Pougy mentions her several times in her memoirs.[12]
Parisian society columns reported on Navar as a celebrity in 1924.[13] In 1930, newspapers reported on a lawsuit that Navar had filed against a British film company which allegedly caused her to gain weight, become less attractive, and damage her voice in the course of a film production.[14]
Little is known of her political convictions or activities during the Second World Ward, yet a prominent advertisement in a film magazine devoted mainly to German stars suggests that she was not considered politically dangerous to the Vichy regime.[9]
References
[edit]- ^ International Encyclopedia of Pseudonyms. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. 2010.
- ^ Bourgeois, Maurice (September 19, 1926). "On foreign stages". New York Times. pp. X2.
- ^ "Nos échos". Paris qui chante. August 1, 1930. p. 2.
- ^ "Antoinette Lauzur, dite Tonia Navar: Lot 373". Ader Auctions. Archived from the original on December 11, 2022.
- ^ "Tonia Navar (Britannicus); Jean Racine. Carte Postale".
- ^ "Baisers perdus". Bibliotheque nationale. April 11, 1932.
- ^ Beach, Cecilia (2001). "Marie Lenéru and the Theater of Ideas". Women in French Studies. 9. 74n5.
- ^ "Nos échos". Paris qui chante. March 1, 1939. p. 22.
- ^ a b "Advertisement". Ciné-mondial. May 29, 1942. pp. 13–14.
- ^ "Biographie de Jacqueline Maillan". notrecinema.com (in French). Retrieved December 11, 2022.
- ^ "Set of 7 letters addressed to Liane de Pougy". Le manuscrit francais. Retrieved December 11, 2022.
- ^ Pougy, Liane de (2002). My blue notebooks. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam. 46 and 71. ISBN 1-58542-156-1. OCLC 50079742.
- ^ "Les Indiscretions de l'homme qui ecoute et qui voit". Paris qui chante. October 1, 1924. p. 4.
- ^ "Film Ruined Beauty, Says French Star". Indianapolis Times. July 4, 1930. p. 9.