Who was Gaby Deslys ?

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7199, 23 April 1930, Page 8

Who was Gaby Deslys ?

Actress in a New Riddle of the Sands

Efforts are still being made to unravel the mystery of the true identity of Gaby Deslys. Gaby’s mother believes that it was her daughter who rose to such heights of fame and. died in Paris in 1920, but the sister of a Hungarian actress says that it was the latter, who changed identity with Gaby 25 years ago.

19-year-old Gaby, in tbe tbroes of her first love affair, eloped with the son of a local doctor named Flavard to Paris. The romance was short-lived, however. The young couple separated. Gabrielle Caire, too proud to run home to her parents, resolved to earn her living by means of her musical talent and her charming voice. .

HLL the web of mystery which for ten years , has been woven around the name of Gaby Deslys, the most fascinating stage favourite of her generation, ever be cleared up.? In Britain, where the golden-haired Gaby achieved the pinnacle of fame and fortune; in Paris, where she was the idol of the boulevards; in Mar-

She became a chorus girl in a Montmartre cabaret. Those were the days before the French stage had been overrun with blonde British beauties —“Les Girls,” as Paris calls them—and here again Gaby’s wonderful corncoloured curls, coupled with her sunny smile and her manner of a naive convent schoolgirl, made her the admired of all beholders. Was it this Gaby, of the golden hair and the golden voice, who swooned one day in 1903 or 1904 in the beach at Ostend and thereafter mysteriously disappeared, her place being taken by a young Hungarian actress, Hedwig Navratil, or Navratilova? If so, who then was the charming lady of the wondrous feather headdresses who danced and sang with such elfin grace in every capital of the civilised world? Who was it, then, who died at the beginning of February, 1920, in a Paris nursing-home after a long and painful illness, and who left all her possessions, her fabulous pearls and her beautiful villas, to the poor of her beloved city of Marseilles, with the exception of an annuity to her dancing partner, Harry Pilcer? Madame Caire, who lives with her other daughter, Madame de Cornil, in Gaby’s former home, the Villa MontJoli, Marseilles, in whjch she has a life interest, believes it to have been her dearly-loved daughter, MarieClaire Gabrielle Caire'. But Madame Berkes, elder sister of Hedwig Navratilova, declares it to have been Hedwig, who was the double of Gaby, and who. changed identity with the Frepch actress on the occasion of a fainting fit on the sands at Ostend 25 years ago. • One could, perhaps, find a motive for the persistence of Madame Berkes in making this assertion, in the wealth left by the dead actress, a share in which is claimed by the Navratil family,, had the suggestion not arisen until after Gaby’s,death.. But the strange thing is , that the Navratils and Mme. Berkes had apparently been convinced for years that the French .star was .none other than Hedwig Navratilova, of whom they had lost trace since she went on the stage. ■ No one was a greater friend of Gaby than her stage partner, Harry Pilcer. . He remembers an occasion,

settles, her native city, she revealed to those who knew her intimately that her i real name was Marie-Claire Gabrielle . Caire. . She . was born in Marseilles at the house of her father, M. Hippolyte Caire, tailor, 63 Rue de la Rotonde, on. November 4, 1881. Gaby was .always intenseley /proud of being a Marseillaise.' She'spent a happy, carefree childhood in the sunny gardens of that cosmopolitan Southern seaport. ' f Destined to be a centr eof attraction wherever she went throughout her short life, Gaby’s golden fairness made her .much admired even as a child among the olive-skinned natives of the' Mediterranean port. It came aS a terrible shock to the good nus, who loved her dearly, as well as, to her parents and only sister when the