Jacques Hébertot

Jacques Hébertot (; 28 January 1886, Rouen - 19 June 1970, Paris) was the pseudonym of André Daviel. He was a French theater director, poet, journalist and publisher. The Théâtre Hébertot in Paris has been named after him since 1940.

Early life The family of André Daviel counted among his ancestors the Jacques Daviel, a doctor, known not only for having been the friend of Denis Diderot, but also for being the surgeon of King Louis XV, and for having performed the first extracapsular cataract extraction; another ancestor was Alfred Daviel, lawyer and magistrate, Minister of Justice in 1851, senator of the Empire, first honorary president of the Court of Appeal of Rouen, specialist of Norman customary law.

The young André Daviel was born in Rouen and studied at the Catholic college Join-Lambert in the same city, and then in various colleges in Paris.

After attempting to sign the Paris Opera and the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt (now Théâtre de la Ville) on 1 August 1920, Jacques Hébertot signed the lease contract for the entire Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The theater was to become the Parisian base of the Ballets suédois, while Rolf de Maré managed the world tours. Jacques Hébertot continued to animate the Parisian theater, now under his responsibility. The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées became an important artistic center, particularly in the theatrical and musical fields, bringing together high-quality personalities: theatre directors like Georges Pitoëff and Ludmilla Pitoëff, Louis Jouvet and Gaston Baty, authors like Jean Cocteau, Paul Claudel, Blaise Cendrars, Francis Picabia, Anton Chekhov, Jules Romains, and Luigi Pirandello, composers like Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre and Erik Satie. In the field of painting, the Montaigne Gallery hosted the first exhibition of Amedeo Modigliani and the first Dada events.

After producing a number of shows, most of which were retained, the creation of a play by Pierre Brasseur and his desire to devote himself to the theater which now bears his name, pushed him to sold the lease of the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre in 1944 to Raymond Roll.

Jacques Hébertot wanted to carry out a project that was close to his heart as he was a relative of one of the Carmélites de Compiègne guillotined during the Revolution: he bought the abandoned facade of the convent of the Carmelites of Gisors, disassembled it stone by stone and then built it up again close to the casino at Forges-les-Eaux, along the road that led to Dieppe. The facade is still there today even if, in 1959, due to a lack of resources, Hébertot had to renounce to his costly and ambitious undertaking.

In spring 1957, Hébertot founded a national weekly magazine Artaban ("Because we are proud!") devoted to the arts in general. Despite the anxieties of his friends Albert Camus and Maurice Clavel, he embarked on an expensive adventure that will not go beyond the autumn of 1958 but that will leave interesting archives. Shortly before his death, he told Diego Fabbri, in an interview published in the program of the spectacle Bienheureux les violents, that "with the theater, it was poetry that had been essential to his life."

He died on 19 June 1970. Bertrand Poirot-Delpech wrote in Le Monde, on 21 June 1970: "The death of the master has the effect of a very old tree that falls to the bottom of a family park. This time, it is there, the theater of the elite no longer exists".

He is buried in the monumental cemetery of Rouen in the cellar of the Family Pinel which was that of his mother.

Legacy The central part of the Boulevard des Batignolles (8th and 17th arrondissements), opposite the Théâtre Hébertot, has been called promenade Jacques Hébertot since 16 January 2014. The Paris Council unanimously voted this decision at the deliberation on 4 October 2011.

The Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris maintains a "Jacques Hébertot" fonds, which includes programs, posters, war books, items from his personal library, objects and a portion of the Hébertot Theater books. This collection was entered thanks to the Association de la Régie Théâtrale, following a donation from Serge Bouillon, manager of the Société Immobilière Batignolles-Monceau (owner of the Théâtre Hébertot's walls). Since the death of Serge Bouillon, on 31 July 2014, his wife, Danielle Mathieu-Bouillon, President of the Association of the Théâtre Régie, became the beneficiary of Jacques Hébertot.