Léonie Yahne (August 8, 1867 – April 26, 1950) was a French comedic actress.
Early life Marie Léonie Jahn was born at Versailles, France. She used a different spelling of her surname professionally, to reflect its pronunciation.John Henry Wigmore, Select Cases on the Law of Torts (Little, Brown 1912): 960.
Career
Yahne was an actress on the Paris stage for most of her career, which lasted from about 1884 to 1917. Her stage roles included Lucienne in Monsieur l'Abbé (1891),"New Plays Produced in Paris" The Dramatic Year Book for ... 1891 (Trischler 1892): 338-339. Roxane in Cyrano de Bergerac (1900), opposite Benoît-Constant Coquelin,"From Abroad" The International (December 1900): 508."French comedian Léonie Yahne as Roxane in play 'Cyrano de Bergerac'" (1900), Getty Images. the title part in Catulle Mendès's La Reine Fiammette (1898),R. S. W., "Catulle Mendès's Play, 'Queen Fiammetta'" The Theatre Magazine (October 1902): 16. Huguette in Famille (1901)."French comedian Léonie Yahne as Huguette in play 'Famille'" (1901), Getty Images. and Adinolfa in Impressions d'Afrique (1912)."French comedian Leonie Yahne as Adinolfa in play 'Impressions d'Afrique'" (1912), Getty Images. In 1895, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec drew her with her co-stars André Antoine and Henry Mayer in L'Age Difficile.Colta Feller Ives, Toulouse-Lautrec in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art 1996): 66. She also appeared in at least one silent film short, Le duel de Max (1913) with Max Linder.
In 1911 she won a lawsuit against another Parisian actress calling herself "Yane", preventing the other woman from using a stage name that so closely resembled her own. An English magazine referred to Yahne as "a favourite in society, an expert with foils, a passionate horsewoman, and a terror of France on her automobile.""Beauty on the Paris Stage" Royal Magazine (1901): 196.
Personal life Léonie Yahne owned a property in Louveciennes, named Villa Fiammette after one of her best-known roles. William C. Carter, Marcel Proust: A Life (Yale University Press 2002): 452. She died in Paris in 1950, aged 82 years.
References
External links
A pencil sketch by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, "Léonie Yahne in her dressing room, in L'Age Difficile" (1895), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.