NIGHT CLUBS OF PARIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17662, 24 December 1920, Page 2 (Supplement)

NIGHT CLUBS OF PARIS.

GAY CITY GAY NO LONGER. AN INTERNATIONAL PLAYGROUNDThree Englishmen—an actor, a business man, and a journalist—were talking about Paris. The first and the last knew their pre-war Paris—and loved it. The actor vias saying that tho Gay City was gay no longer; it had become an international playground. The journalist's wings had been scorched many times, when the moths fluttered round the bright lights that burnt BO brightly in the days that are dead and gone. The business man was practically a new oomer, and. wanted to be shown. So the journalist agreed to take him on a tour of investigation. Well— We started out, the business man and I, to spend a real typical Parisian evening. After dinner we strolled along the boulevards towards tho establishment that- is the rage of Paris. I can only say of it what the Peckhaan milliner said of the new fashion hat she placed in the window :itis " the last shout. ' It is a gorgeous place, this new* restaurant. Typically Parisian. , It belongs to an English company. Upstairs there is an excellent orchestra. The conductor is an Italian. English Dancing Girls. Downstairs there is another baud; a real good jazz band, all Americans. People dance, and win®, and dine. Do you want to know what the ' Parisians are discussing? Listen. " Wal, if this little dive don't beat anything Chicago. . . A hand pushes out a placard bearing the word Attraction," and the band strikes up a popular tune. Miss Stella Marvis, wearing a costume reminiscent of May Yolie in "Little Christopher Columbus," walks through the audience singing a song in English or American, I forget which. Later she is joined by eight girls from Manchester and Liverpool, who sing and ■dance. You have had enough of this? So have I. We go to another Parisian establishment, the property of an English company, and there we hear English and American music and English and i American conversation. The night is still young, but the Government decrees that everything must shut up at one. So we accept the hospitality of an American friend . who takes Us to his " club." I shook hands with a stranger and became a member. Almost like London night life? Then we entered a place thaS used to be a theatre. Now it is the Ulab. There is an American jazz band, with a nigger trap drummer. The last time i saw him was in tha Foreign Legion. America Bent us her best and worst; the best seem to have gone home. Here, around the American bar, one' hears all languages, including German, but mighty little French. There are men who are possibly gunmen in the Bowery—and i others. Fights are frequent, but there is no official interference. Dregs of Humanity. It is now three-thirty. The famous " Pere Tranquille" restaurant in the Central Markets opens at four. Downstairs there is the iitiie zino bsr where the market porterg are already drinking their coffee and " petit verre"" Upstairs there is an oblong room, full o? the dregs of humanity. Well might one cry with Ferdinand in the " Tempest": " Hell is empty, and all the devils Bra here,'" Women disappear into ** G.H.Q. Love, 1 * and come out dosed with cocaine. You can count a dozen women who are doped. The only Frenchman present is & drunken, m-neh-bcribboned sailor. An English " crook" fa breakfasting with a psendo Irish-Hungarian marquis; the couple are accompanied by a nondescript Englishwoman whose evening gown shows a disposition to slip from her shoulders, and whose pearlg could never claim an oyster as a mother. We have enough of this ® dope shop," and away for home, elbowing a path through tha hustling people. • • »- S The actor ■sfrs righfL