In the memory of viewers of the 70s and 80s, Alice Sapritch remains the favorite head of tricks of Philippe Bouvard and Thierry le Luron. “Honey darling, stop with your gugusseries! she often repeated, falsely angry, to an impersonator who, on stage, caricatured her by assuring that in her career, she had had more facelifts than recalls.
Interviewed by Philippe Bouvard, in the presence of Thierry, in 1980, in a Come and see me that we invite you to see or see again, she evokes A tramp in my garden, a comedy with Pierre Doris, which she is about to go play in Africa. However, she specifies that she has alternated, in her career, laughter and seriousness. She thus embodied the duenna in La folie des grandeurs, opposite De Funès and Montand, but also agreed to participate in comedies described as “nanars” by the critics. Among them are Le Führer en folie, by Philippe Clair, – in which, at the end of the war, she played the role of Eva Braun -, Gross Paris, by Gilles Grangier, and Funny Zebras, the only film directed by Guy Lux.
To this filmography, of which she never really boasted, are added participations in feature films directed by Claude Autant-Lara, Jean Cocteau and François Truffaut. There are also, and above all, dramas of which she was much more proud, and which have marked the history of the small screen. Among other things, Madelen proposes to discover or rediscover La cousine Bette and especially her interpretation of Folcoche in Vipère au poing based on the novel by Hervé Bazin. Finally, there is The Marie Besnard affair which, in 1986, brought her the only 7 d’Or of a career that meant everything to her.
“My life started with television” she assured, adding “my childhood has nothing to do with the woman I have become”. Her face closed, she made it clear that she didn’t agree to remember her past, because she didn’t like the child she had been.
His early years were indeed not happy ones. Born in Istanbul, she began growing up in a family that her father’s gambling debts placed in dire financial straits. At the age of six, she was sent to Brussels, to a grandmother whose affection was not her first quality. Dreaming of becoming an actress, she decided, at 16, to try her luck in Paris. She entered the Cours Simon, then continued her apprenticeship at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated with a second tragedy. His path is now traced. In theory… After playing Queen Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, she continues with a role as a pharmacist, but in Le tampon du capiston, the story of a peasant who has become the whipping boy of his regimental comrades. This completely forgotten comedy was written by Guillaume Hanoteau, whom she married in 1950 and divorced in 1972.
A few images of Vipère au poin by Pierre Cardinal, screenplay by Jean-Louis Bory, in 1971, with Alice Sapritch, Dominique de Keuchel…
In the 70s and 80s, she decided to play the card of self-mockery. She assures, in a commercial that she was ugly before using Jex Four cleaning products. Which will make Le Luron say: “She made a success with an oven!”.
Finally, in 1975, she recorded a 33 rpm which did not obtain the success hoped for by its producers. One afternoon, at the Café de Flore, where she met Thierry le Luron and Jacques Chazot, a teenager approaches the trio and asks Alice to autograph the record he has just bought. Le Luron, again, looks at him and says, “Ah, is that you?”.
