Vintage Italian postcard. Fotocelere, Torino, No. 179.
Italian Yvonne De Fleuriel (1889 - 1963) was a singer and actress of variety and silent films. She was very popular during the Belle Epoque.
De Fleuriel was born Adele Croce in Teano, in the province of Caserta, on 7 July 1889, into a family of labourers. After spending her childhood in her hometown, as an adolescent she was accepted into a girls' boarding school in Naples, where she probably learned to sing. She left the boarding school at eighteen and entered show business: she made her theatre debut as a 'generic actress' in Eduardo Scarpetta's company. In her early twenties, she met the actor Nicola Maldacea, who introduced her to the world of song. Maldacea himself suggested she take the pseudonym Yvonne De Fleuriel, and she made herself known to the public by performing in the most famous café-concerts in Naples, quickly becoming one of the most famous Italian 'sciantose' (chanteuse). She was the interpreter of the most famous traditional Neapolitan songs, most of them written by Giovanni Capurro, Rocco Galdieri and Gennaro Pasquariello. Among De Fleuriel's best-known songs were Nini and Girala la rota, both from 1908 and written by Luigi Mattiello. Both songs can be heard on YouTube.
In 1915 De Fleuriel made her film debut with Napoli Film's production 120 H.P., directed by Augusto Genina, but her real breakthrough she had in 1918, when she had the female lead opposite Tullio Carminati in Il trono e la seggiola, directed by, again, Augusto Genina. In this romantic comedy Carminati plays a Merry King, who is bored by court life and finds happiness in the arms of a Roman countryside girl, Cecilia (De Fleuriel), State affairs recal the king to his Blue Reign, where he is urged to marry a lady of noble kin, to save the crown. But the Merry King has never forgotten his Cecilia. He abandons crown and reign and returns to Rome, to embrace his simple and good country girl again.
At the time, Dino Lombardo wrote in the Neapolitan journal La Cine-Fono (25-12-1918) that this comedy was successful in every which way. Lombardo praised the script by Genina and Piero Romolotti for its straight forwardness, while still keeping the combination of sentimentality with liveliness. Lombardo also praised the direction by Genina and the production by Tiber Film. Finally he lauded he actors Carminati, Oreste Bilancia and in particular Yvonne De Fleuriel. Despite her fresh start in film after her career in vaudeville Lombardo noted: "She has given a 'devilish' liveliness and a unique sentimentality." Il trono e la seggiola had its first night in Rome on 20 September 1918, two months before the First World War ended.
De Fleuriel later took part in other films in the leading role, such as in Il veleno del piacere (Gennaro Righelli, 1918) also with André Habay, La modella di Tiziano (Paolo Trinchera, 1921) and Madame l'Ambassadrice (Ermanno Geymonat, 1921) in which she had the tile role. All in all she acted in some 13 Italian silent films, mostly comedies. In 1923 she did her last films in Italy. With the crisis of Italian cinema in the early 1920s, she moved to Germany, but without any success. According to Italian Wikipedia, she obtained a few parts, mostly as an extra, though it is unknown which films she played in. Returning to Italy in the following years, she fell into disgrace and settled in Rome, the city where she lived her last years, characterised by poverty and loneliness.She died in a modest flat in the capital on 9 January 1963 at the age of 74.
Sources: Italian Wikipedia, IMDb.