Queer Places:
Cimetière Communal de Saint-Gengoux-de-Scissé
Saint-Gengoux-de-Scisse, Departement de Saône-et-Loire, Bourgogne, France
Lys Gauty, whose real name is Alice Gauthier, born on February 14, 1900 in Levallois-Perret and died in Monte Carlo on January 2, 1994,was a French singer.
In the 1920s Chez Fysher attracted more and more lesbians. The star until 1927
was Gaby Montbreuse, a busty redheaded singer
whose biggest success was You possessed me by surprise. Fisher's stars that
followed were: Yvonne George,
Damia, Marie Dubas,
Arletty, Lucienne Boyer,
Lys Gauty,
Gaby Basset.
Alice Gauthier was born into a modest family: her father was a mechanic and her mother a seamstress. After sewing and typing classes, she started working as a saleswoman in a department store and then at a milliner at a very young age. With what her parents left her from her salary, she took singing lessons. Indeed, her voice was noticed from school. With a classical background, it was at Fyscher (Nelson Fyscher, rue d'Antin) in 1924, that she began a career as a music-hall singer with Georges Van Parys as pianist. In 1925, she sang at the Olympia. The Swiss Gaston Groener, twelve years her senior, who became her husband in 1925, took charge of a career full of successes and co-wrote some of her songs. He directed the Théâtre de 10 Heures in Brussels and Lys Gauty's first records were released in Belgium by Gramophone in 1928. In 1930, she made her film debut in the film about Maurice Gleize, Wedding Day. This experience as an actress was renewed in 1938 when she played the title role in the film The Goualeuse by Fernand Rivers. In 1934, she denounced the anti-Semitism in her song Israel, go away. However, her greatest success remains the waltz The Barge That Passes (1933), French version of the Italian song Parlami d'amore, Mariù, sung by Vittorio De Sica. In 1937, with humour, she self-parodied with The Barge That Remains. She triumphed in cabarets (The Box of Matelots, 1932; The Madness of Lys Gauty, 1933...) and music halls (Bobino, 1933; Alhambra, 1934; A.B.C., 1935, 1936...). In 1933, she received the Grand Prix of the disc for her performance of two arias from The Opera of Quat'sous: The Song of Barbara and the Bride of the Pirate by Kurt Weill. In 1934 she was elected the Queen of Six Days at the Vel' d'Hiv, of which she was empress in 1935. She was known for the long white dresses she wore at her concerts. She has the distinction of having been one of the first interpreters of the songs with text while also singing popular melodies. Damia, blaming her for not being melodramatic enough, calls her "the sub-prefect"." Known and appreciated in England and the Netherlands, she toured South America in 1939. In 1946, she was back, at the Alhambra,with A little bouquet of violets and Listening to my heart sing. At the Libération she is criticized for her interventions on Radio Paris and a tour with Frehel and Raymond Souplex organized by the association Kraft durch Freude (The Force by Joy) in Germany during which she sang in front of the workers of the S.T.O and the prisoners of the Stalags in 1942. She never came back to the limelight. She divorced in 1947. Léo Ferré became her pianist for a time. In 1950, she played and sang in the operetta Ma Goualeuse at Casino-Montparnasse. Also in 1950, she ran the Casino de Luchon and founded the Festival de la Voix. She left the stage around 1953 to become director of a cabaret in the Nice region, where she founded a singing school. She later retrained as head of a real estate agency in Monte Carlo. Lys Gauty died in Monte Carlo in 1994. She is buried in the cemetery of Saint-Gengoux-de-Scissé in Saône-et-Loire, a commune in Haut-Mâconnais where she owned a house in which she regularly stayed.
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