Yvonne George: Late of Chez Fisher; Now of Ours

VISITORS to the newest edition of the Greenwich Village Follies are experiencing a novel and memorable sensation—the performance of an artiste whose genius is of the essence of a land and language foreign to Americans, but whose high ability and vivid personality nevertheless combine to create a brilliantly moving effect. When she first appears, the audience are disinclined to. accord their full sympathy. They see before them, on a stage bare save for some hangings, a woman of foreign and. exotic appearance, strangely' dressed, singing in a foreign language. After a few moments the mood of the song and the art of the singer exert their influence, and before long the audience find themselves carried enthusiastically along, through song after song, completely subject to the enchantment of one of the most remarkable of modern diseuses. The singer is Yvonne George, latel) of "Chez Fisher", in Paris.

Yvonne George, before coming to America to join the Greenwich Village Follies, had been "chez Fisher" a little more than a year. Before that she had sung at the Olympia and also at the Ambassadeurs. But it was at the little cafe under the direction of M. Fisher—in the heart of Paris, in the Rue Dantin near the Place de l'Opera—that she found her best milieu and added the most distinction to her fame.

All the famous diseuses and cafe singers perform at some time or other chez Fisher. It is a favorite gathering place of characters of the smart Parisian Bohemian world. The small intimate room, with no music except a piano, usually laden with cigarette smoke, crowded with people, with no dancing or other distractions, and extremely critical audiences, is an exacting test of an artiste's ability.

Yvonne George and another popular cafe performer, Gaby Montreuse, composed the bill at Fisher's for over a year. Gaby Montreuse sang her rowdy, gay chansons, reducing the gatherings to laughter, little short of hysterics. Yvonne George has for the most part almost the opposite appeal. She delights chiefly in singing old sad songs of love and death and the past rather in the manner of Yvette Guilbert.

Her best songs have been Mon Homme and songs by Maurice Yvain, also Lucien Boyer's Lettro a Nini.