Patrick Bade
The Jazz Age and Craziness

Patrick Bade - The Jazz Age and Craziness

- Well, as you can see, we’re in Paris. This is Paris, taken from an aeroplane, between the two great world wars. And indeed, it really hasn’t changed very much. There can’t be many great cities that are so unaltered from this time. You can see the Palais Garnier, the great opera house, on the left-hand side, right bang in the middle. You can just read the sign on Gallery Lafayette, famous department store. And you should be able to see a diagonal, going from Gallery Lafayette upwards, towards the right of this image. And I am sitting in an apartment just off that street, but just a bit outside the range of this image of Paris. Now, as soon as this talk is finished, I’m going to trot down the hill in the direction of the Seine, and I shall walk. I’m on my way to a friend for dinner, and I shall walk through the Gare de L'Est. It’s only five minutes from my flat, and I go it through it very often. But I always have a tremendous sense of sadness and melancholy when I walk through this building, ‘cause I can’t help thinking of the hundreds of thousands of people in both world wars who went through this station on their way east and never came back. There is this very big picture, this big oil painting that I find very touching. It’s by an American artist called Albert Herter. And his son was in the American army and was killed right at the end of the First World War. And he painted this picture of the young men, the cannon fodder, of course, who went off to the trenches in the first world wars. His son, who we see in the centre of the image, with flowers coming out of his gun, his arms are outstretched. And of course there is, I think, meant to be a kind of subliminal memory of the crucifixion.

And there’re also monuments around the station, to people who died in the Second World War. It wasn’t actually the principle exit for Jewish victims of the Nazis, most of whom, of course, went from the interment camp of . Nevertheless, many did go through the Gare de L'Est and also tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of forced labourers and prisoners of various kinds, again, many of whom never came back. And on the left, you can see a very famous image of Hitler on his very short visit to Paris in June, 1940. I’ll be talking more about that next time. Posing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Now, the one thing everybody wanted to do after the First World War, it was in a 10-year period, 1918 to 1929, that the French call , the crazy years, it was party time. The one thing they wanted to do, of course, was to forget the horrors of the First World War and to move on. The book on the right-hand side, which it says it’s by Georges Sim, it’s actually Georges Siminon, , naughty Paris. So Paris was the city where you went to have a good time, where you went to behave badly. And maybe the one facade that symbolises the pleasures and delights of most is the facade of the Folie Bergere in the Ninth Arrondissement. The Folie Bergere went right back to the middle of the 19th century. And of course, it was famously painted by Manet in the 1880s. But it was completely revamped and it got a new facade in 1926. And it’s decorated with this splendid relief sculpture by an artist called Moise Pico, P-I-C-O. And this was a much-reproduced image. And this is the image, isn’t it? It’s the icon of the frenzied good time that people wanted to have in .

Here is a close up, and you could probably see a version of it behind me. You can still find them in Paris flea markets, at a price. Inside the Folies Bergere, what could you expect? Well, you could expect lots of naked or semi-naked young ladies kicking their legs up in the air. This is what they were really famed for, for their nude or nearly nude reviews. And the great star of the Paris music hall in this period was Mistingueett. Well actually, by the 1920s, let alone the '30s, she was no spring chicken. She’d been around, she’d been appearing on the stage in Paris since the 1890s. And she would continue right through the Second World War, even after the Second World War, in her 80s. She was still delighting Parisian audiences. And rather like Yvette Gilbere in the 1890s, she was dubbed the Voice of Paris. She was not beautiful, I don’t think. She’s what the French would call a “Jolly lad.” She was cute and adorable, and she didn’t really have much of a voice. It’s a funny, croaky little voice. She was very famous for her legs. She was considered to have the best legs in France. And she was famous, as you can see, for her love of shoes. I often wonder how she made herself heard. She sang in these absolutely enormous Parisian musicals, like the Casino de Paris and the , and without the benefit of a microphone. We’ll hear later from the first singer to use a microphone in Paris, Georges Sablon in the mid 1930s. But somehow, she made herself heard and delighted her audiences. If Mistingueett had a rival in these years, it was the American, Josephine Baker. But , as they call her in France, she was recently had a triumphal reburial in the Pantheon in Paris. And she was such a remarkable woman. If you don’t know about her, pick up, there have been many, many biographies of her. And she had a really extraordinary life. It’s hard to define her, really. She was a singer, she was a dancer. She was in movies.

In the Second World War, she was a spy and a resistance fighter. She rather surprisingly, during the second World War, she converted to Judaism and she took it very, very seriously indeed, and was a very observant Jew in the 1940s. And then of course, she’s famous after the second World War for her rainbow drive, her struggle against prejudice and racism. She’s, in a way, the Martin Luther King of France. And she adopted 13 children of different colours, races, religions, and so on. And was apparently a very good mother to them. And most of them turned out well, which is not always the case with celebrity adoptions. For me, she is the embodiment of the art deco style. She has an art deco body. It’s sort of streamlined, this… She of course rubbed things into her skin to give it this shiny, art deco appearance. And she was very comfortable with her body. She she was quite happy to go on stage, much more nude even than you see on the right-hand side. And the great writer Colette said, “There was nothing, there was not a trace of anything coy or embarrassment or lascivious. It just seemed utterly natural for her to appear on stage with no clothes. And she was, of course, a great inspiration to the artists of the period. So there is a great many art deco images of her. So we’ll get a little flavour of her voice. A much sweeter voice, actually, than Mistingueett. And she has, of course, a very noticeable American accent, which the French find completely delightful. It was Paris that made Josephine a great star. She came with an American troupe, called Revue Negre And she wasn’t actually a leading star of that group at all. But when Revue Negre appeared at the Champs Elysee Theatre, the Parisians immediately took her to heart and she became a major star overnight. And she remained so right till at the end of her life.

And this is all part of the French love of Afro-American African and African Afro-American culture. Paris was, in many ways, a very tolerant city in the 1920s. It was much better to be for American Blacks. They could live far more freely. They had a far greater degree of acceptance and tolerance than they did in their native country. And Paris was, on the whole, hugely, hugely welcoming to people from all over the world and people of all types and people of all sexuality as well. It was the best city, probably, in the world in which to be gay, either male or female, in the 1920s. Makes me a bit sad that I don’t think France is quite as open and tolerant as it was then. Everywhere, of course, in the world we’re seeing this very ugly prejudice and hostility towards refugees and immigration. But this is a very celebrated image of this French love of black culture. This is Man Ray, New York Jewish artist living in Paris. And it shows his mistress, Kiki de Montparnasse, I’ll show you more of her later, with an African mask. There’s a great love affair going on in the 1920s between Paris and North America. And it’s a two-way thing, of course. Americans are flocking over to Paris, it was… The rate of exchange made it very cheap for them. And they could have a wonderful lifestyle they couldn’t enjoy in their own country. Not least, they could have a cocktail. And cocktail of course, great American invention, one of America’s great contributions, I would say. And that was an invention that was embraced by the French. But of course, this is the period of prohibition, 1918 to 1933.

So if you wanted to openly buy cocktails, it was better for Americans to come to Europe. On the right is a cocktail bar for a flat, designed by the modernist designer Charlotte Perriand. Cocktail bars, very chic thing to have for the super rich. A mobile cocktail bus. The one on the left is for to take cocktails while you are skiing. Of course, you have your butler or your servant who’s got to drag this thing on skis up the mountain and follow you down again, giving you… Fueling your exercise with liberal cocktails. And there’s… It’s a period of luxury travel between the continents, it’s the period of the great ocean liners. These were floating art deco palaces. This is the most splendid of all, the Normandie that was launched in 1935, had a very short career, unfortunately, that ended with the Second World War when it was turned into a troop ship and then accidentally destroyed by fire in New York Harbour. But it had the most dazzling and amazing interiors. All the big Hollywood stars, they all came over on the Normandie, in the late 1930s to Europe. Another American who arrived, actually during the first World War. Amazing, I only discovered this recently, that Cole Porter volunteered for the French Foreign Legion. Seems a bit unlikely, but apparently it’s true. And he, like so many Americans, immediately fell totally in love, well, with Paris. For me, I can’t understand anybody who doesn’t fall in love with Paris the moment they step out of the Gare du Nord. And so he acquired for himself this very luxurious apartment where I’m sure a lot of alcohol, drug-fueled bisexual parties, very luxe parties took place in the 1920s. And he had it kitted out by Jean-Michele Frank, who was the go-to designer, really, for the super rich on both sides of the Atlantic, throughout this period.

Sadly, 1940, of course, when the party was over, he was in New York as a Jewish refugee from France. And I think he must have realised that life was never going to be like this again. And he apparently threw himself from a building in New York. So lots of literary Americans swarming over. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, they spent time in Paris. And also, of course, in the summer, go down to the Cote D'Azur. And on the right-hand side, we see Hemingway in front of the famous bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, that was run by the American Sylvia Beach, who you see here with him. And she was, of course, a very major… It’s a strange thing, Paris was such an important centre for publishing English language texts in this period. And in 1922, Sylvia Beach published the first complete edition of James Joyce’s "Ulysses.” You see her with him in Shakespeare and Company here. But of course, the American in Paris has to be George Gershwin, who came over in 1926. He went to… He wanted to visit Moise Lavel. He wanted to experience the delights of Paris. And like most Americans, he also deeply fell in love with Paris, while feeling some nostalgia, some homesickness. And I think he was slightly alarmed, as many people are, by the Paris traffic, which is quite extraordinarily aggressive. I mean, since I got my double glazing, you probably can’t hear all the hooting and honking, but when I first started doing these lectures, people remarked on the amazing noise from the street. If my very good friend Ron Bornstein is listening to this, he loves Paris, he comes here very often.

But he finds crossing the street quite scary. And he told me, I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing this with you, that when he has to cross a street in Paris, he always has a quick look around to see if there’s a pregnant woman or a woman with a small child. And he prefers to cross with them, 'cause he thinks that even Parisian drivers wouldn’t mow down a pregnant woman. But the aggression of Paris drivers, which it always shocks me, really, going in either direction, going between London and Paris. London traffic is a great deal calmer and more polite. But, and there’s still a lot of hooting and honking going on. But, so George Gershwin actually acquired a set of taxi horns, you can see him with them here. And he included them in the score of his great masterpiece, “An American in Paris.” This is a piece I listened to very often. And for me, absolutely, I’m always an outsider in Paris. I’m never going to be really Parisian, I’m never going to be French. But I have such joy in being here, as an outsider. And this music certainly expresses that joy for me. And this is the first recording ever made in the 1920s, of “An American in Paris,” that actually incorporates the taxi horns that you see in this photograph. And Paris also produced the first authentic and really distinctive version of jazz, with the Hot Club of France, which was established in the 1930s. Two great stars of the Hot Club of France were Stephan Groppeli playing the violin, you can see on the left, and Django Reinhardt. And they worked together until they were split by the war, with Grapelli flee to England and staying England. Reinhardt, staying in France, and amazingly surviving. Because, well, as he was half Jewish, half gypsy. So that was not a good thing to be during Second War War.

But he seems to have survived with the protection of a jazz-loving, high-ranking Nazi whose nickname was Dr. Jazz. So here is Django Reinhardt, Stephen Grapelli in one of their most famous pieces, “Nuages.” This is the great period in the between the wars, of Montparnasse. The artist area of Paris at the turn of the century was Montmartre, at the top of the hill. But round about 1907, 1908, there was a mass migration of artists from the top of the hill to the other side of the Seine, to the 14th Arrondissement, of Montparnasse. This is a song cover on the right-hand side. I was able to acquire a copy of this for Wendy, I hope she’s enjoying it. I have one in on the wall, just opposite me in my flat. It’s a song about Montparnasse. And you can see the illustrator, Rose de Valeria, wonderful artist in my opinion, has caricatured two of the most famous characters of Montparnasse, the Japanese artist Fujita and the model and muse and chanteuse, Kiki de Montparnasse, who we see on the bottom left. This is La Ruche, French for beehive. It was designed by Gustav Eiffel, architect of the Eiffel Tower, or at least builder of the Eiffel Town, he didn’t actually design it. But I think he did design this, or it came from his office. And it was actually a wine store for the Paris World Fair of 1900. After that fair was finished, it was dismantled and reerected in Montparnasse to create studios for artists. And the artists who lived here, it’s just an extraordinary roll call of the avant garde artists of the period.

I wrote down a list 'cause I’m never going to remember it otherwise. It’s Appoline Nair, poet, Max Jacob, the sculptor Zed Keen, Lipchitz, who did Yani, Chagall, Soutine, , Grancuci, Diego Rivera, and Moise Kissling. Those are just a few of the artists who had the studios. It still exists. You can’t visit it, unfortunately, it’s been transformed into luxury dwellings. Now, all these artists belong to what has been called L'Ecole de Paris, The Paris School, which is in a way a misnomer because almost none of them were French, let alone from Paris. They came from… As I said, Paris was an incredibly welcoming, open city to the whole world. And that’s what made its richness. I feel very strongly that the thing that made America the greatest country in the world in the 20th century was immigration. People need to remember this. And London too, owes its greatness to having welcomed many people in the past. And it’s so sad that these places are now much less welcoming. But I should get off my hobby horse there and introduce, this is Diego Rivera, who’s Mexican, and Grancuci, who is Romanian. Neither of these artists were Jewish, but it’s a very striking phenomenon, the very high percentage of the artists of the Ecole de Paris who were Jews from Poland, from Russia, from Belarus, from Ukraine, and also Sephardi Jews from Italy and South America. We have here Modigliani and Soutine who were neighbours in La Ruche. And they were… They had a profound loving friendship. They were really an odd couple, I would say. Modigliani, of course, was from Sephardi background and came from a highly cultivated bourgeois family. He was a very beautiful man. I think even in this version cropped, you can see it. Absolute film star, Marcello Mastroianni good looks.

And he was dapper and elegant and women adored him. Whereas Soutine came from a very, very poor background, Ashkenazi background. He was grubby and uncouth and scruffy. But they had this great mutual admiration. And particularly, I think Modigliani, who was rather initially more successful. And he did a lot to help Soutine get established on the French art scene. Now on the right hand side is the cover of an exhibition that I went to in the year 2005, about Jewish artists from the Ecole de Paris, from Montparnasse who were deported and who were murdered by the Nazis. And there were hundreds of them. Most of these artists would probably be unknown to you. Which is not to say that they weren’t wonderful artists or very talented. Many of them clearly were. But not only were they murdered, but very, very often, their studios were pillaged and their work was systematically destroyed. So in many cases, there’s not really a lot left to judge them. The most well-established and famous artists of the Ecole de Paris, who was murdered, was Otto Freundlich, the abstract artist. You see an example of his work on the left. This is Moise Kissling, in his studio on the left. This is Sonia Delaunay, who of course was of a Russian Jewish background, her real name was Sonia Terk, wearing one of her gorgeous dresses. She’s a very fascinating figure, Sonia Delaunay. I suppose, as far as high art is concerned, she was very much in the shadow of her husband, Robert Delaunay.

He died long before she did. And I think, I know I’ve told this story before in one of these lectures, one of my favourite teachers at the Courtauld, John Golding, as a student, he went to Paris and he introduced himself to Sonia and she liked him and she invited him to help her in the studio, faking paintings by her dead husband because his work went for a lot more money than hers. But she certainly had a very distinctive contribution to make, particularly, I would say, in fashion and the decorative arts. She opened this shop in 1925, where you could be kitted out in Cubist simultaneous. Actually, the shop was called Simultane, simultaneous, meaning… Well in cubism and futurism, this expression of the dynamism of modern life. So you could have cubist handbag, shoes, underwear, stockings, swimming costumes, even cubist pyjamas. And this is the architect, Anna Goldfinger, Hungarian architect. Also, of course, for a while, Ecole de Paris, before he comes to England and establishes modernist architecture in England, wearing a wonderfully cool pair of pyjamas designed by Sonia Delaunay. And my much, much loved Chana Orloff, and I’m afraid I’m going to insist on calling. I know there’re going to be… Suddenly I’m going to see in the question and answer, there’ll be 20 people saying, “Oh, she’s not called Chana Orloff, she’s called Hannah Orloff. Of course, she was born Hannah, but she always… She lived in France, she spent all her career in France and she called herself Chana, and that’s how her granddaughter pronounces her name, so I shall do the same.

Here she is in her studio, which you can visit. It’s in a little street in Montparnasse, which is entirely made up of modernist studios. And quite a few artists and writers, Henry Miller, Soutine had a studio in the villa. It’s called Villa Sirah, the street. And this is the studio of Chana Orloff, which you can visit. You have to book a visit through the Jewish Museum in Paris. And you can be taken round by her granddaughter, who only speaks French. So you need to have French to do that. But if you do speak French, I can’t recommend that experience highly enough. It’s really extraordinarily moving to hear her story from her granddaughter as you go round her studio. I will be doing that, actually, on a Martin Randall trip in November. Here is Man Ray, who came to Paris wanting to be a painter, I think, really. But making his niche as a highly original photographer, highly successful photographer of very avant garde images, as well as society portraits and advertising. This is his lover and model, Kiki de Montparnasse. And the type of this is , that’s a phrase used in French for a hobby. And that photograph, you probably know in this past, oh, last year, sold for the highest sum of any photograph at auction. This here are… Here is an artist and his wife and his mistress that I’ve become very, very involved with recently. This is Jules Pascin, who was originally from Bulgaria from a Jewish background. He lived a very bohemian life in Montparnasse. He was sometimes dubbed , the king of Montparnasse. He was a flamboyant character and he was fantastically generous and hospitable. He would turn up in one of the famous cafes and he would order drinks or rounds.

And he was a big tipper. And when he died in 1930, it was said on the day of his funeral, it was hard to get a drink in Montparnasse because all the waiters wanted to pay tribute to him. And they followed his funeral cortege. On the right-hand side is a portrait he made of his wife, Hermine David, she’s on the left of the image, and his mistress, Lucy Krohg. And they had a, I think I think it’s a little bit hard to figure out, but it clearly was some kind of quite successful menage-a-trois. And he was a man who suffered from huge psychological problems and highs and lows. He was very, very successful. He made a lot of money, which enabled, of course, this generosity. And in 1930, he had an exhibition that was huge, roaring success, sellout, all that kind of thing. And he went home to his studio on the Boulevard de Clichy, walking distance where I am now. And he slashed his wrists and he wrote a farewell message at his mistress, Lucy, "Adieu, Lucy,” in his blood across the wall. And he didn’t die from the bleeding, he actually had to hang himself to finish himself off. And after he died, his property and his work, which was considerable, was divided between the wife and the mistress. And they seemed to have moved in with one another and been, I don’t know if they were a sexual couple, but they were certainly very devoted to one another, actually, for the rest of their long lives. I’ve become totally obsessed, some of you know already, Ron knows this, with the work of Hermine David. And I’ve managed to acquire four paintings by her and a couple of drawings. And this is her painting she made in the 1920s at San Juan, at the foot of Montmartre. And you can see the Sacre Coeur in the background. I find it an utterly magical little picture.

And this one even more so, this is a painting by Hermine David. Her work is, I think, very underrated. I think these are museum-quality pictures, marvellous pictures that are really, I think, within the realm of possibility for probably most people listening to these lectures. This shows a place called , just outside of Paris where Peruvians used to go on a Sunday to take walks and enjoy themselves. Here she is. This is a bar in Montparnasse. And it’s Hermine on the left, she’s woman on the left here. And you can also spot, of course, Fujita on the right-hand side. So all these artists spent an awful lot of time in cafes and bars. This is Moise Kissling, the insert is his portrait by Modigliani. But you can see Moise Kissling schmoozing with Picasso. I think that’s La Rotonde. Here is La Rotonde still exists. And then that was existed from before the First World War. Then La Coupole was set up in the 1920s. You can see here, “Brasserie, Restaurant, Bar Americain,” where you could get cocktails. And you can still… The interior is still there, it’s preserved. It’s an okay place to eat, and certainly a very nice place to go and have a cocktail or a drink. So the interwar period was punctuated by three great world exhibitions. The first one, 1925, was the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, the Exhibition of Decorative Arts, which was really an attempt to reestablish French hegemony in design and the luxury businesses. And it’s usually seen as the high point of the art deco style. You can see that the Eiffel Tower had this lovely art deco decoration, illumination. And the term art deco for this style is quite recent. It was only in the 1970s that term art deco was coined. And it’s a contraction of Exposition des Arts Decoratifs. This is what the exhibition looked like. And you’ve got two models wearing Sonia Delaunay cubist dresses, standing in front of a cubist forest by the Martel brothers. So in Paris, there are two museums where you can see the decorative arts.

No, three wonderful museums, actually. There’s, in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, there are reconstructions of rooms. This is the… This was actually in the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, it’s by an architect called Pierre Chareau. And it’s a library designed for a French embassy. And also, in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, there is a reconstruction of the entire flat of the great fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin. This is very start… This is very 1925. So it’s the phase of art deco, which is still quite florid and still quite decorative. But although the flowers and so on tend to be geometricized rather than more natural and organic, as they would be in the Art Nouveau style. This is her bathroom, this is surely one of the most spectacular bathrooms in the world. This is, I’m showing you now the toilet and the bidet, , with real leopard skin. So two leopards had to die to cover her bidet and her toilet. The next great exhibition was 1931 and it was the greatest colonial exhibition that was ever assembled. And it was in the Vol D'Oiseau, it was absolutely enormous. So of course, what people didn’t know at that time was that the Second World War was going to bring about the dissolution of all these European colonial empires. So the French built this building, this was… Most of the exhibits were temporary, but there was one permanent building which still exists. And I love taking people to it. Again, this will be on my MRT tour in November. This was the old Palais Coloniale. It then became, when the French empire dissolved and fell apart as all the European empires did, it was a bit of a white elephant, that what to do with this building.

For a long time, the French collection of tribal and of African oceanic art, which is the greatest in the world, was housed in this building. But I think eventually, even the French are not… Actually, they’re coming round to be a lot more PC than they used to be. And eventually, I think they thought, oh, this building is a very inappropriate building for to be housing all these objects, most of which were stolen from Africa and the Far East and so on. It’s an extraordinary building. I’m almost embarrassed to tell you how much I like it, 'cause it is about the most non PC building in the world. It’s telling a story. It’s telling the story of how the French went around the world and they built up the second greatest empire after the British. And it’s full of images of bare-breasted native ladies from all over the globe. And handsome French army officers and naval officers with moustaches and uniforms. And these magnificent art deco offices. Again, in a way shocking, when I tell you that the desk is covered with snake skin and you can see that the door handle is the tusk of some animal. And all the woods are rare and precious woods. The more endangered the species, the better, I suppose. The last great exhibition of the interwar period was the 1937 show, which has gone down in history with a bad reputation, really. 'Cause this is the famous image of the Nazi German pavilion, designed by Albert Speer, towering over the Soviet pavilion on the other side. Hitler had sent spies to Russia to find out how high the Soviet building, pavilion was going to be. And then he gave orders to Speer to double the height. So this is a period where the storm clouds are gathering, and a lot of people in France are feeling very, very threatened. You’ve got the Spanish Civil War, which is being won by the fascists. You’ve got fascist Italy becoming more aggressive.

You’ve got Hitler becoming evermore aggressive. So France feels very threatened on all sides. And the song that is always associated with this is a comic song called “Tout Va Tres Bien Madame la Marquise.” It was actually originally written, inspired by the great economic crisis, the Wall Street crash, which had delayed effects on France. It wasn’t actually till the early 1930s that the Great Depression hit France. But as the the '30s went on and the economic crisis gave weight to the rise of all these terrible right-wing populist, fascist regimes, there was this real sense that disaster was around the corner. And this song, of the… Ostensibly, it’s about an aristocratic French lady who’s been away on holiday for two weeks and she rings her servants to find out what’s been going on. And she goes through a series of the servants and the first one tells you, “I’m terribly… Everything’s fine, . Everything’s fine, madam, but I have to tell you that your favourite mare, your favourite horse has died.” And then she moves, goes onto the next servant who says, “Well the horse has died because the stables burnt down.” And then the stables burnt down because the shutter burnt down. And the shutter burnt down because her husband discovered that they’re economically ruined and he shot himself and he knocked over a candle that set fire to the curtains. I won’t go through the whole song, but I’ll just play you the beginning of this rather macabre comic song.

♪ Hello? ♪ ♪ Hello, hello, James ♪

On the left, you’ve got an image of students wearing masks of various world leaders. The 1930s is a great period. And actually, all the way through the Second World War. It’s a great period for French movies. Some of the best movies of the 20th century were made in France in the '30s and '40s. Probably the biggest commercial success was in 1936, with Duvivier’s film, “Pepe le Moko,” starring the great French male star, Jean Gabin. He was the superstar of the '30s and '40s in France. And Mireille Balin. The film was later remade in Hollywood, with Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr, with the title “Algiers.” And it’s about a gangster who’s untouchable, in the casbahs of Algiers, until he’s lured to his doom by this beautiful woman, played by Mireille Balin. She had the reputation for being the most beautiful woman in France. And the success of this movie in 1936 led to an invitation to go to Hollywood. She had a very frustrating year, kicking her heels with a contract with Paramount. But they didn’t really know what to do with her. And so having spent a year in Hollywood and not made a single movie, she returned to France and continued her movie, playing… She was always playing seductresses and femme fatale. And I think this had… Eventually, I think this really had fatal consequences for her. She had a series of lovers, Jean Gabin, the singer Tino Rossi. And she had a very passionate affair with the world champion lightweight boxer, Victor Perez, who was of Tunisian Jewish origin. Both had suffered really a dreadful fate in the Second World War. He was denounced, sent to Auschwitz. He survived right till the end, but was murdered. He was shot dead on a death march for having offered bread to another prisoner. And she also suffered a very terrible fate.

She had an Austrian lover and they tried to make a break for Italy at the end of the war. And they were captured by the resistance. And she was gang raped by a whole gang of these, the French resistance. And her career was also… She was denounced and appallingly treated at the end of the Second World War, and fell into alcoholism and drugs and died very early. Another movie that everybody in France knows almost by heart is “Hotel du Nord,” that’s dated from 1938. And it was the movie that made a great star out of Arletty. She was already in her 40s, actually. And her role was meant to be a subsidiary role, but she completely, completely stole the movie. As you can see from the signed card, I met her. That would’ve been, when did I meet her? In the 1970s, I think. She was already very old and she was blind, utterly charming and adorable. And oh, a very naughty old lady, full of outrageous stories and gossip. But this is the scene in the movie. And she’s a gangster’s mole and he’s fallen in love with the younger character, played by Annabella. And he wants to dump her. And they’re standing on this bridge on the Canal San Martin, just at the end of the street where I’m living. In fact, Trudy and I, we’ve reenacted this scene almost word for word, the first time she came to Paris. And so he’s saying… She’s saying, “Aren’t you happy?” And he says, “No, I’m not happy.” And she says, “Why aren’t you happy?” And he says, “I need a change of atmosphere.” And she says, “Well let’s go to the seaside. Let’s go to the colonies.”

He says, so very brutally, “No, no, no, you don’t understand. I want to change my atmosphere, .” And then she finally snaps and she comes back to him and she says, “Atmosphere, .” I’ll play you, it’s only a minute or so. I’ll play you this scene from the soundtrack of the movie. Which as I said, every French person of a certain age knows this whole scene by heart. 1937 was the year of the breakthrough of Edith Piaf. I mean, she was very young. She was only 20 years old. In fact, she’d begun her career a year or so earlier and was already making nice progress. But her mentor was a figure in the French gangster underworld. And he was murdered, he was shot down. And she was suspected of being somehow implicated in the murder, as you can see from the cover of this magazine called “Detective.” It says, “ ,” the four women were suspected of being involved in the murder. And that would’ve finished, it seemed to be have finished her career. But that is in 1936, the same year the big hit in France, the biggest hit song was “Mon Legionnaire.” And that was launched by Marie Dubas. Marie Dubas, it’s extraordinary how she is forgotten today. I’m always meeting French people and saying, “What about Marie Dubas? What do you know?” And it’s amazing how even people you’d really expect to know about these things have forgotten her. She was the biggest female star in France in the 1930s. She was the equivalent of Gracie Fields. And she was a kind of comic genius. She was a very… She was the funniest woman in France in the 1930s. So “Mon Legionnaire” was not really her style. It’s a very tragic song. It’s a real tear-jerking song. It’s a song about a prostitute who falls in love with a foreign legionnaire. She spends the night with him.

She says he makes love to her all night. And he leaves in the morning and he doesn’t know that she really loves him, she never tells him. And then of course, he goes off and dies in the desert. So it’s a real tear-jerking thing. And it was on the radio all the time. It was very, very famous. And in those days, if a singer had launched a song, it was a rule that they had sole rights to sing it for two years. But Edith Piaf realised that the song fitted her like a glove. It actually was a much better song for her than it was for Marie Dubas. She went to Marie Dubas and she said, “Please, please, please can I sing this song?” And very generously, Marie Dubas said yes. And the result was the first great recorded success of Edith Piaf. I’m not going to play it through. Well firstly, I haven’t got time. And secondly, I will cry. And it’s very embarrassing to cry on the internet in front of an audience of 1,000 people.

I want to finish on an upbeat note. And my favourite popular male singer of this period is Jean Sablon. He was the first French singer to croon in the American way. He was the first one to make use of a microphone, for which he was very criticised by some people. But such an elegant singer, wonderful singer. And I, many years ago, must be again, back in the 1970s, I sent him a fan letter. I never met him actually, but he sent me this nice dedicated photograph. And here he is, singing about coming back to Paris after a journey in Canada and the United States. And the joy of of coming into the station and leaving the station and driving through the streets of Paris. And it’s of course a sentiment that I can identify with very strongly. It begins with, you’ll hear in… The jazz orchestra is simulating the sound of a train coming into the station in Paris. All right, well, let’s see what you have to say.

Q&A and Comments:

Told us a very good documentary about Josephine Baker. I’m sure there’ve been many documentaries about her, but she says it’s on PBS American. Thank you, Susan.

Q: Josephine Baker, is that the name? You want it to be repeated?

A: All the names, as usual, on the list that you’ve been… Josephine Baker was the star France wanted and the spy it needed, that’s true.

Q: Was the racial, sexual orientation tolerance only in Paris? Was it in other…

A: I think it was Paris. I think it was mainly Paris. It was what the Germans called , The Great City.

This is Rita saying there’s an interview with Josephine Baker, and she sent the link. That’s one, I will watch that later. Thank you very much, Rita.

John Norman. John Norman, “Paris is a movable feast,” wrote Hemingway in one of his enjoyable late books. Of course, Hemingway also actually wrote an essay, an account of drinking at a bar with Jules Pascal, meant to mention that earlier.

Oh, this is Joyce saying she likes it. Well, you can’t hear it anymore, I’m afraid, Joyce, 'cause I’ve got double glazing now. It’s possible. She was married for a while to a Jew, so I think that’s why she converted. So yes, that is true, of course, that she had a Catholic funeral.

Miami Beach Art Deco buildings. It’s a very distinctive style, isn’t it? With a particular colour range, these sweetie colours. Usually Art Deco is a very international style, but the Miami Beach version is one of the few distinctive local variations.

Yes, the official position on jazz was absolutely negative, that it should be banned. Yes, I’m afraid. Well, I played “Nuages” because it’s by Django, it’s a good composition by Reinhardt Django.

Let me see. This is a story about Roger Hart visiting Paris for a weekend in the '20s, riding around the Place de la Concorde in a typically crazily driven taxi. Another taxi missed us by a millimetre. One of their female companions, cried out, “Oh my heart stood still.” Hart immediately said that would make a great song title. That’s good, thank you, I didn’t know that story.

And of course there’s…. Yeah, right. Jazz under the Nazis, thank you for the link.

Jeremy’s a big fan of Django. Django Reinhardt was a… Yes, 'cause it’s extraordinary to think that he had two fingers paralysed and became one of the great virtuoso guitarists.

Chana Orloff. One of my distant cousins, Rose Adler was one of her very close friends. Rose Adler was a considerable art deco book binder. Chana Orloff was not born in Palestine, she was born in Ukraine, but she moved to Palestine as a child and then as a young woman moved to Paris. That’s true, yes. I know that there was a Manhattan restaurant run by one of Josephine’s funds. Sons. Thank you for your nice comments.

Oh, Maryanne, hello Maryanne, let’s talk. Thank you, Mon Legionnaire.

Q: In what years did Marie Dubin need to appear to record this song?

A: Marie Dubin is 1936 and Edith Piaf is 1937.

Thank you for all your very nice comments.

Q: And why is it in also the male film sync sound like? Is it the recording?

A: No, I don’t think it’s the recording quality of the time. I think it’s the style, that it’s a very suave style that was popular at the time.

Q: The song by Sablon is called… What is it? Is this like…

A: Yes, “You Haven’t Changed,” is the name of the song. Thank you, Carla. Thanks everybody.

Josephine’s restaurant was 42nd Street. I will give you details of my MRET Tour and also Kirker, they just actually confirmed all the tours I’m going to do for them in this coming year. They’re going to send me the details, so I’ll add them to my next list. On either of my… Not Norman. On either of my… Maybe that’s a misprint.

Many American Black musicians made Paris their home, that’s true of this time.

Thank you all very much, 'cause we’re moving on to a rather darker period for the next talk, for the next two talks, Paris and the Occupation. But there… It was also an amazing cultural richness, rather surprisingly under these terrible circumstances. Thank you everybody, bye-bye.