Andrée Mégard
Andrée Mégard (born Marie Adélaïde Alexandrine Chamonal, 1869–1952), was a French actress and stage beauty. Early life Marie Adélaïde Alexandrine Chamonal was born in 1869, in Saint-Amour, in the Jura Mountains. Her parents were "well-off peasants" who apprenticed her to an aunt who ran a dry good store; she ran away from the aunt at fifteen, and landed alone in Paris. Career Mégard worked as an artists' model as a young woman in Paris, especially for artist Auguste Toulmouche. She was on the Paris stage from 1896 to 1925, appearing in shows including Shakepearean tragedies, comedies, and plays directed by her husband, Firmin Gémier. She played the love interest, Roxane, in a 1913 revival of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, while she was having an affair with Rostand himself. She starred in a stage adaptation of Anna Karenina in Paris in 1907. In 1908 she knocked herself unconscious on stage during an emotional scene. She appeared in one silent film, La tour de Nesle (1909). Mégard was considered "tall, graceful, and distinguished looking." Her hairstyles and the designs of her costumes, hats, and gowns were reported in detail, internationally, often with photographs or drawings showing their features. She was especially