Yvonne Arnaud

Germaine Yvonne Arnaud (20 December 1890 – 20 September 1958) was a French-born pianist, singer and actress, who was well known for her career in Britain, as well as her native land. After beginning a career as a concert pianist as a child, Arnaud acted in musical comedies. She switched to non-musical comedy and drama around 1920 and was one of the players in the second of the Aldwych farces, A Cuckoo in the Nest, a hit in 1925. She also had dramatic roles and made films in the 1930s and 1940s, and continued to act into the 1950s. She occasionally performed as a pianist later in her career. The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre was named in her memory in Guildford, Surrey. Life and career Arnaud was the daughter of Charles Leon Arnaud and his wife Antoinette (née Montegut). She was brought up in Paris and entered the Paris Conservatoire aged 9, studying piano under Alphonse Duvernoy and other teachers. In 1905, she won the conservatory's Premier Prix for piano. Beginning that year, aged 14, until 1911, she performed with leading orchestras throughout Europe and the US, under conductors such as Édouard Colonne, Arthur Nikisch, Willem Mengelberg, Vasily Safonov, Gustav Mahler and Alexander Siloti. In 1911 she decided to try the stage instead of the concert hall and obtained an engagement at London's Adelphi Theatre as understudy to Elsie Spain in the role of Princess Mathilde in The Quaker Girl, first going on stage in that role on 7 August 1911. She next played the leading role of Suzanne in the musical The Girl in the Taxi (1912), earning popularity with her vivacity and charming French accent. One reviewer wrote: "Arnaud is as clever as her ways are charming, and her voice is beautiful". This was followed by roles in more musical comedies, farces and operettas, including as Noisette in Mam'selle Tralala in 1914 (revived the following year as Oh! Be Careful), two revivals of "The Girl in the Taxi" (in 1913 and 1915), in Harry Grattan's Odds and Ends (1914), Excuse Me! (1915) and Phrynette in L'Enfant Prodigue, in which she also played the piano. She also had a lead in Kissing Time (1919). After this, an operation damaged her vocal cords, and so she switched from musicals to plays, beginning with the role of Louise Allington in the farce Tons of Money, which ran for nearly two years at the Shaftesbury Theatre from 1922.