Jean MARAIS (1913-1998). 2 autograph manuscripts, [1941]; 8 pages in-4 (4 in pencil). On La Machine à écrire by COCTEAU (first performed at the Théâtre Hébertot on April 29, 1941), and the violent criticisms that the play has triggered (notably by Lucien Rebatet and Alain Laubreaux): "I will perform it without worrying about fatigue, I will strive with my comrades to show the incredible richness that it conceals beneath its plot. He protests against "this bias which consists in attacking and sullying any man of value who produced before 1941, and against this harmful tendency to want to attack the motives thanks to which the masterpieces exist. The purity of a work does not come from its subject but from the purity of its author's soul. [...] All of us who have shared Jean Cocteau's effort are ready to testify to his purity, to the disinterestedness and construction of what he brings to the public. In Les Parents terribles, I was personally insulted when they spoke basely of incest, the subject of the play being the love of a mother and her son "which resembled his so much that I thought I was playing out my own story"... On his entry into the Comédie Française (August 1941): he auditioned on July 22 and Marie Bell gave him the line. He was asked why he wanted to leave the great roles of the boulevard for the Comédie Française: "I have always considered the theater as something sacred and I like the ceremonial. It's at the French that I find this ceremonial that I'm looking for", and he is ready to take orders from the house. "I would hate to enter the house for the sake of glory and to leave quickly"; he wishes to make a career of it; his only regret is "not being able to take up my role in Les Parents terribles in October with Yvonne de Bray". He recounts his failure at the Conservatoire (1936), where he presented a "scene from the Holocaust, an old play by Henry Bataille whose title Yvonne de Bray did not even know. He will make his debut only in January and he will probably be given a few roles "so that I get used to this setting that intimidates me a lot.