SECRETS OF FOLIES BERGERE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1936, Page 6 (Supplement)

SECRETS OF FOLIES BERGERE.

Case Of The Mean Millionaire. THE AUDACITY OF YVONNE PRINTEMPS (By GASTON VAUCLAIRE. —Copyright.) (No. 6.)

AMONG the throngs of show people who dance, sing, parade, and merely stand still and decorate a great stage like the Folies Bergere there are not many who have any idea of working to make a career. The majority are just show girls. They have looks, and can be drilled to work with the chorus crowd; and so they earn tlieii payBut they have one thing in common — they have a private life. What does that mean in sliow-life terms ? Well, it may mean that a girl tries to keep a worthless young lover in idleness —that's private life. And there is the chorus girl who gets fiftv francs a night, but lives in a sumptuous flat and goes to and from the theatre in a white Hispano driven by a liveried chauffeur —and that, again, is private liftTheir sojourns in the world of luxury and wealth are apt to be precarious and brief. But some make it stick, and Gabrielle was one of those. She adorned the front row, and routined with the chorus line. But in production they found they needed five minutes in between two sketches for the principals to change. So they sandwiched in a tableaux series. Running his eye expertly over the chorus line, the producer spotted Gabrielle, tall, statuesque, white-skinned, with a slow heavy-lidded glance, and a voluptuous Greuze mouth; beautiful and cold. "She'll do for No. 1, and she can get changed in time to pose for No. G, too." So Gabrielle was Cleopatra, with golden hair and proud head held high, disdainfully watching from her throne the effect of poison on a slave; and she was also Messalina, black-haired, leaning against a pillar, with her head drooped, looking sideways at a soldier being flogged to death. Now some men are allured by cold femininity, and it was from one of the latter that Gabrielle presently received a sheaf of orchids and a card, with a pencilled invitation. The name told her nothing, but the orchids suggested a fat fish on the hook, and Gabrielle gambled a ten-franc note to get a, line, by way of a callboy, on the man, who said his car would await her at the stage door after the show. The boy came back to tell her that the man was English or American, and he was alone in one of the best boxes, and the programme girl said he had been in the box every night for five nights. • The girl did not take the customary bus back to her humble lodging on the left bank that night. She saw the huge gleaming limousine at the kerb, and stepped towards it. Instantly a gentleman hopped out, and bowed her in, hat in hand, as if she were veritably Cleopatra. He was shy, awkward, polite and anxious. Evidently ho was unaccustomed to stage-door meetings with little ladies of the theatre. The Wiles of Gabrielle. He had taken it for granted that she would not be dressed for a restaurant, as he had given her such short notice, so, with her permission, they would sup in his suite at his hotel. On getting her pencilled acceptance he had sent a messenger back to order everything to be prepared and ready. > She had a charming supper, and then he kissed her hand and handed her into his car. ; It was at her disposal. She admired the tact which would not permit him to accompany her from the aristocratic precincts of the Place Vendome away across the river to cobbled streets, and the frowsy portals, of the apartment house where' she lodged. "Give him nothing and you'll get everything," advised the girl friend .to whom she confided her singular experience. "He's that sort." He proved to be. It was some considerable time before she allowed him even to trespass beyond her hand with his lips. "There is a diamond necklace in Cartiers window," she observed one night when he had tiegged to be allowed to kiss her enticing ftps. He had turned out to be rather mean about money, though he was a millionaire. He bought his way to her lips with that diamond necklace; and it was in Cartiers that the Indian prince saw her. He also was buying jewels, and he surreptitiously eyed the haughty and voluptuous young beauty, elegant and befurred (at her admirer's expense), as she fingered tfie valuable necklace and examined its effect against her white throat, holding it up and turning lier head this way and that as she looked in the mirror. Thus arrayed and posed, she would doubtless resemble a genuine lady of thebeau monde as closely as a cultured pearl resembles a real one. I can imagine the Oriental's surprise when he caught her eye in the mirror; and, instead of being repulsed by blank indifference, received a look which he could only interpret as an invitation. To the Orient. A month later the Folies had to find a new girl for the tableaux. And the millionaire went disconsolately home. Cleopatra-Messalina Gabrielle sailed for the Orient in state with a maid and courier. I believe that she and her prince went through some form of marriage in his native State, where he already had four official wives and a number of concubines. But perhaps the marriage is not binding enough for passports, or sufficiently official to be recognised beyond the frontiers of his feudal state; because when I saw them at Deauville this summer, she was still "Mademoiselle" at the hotel, where she occupied a separate suite with her attendants', although always in the company of her handsome prince. I could not help smiling as I saw them at dinner that night with a party which contained some of the smart cosmopolitans staying at the plage. She played the role of princess to perfection. Indeed, she looked much more like a princess than an authentic but impo\eiished one from the Balkans who had been roped into the party—but perhaps the real princess, hungry as she was for free wine, food and entertainment, would have found an excuse to decline the imitation if she had known that her opulent host's lady friend was not tlic OTande dame she appeared to be. but only little Gabrielle, who had by great good fortune not only hooked a line lat fish, but actually landed him . . .

Rise of Star. You think a little piece in a show oil the Folies Bergere stage is not much? Well, it is not if an actress is over 30. In these things age is the whole difference between hope and despair. But when one is young! There is no stage in the world where the little piece can mean so much—where it is fraught, not necessarily with so much promise, but with so much of what we call chance. One sees a Folic* Bergere show. Blaring, spectacular, naked —sex through a megaphone—colour like the aurora borealis —and then one goes to a theatre intime in London or Paris, and one sees that most delicious and exquisite of artists, with the lightest of silvery voices, the most delicate wit, Yvonne Printemps; and one thinks, "a link between the Folies Bergere and this bewitching actrcss, who is all delicate pastel tints and murmuring notes —nonsense! Which only shows that we do not understand tills iabulous stage and the roulette chances of those who play upon its wide boards. Daring Side Skit. I noted with more than usual interest the arrival on the Folies stage in an early war year of a lovely creature with ash blonde hair and languishing turquoise eyes. Dressed as a boy in a velvet suit she walked on reading a book in an attitude of deep reflection. One of the characters spoke to her. She looked up from her book, replied, and immediately resumed her attitude of reflection. Beside me in the box sat a man who has no parallel outside Paris. You would have to make a cocktail of Cochran, Noel Coward, Pinero and Cedric Hardwicke to approach him in the London world. He was Saclia Guitry, prolific playwright, producer of genius, matchless actor, talented essayist, a famous actormanager already, although har.dly over thirty. I looked sideways at this celebrity with a concealed smile, for that imp on the stage was poking fun at the great man. "Who is the chit?" growled Sacha under his breath. I silently thumbed the programme for his benefit. He read: "Le Fils de Sacha Guitry . . . Yvonne Printemps."

She was impudently satirising his 1 precocity in the role of his supposed son in this audacious skit. Incidentally, Sacha Guitry had no son. He sat there, heavy faced and still; and said not a word. It was a daring thing for that girl to do. The Perfect Foil. One touch which jarred, and she would have made an enemy for life of the most powerful man on the Paris stage. But her touch did not jar. Some time after, "son" and "father" met at a fashionable party; and the word went round that they seemed to make quite a hit with ope another. She was 17 then, and as impish as Puck; and he was 32, heavy-bodied and g>ave as a judge. Well, they married, and she proceeded to take the Paris high-brow stage by storm. The truth was —and I think the astute Sacha saw how it would be—she was exactly what he needed as a foil for his own personality 011 the stage. They helped one another by the sheer force of immense contrast. For sixteen years that partnership which budded that evening at the Folies Bergere flourished, and if Sacha's theories atiout matrimony had proved all right in practice, they would still be SachfT and Yvonne, the happiest married couple in Parrs, living a charmingly intimate life together on a solid foundation of love, affection and an indestructible stao-o partnership. Alas, the theories did not work out in practice. A young and delightful new rrirl appeared on the horizon of the Guitry life. Who, asked the gossips, is the woman Sacha takes such an interest in' She was Jacqueline Dclubac. She became his new stage partner. Yvonne Printemps smiled a little wistfully, and presently began rehearsing a new roie in a' new play—a play in which for the first time there wolud be 110 Sacna Guitry to provide a stolidly humorous background. (To be continued.)