Sacha Guitry and Leon Gard

  Leon Gard met Sacha Guitry for the first time in 1942  when it brought back itself to the hotel of the avenue Elisee-Recluse a fabric that author celebrates it had made him carry to repair.

Here how the painter evokes his first interview with the man of theatre:

  One had recommended to me to him for the remounting and the cleaning of a portrait of woman of the 18° century. I awaited this important man one hour old meadows in the anteroom with my table cleaned and given in state. I finally live it to appear. It returned from voyage. I recognized the silhouette celebrates, the large round glasses, the a little conspicuous shirt, the felt in battle and a white silk scarf thrown around the neck. It says to me of an air being wary by looking at the table:  "put You to him red with the cheeks. "I had done nothing but clean the table and the sharp red that the injuries of the 18° century were put abundantly on the cheeks appeared. I made him this answer which appeared to amuse it much because it was to some extent of Guitry: " If I had added red, that would not be seen. "Since we were friendly.

  " friends ", Sacha Guitry did not miss any then, because, in a certain way, he was the king of Paris and, consequently, very courted, and like the Master liked to feel surrounded and admired, he granted his friendship with a certain lightness that Leon Gard rejected in silence. Many was prevailed of its favours during the gilded days of its reign, but when the drama of the charge of collaboration struck it, this beautiful multitude of alleged friends disappeared completely, or almost. Its faithful secretary, Henri Jadoux, tells in his book of remembering on Sacha Guitry that then, only two journalists had courage to openly take its defense against the media lynching of which it was the object: Jean d' Ars and Leon Gard.

  During fifteen years, until the death of Sacha, Leon Gard made really party of the small circle of close friends, those which one invited to the New Year's Days in the hotel of the avenue Elisee-Recluse or the country house of Fernay. It never made display of this friendship and even always kept a certain reserve that Sacha seemed to reproach him. Leon Gard tells:

  One evening, with dining, which occurred Elisee-Recluse, we were four or six people in the small dining room Chinese. Ambroise, the Master of hotel, brought a splendid bearing birthday cake I do not know exactly how much candles, forty or forty-five. Each guest wondered who could be the birthday. Sacha approached me, embraced me, and says to me: happy birthday! I burst of laughing: but it is not my birthday, I am of July and we are in September! It mima a very astonished air: How, it is not your birthday? I believed it. It reflects one moment. Listen, says me it, that would arrange me if you authorize so that it is your birthday. I gave my agreement. I blew the candles. The beautiful cake was started, and one carried toasts to unhappy which was one year old more. This invention, délicieusement comic and very " guitryste " meant obviously that it considered my friendship not very expansive and that it would have wished that it was it more: also amusing, also nice, also moving that was the imagination of this evening, the a little fixed side of my behavior hardly changed: I acknowledge that I do not believe that in our company there can be still friendships approaching those of Beaver and Pollux, Oreste and Pylade, Achille and Patrocle. I undoubtedly smell myself too demanding not to be reticent. And, finally, the theatre with its power of illusion and simulation will always cause me some concern. However, at the bottom of its nature, Sacha liked the true friendship that it had seldom met and of which it had nostalgia.

  The insulation where the celebrity had placed it linked at a skepticism almost indéracinable made impossible a friendship of equal to equal and I believe that it suffered from it. 

  Leon Gard still made this major psychological observation about Sacha: 

   The Truth is a large haughty injury and without regards which having wounded each being remains about it nevertheless venerated because as powerful and essential as difficult to reach. Sacha Guitry marvelously distinguished the truth and venerated more it than anything else, but it had a species of superstitious apprehension of it. Its birth, its youth, at the same time jolted and gilded left him, in the final analysis, a rough memory of the truth, which he liked without continuing it as much as he had wanted it. It was wary about it finally, him which had registered in its breviary (collection of thoughts that it liked) this terrible Chinese thought: " It is the truth which poisons the water of the wells. "I think that it was wrapped deliberately in the illusion of the theatre to flee it, so that the things appear as it wished them before being as they are actually. Also, its life was it something of factitious, too shining and land-mark: it had succeeded in choking the life by the marvellous decoration which it had drawn up as a magician, but by far in far a small voice left the accumulation from the decorations, said to him that it was only one decoration, and it made conceal this voice by new decorations. 

Sacha required of Leon Gard to paint a portrait of the actress Jeanne Fusier-Gir in the role of Julie Billanbois for the creation of " do not listen to Mesdames ". This table painted with the manner of Toulouse-Lautrec excited the liveliness of Sacha which had fun to make become the painter for the author of the Mona Lisa. It presented it sometimes as follows:  "  Leon Gard, this alarming man who, if one spoke to him about the Mona Lisa, could start to smiling! ".

  It made then the portrait of Sacha, that this last preferred with that which Van Dongen had carried out of him " Sacha posed well ", known as Leon Gard, " but little time, not more than ten minutes. It returned half an hour after while saying: " acknowledge that I did not disturb you too much ". This portrait remained hung in the office of the avenue Elisee-Recluse until the death of the Master.                             

  Leon Gard also painted two portraits of the actress Lana Marconi (last woman of Sacha). Several tables, flowers or natures died, bought or offered, were added to the rich person collection of Guitry, where beside impressionist fabrics and of older Masters, some Picasso or Matisse was. Obviously, Leon Gard, who stripped arrows in the newspaper " Apollo " against painting cubist and not-figurative, never hid in Sacha what it thought of some of the fabrics of his collection.

                                          Portrait of sacha Guitry.

 Portrait of Jeanne Fusier-Gir by Leon Gard for the creation of "Do not listen to Mesdames" (monochrome photo of the picture with dedication of the actress)

                       Chart of sacha Guitry sent of the Cape d' Ail to Leon gard.

               Article of Leon Gard appeared in 1947 in the Apollo newspaper.