Belgian postcard by Uitgave Weekblad 'Cinéma', Antwerpen. Claudia Victrix as Princess Masha in La princesse Masha (René Leprince, 1927).
French promotional postcard by Europe for the release of L’Occident / The West (Henri Fescourt, 1928) at the Cinéma Marivaux in Paris.
The most powerful press magnate in Paris
French actor and director René Navarre once described Claudia Victrix, towards whom he admitted feeling great sympathy, as "a woman of tremendous will who, after having set her goal, reached it through thick and thin".
When she married the most powerful press magnate in Paris, she knew that her time had come and that she could become famous.
She first set her sights on opera and then chose to be a movie star.
It helped, of course, that her husband was president of the consortium of the major Paris daily newspapers, which assured her of a wide press coverage, and that he also owned a film company.
However, she never became a Callas or a Garbo, but an interesting and colourful character she certainly was!
French promotional postcard for the release of Princesse Masha / Princess Masha (René Leprince, 1927) at the Rialto-Cinéma in Paris, no. 20.
French promotional postcard for the release of Princesse Masha / Princess Masha (René Leprince, 1927) at the Rialto-Cinéma in Paris, no. 115.
Juana Borguèse
Claudia Victrix was born an illegitimate child as Jeanne Renée Marie Bourgeois on the 25th of May 1888 in Le Havre, France.
Her parents, Gustave Bourgeois and Léontine Pion, only got married in 1899.
In 1917, she made her film debut by playing the role of the evil baronne d’Apremont in Louis Feuillade’s serial La nouvelle mission de Judex / The New Mission of Judex (1917-1918). At the time, she used the pseudonym of Juana Borguèse, which was simply an 'exotic' version of her birth name, Juana being the Hispanic version of Jeanne and Borghese meaning Bourgeois in Italian.
According to writer and playwright Armand Salacrou, she had substituted a 'u' for the 'h' after the Italian Borghese family had threatened to sue her if she used the usual spelling of their famous name.
Salacrou claimed to have met her for the first time in the second half of the 1910s at a dinner party organised by the lady-owner of Le Chabanais, who was at the time one of the most luxurious and costly brothels in Paris. He also implies in his memoirs that, at one time, Jeanne sold her charms to wealthy men (we leave him the full responsibility for this assertion) and also mentions that she performed occasionally on stage.
French postcard by Coquemer Gravures, Paris. Photo: Félix / Gaumont. Juana Borguèse as the evil Baronne d'Apremont in La nouvelle mission de Judex / The New Mission of Judex (Louis Feuillade, 1917-1918). Collection: Ivo Blom.
French postcard. Claudia Victrix in the French silent film Princesse Masha (René Leprince, 1927). Publicity for the film's screening at the Paris-based cinema Rialto.
Jean Sapène: the man who would change her life
Around 1920, Jeanne Bourgeois became the mistress of Jean Sapène, 21 years her senior, a powerful French press magnate who, since the end of the 1910s, had started to invest in the film world. This relationship would change her life.
At her request, Sapène allegedly asked actor and director René Navarre if he could consider hiring Jeanne for the role of Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais in L’Aiglonne, a film he was planning to shoot. Navarre tells in his memoirs how he screen-tested her, liked the results and signed her for the part.
However, he soon got the feeling that Sapène was somehow not especially keen on launching Jeanne’s movie career and that he mostly wanted her to devote most of her time to him, and not to film work.
After a meeting with Sapène and Jeanne, Navarre released her from her contract, and another actress played Joséphine in L’Aiglonne (1921).
In January 1923, Jeanne married Sapène, and they had a daughter, Anita, in 1930. Previously, she had been married the first time in 1911 and had divorced in 1914.
French postcard. Claudia Victrix in Princesse Masha (René Leprince, 1927). Publicity for the film's screening at the Paris-based cinema Rialto. Collection: Ivo Blom.
French postcard by Europe for L'Occident (Henri Fescourt, 1928), no. 41 with Claudia Victrix and Hugues de Bagratide. The card makes publicity for the film's premiere screening at the Paris cinema Marivaux. Collection: Ivo Blom.
Jeanne becomes opera singer Claudia Victrix
An ambitious and resolute woman, Jeanne Bourgeois soon opted for an operatic career.
After intensive singing lessons, she made her prima donna debut in 1924. For her new career, she chose another flamboyant pseudonym, Claudia Victrix, the Latin word 'victrix' meaning 'victorious'.
But Claudia never reached the fame of opera stars such as Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden or Maria Jeritza. She was mostly considered a 'cantatrice mondaine' ( a 'society singer'), who mainly specialised in charity concerts.
She notably performed in Henri Février’s 'Monna Vanna', Massenet’s 'La Navarraise' and 'Sapho' and Puccini’s 'Tosca'. Interestingly enough, it seems that no music label ever asked her to make a record. So, we will never be able to judge for ourselves her singing talents.
However, famous and witty French screenwriter Henri Jeanson’s opinion was decisive: "If I had such a voice, I would hang myself with my vocal chords". Nevertheless, probably on Sapène’s suggestion, she was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by the French government in 1927 for her commitment to charities.
French film journal 'La Petite Illustration', no. 345, 13 August 1927, p. 8. Jean Toulout as General Prince Tcherkoff and Claudia Victrix as Princess Masha in La princesse Masha (René Leprince, 1927). Collection: Ivo Blom.
French film journal 'La Petite Illustration', no. 398, 8 September 1928. Special issue on L'Occident / The West (Henri Fescourt, 1928). Collection: Ivo Blom.
Movie star
Claudia Victrix, who was pushing 40, hadn’t said her last word as far as movies were concerned and decided that the right moment had come to turn into a film star. This time, in view of his wife’s strong determination, Sapène didn’t - or couldn’t - object. So, she starred in three films, Princesse Masha (1927), L’Occident / The West (1928) and La Tentation (1929). They were all produced by the Société des Cinéromans, a company directed by Sapène since 1922, and benefited from a wide press coverage, thanks to her husband.
L’Occident had already been filmed in the U.S.A. with Alla Nazimova in 1918 under the title Eye for Eye. Henri Fescourt, who directed L’Occident, later made this telling remark: "My approach to film acting didn’t match with that of Claudia Victrix, Sapène’s influential wife". According to Armand Salacrou, Parisian spiteful tongues of the time allegedly had renamed the movie L’Accident instead of L’Occident.
As a whole, film critics showed a great deal of benevolence towards the new star and were keen not to incur influential Sapène’s wrath. They certainly remembered that, in 1926, he had sued Léon Moussinac, who had lambasted, in the Communist newspaper L’Humanité, a film distributed by the Société des Cinéromans. But, despite all the publicity, Claudia never really caught on with audiences. The dithyrambic reviews hardly convinced the public that she was the epitome of talent and beauty touted by Sapène’s marketing department.
Regarding her extant movies, reviewers are nowadays not that enthusiastic, to say the least. In 2016, the catalogue of the Pordenone 'Giornate del cinema muto' festival describes her as "insipid and talentless". The website 'Ann Harding’s treasures' is even harsher: "totally incompetent", "as expressive as a log", "she can’t move, she is clumsy, awkward, and, furthermore, she is not at all photogenic, with a long nose, a heart-shaped mouth and an unattractive face".
Claudia Victrix never made another film. In March 1929, Jean Sapène sold his Société des Cinéromans to Bernard Natan, and she thus lost her main support. No other film producer seemed to be interested in employing her.
French autographed postcard.
French 1935 promotional postcard for one of Claudia Victrix's charity concerts, at the Opéra-Comique in Franco Alfano’s 'Résurrection'.
An original until the end
Afterwards, Claudia Victrix still appeared now and then on stage, such as in 'La dame aux camélias' in 1933 at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt or in Franco Alfano’s 'Résurrection' in 1935 at the Opéra-Comique.
Famous writer Colette, who didn’t like 'La dame aux camélias', which she found much too old-fashioned, wrote, after viewing her in the play: "She curbs her gestures, her voice, her gait, she has even tamed her magnificent hair! She would do better to tackle a realistic and modern role. I know we can advise Madame Claudia Victrix on such an initiative. It’s not success that entices her, but rather endeavour and even the boldest challenge".
For the record, Jean Sapène had been Henry de Jouvenel’s witness when he married Colette in 1912, and she was, from 1919 to 1924, literary editor at 'Le Matin', one of Sapène’s newspapers.
Claudia soon divorced Sapène, who remarried in 1938, and, thereafter, she led a quiet life, well free from want. She passed away on the 20th of April 1976 and was interred at the Boulogne-Billancourt West Cemetery.
Even in death, she remained an original: her tomb is a replica of the monument erected in the Paris Dome Church at Les Invalides to keep the remains of French Emperor Napoléon I.
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition no. 48. Photo: Franz Lowy.
Text and postcards: Marlene Pilaete (unless captioned otherwise).
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