NOT ALL FUN

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20000, 7 January 1935, Page 10

NOT ALL FUN

LIFE OF MUSIC HALL “STARS” TWO FAMOUS VEDETTES INTERVIEWED (Exclusive to “The Timaru Herald ” by Bertrand Phillip) PARIS, November 27. “One should sculpture one’s body before showing it off in a robe,” I was told that very vivaciously to-day in the sumptous Champs Elysee apartment of Cecile Sorel, one of France’s most longbeloved vedettes. “I had just been introduced a few minutes before to her beautiful salon by a well-made mamelouk in the traditional hairdress. Everywhere I could notice a sureness of taste, a careful elegance, and a love of originality. And in the middle of it all was Cecile Sorel. When she moved her carriage was all suppleness and lightness. Her reception was most amiable and she replied volubly and enthusiastically to all my questions. Life of a Star. “I am sure,” she said, as she retraced the vicissitudes of her life as a star, “that the form and harmony of body is entirely dependent on the physical culture one takes on getting up. I dance to conserve the suppleness of my muscles.’ I thought of the words of the famous Leon Daudet who declared that Sorel unites, genius, charm and harmony.

“When I am through with my physical culture, lam massaged. Nor is there any need to say that this seance is frankly fastidious and painful. But ; then I derive a lot of satisfaction from the cold show’er which I take immediately after. “I never eat bread and only grilled meat with a taste of fine Bordeaux wine. For desert—fruits. So you see, I am deprived of eating as I please. If it ever happens that I am tempted by a particularly enticing titbit, I punish myself the next day by going on a diet. Then I drink only a little warm water with lemon in it. That is how I tame ‘my inner beast.’ It must be chastised and corrected. One needs a discipline of iron for that, and consequently an energetic and willing character. lam very fond of receptions and fine meals, but I am obliged to eat on the end of my lips, because I dare not depass my weight. An artist is just like a jockey who is not able to run the race if he is too heavy. Heavy Demands of Art. r “Tell me how you prepare for your parts,” I asked. “In art all is a sacrifice! To learn my part I must find my real self. That obliges me to plunge myself into solitude and meditation. In fact, it is quite necessary to concentrate one’s mind on the single object. I can assure you that it is very tiring and takes a lot of work to reach some sort of reincarnation of one’s self. But what could be more thrilling than the role ' of Hermione for example? It is really a delight to awaken such a beautiful medium. No one can imagine what a pleasure it is to leaf through the soul of this tigress discovering all its scratches and all its stings. When one gives his talents to such a role he is certain to come out of it with a new experience. “To incarnate people like this, I must gc to the Louvre. There I study the statues. When lam entirely impregnated with the part I let myself go, and in simple and human words translate the feelings which the soul expresses. Tiresomeness of Touring. “Work to me means using that superabundance of life that is in me.” Touring was not all rosy she told me. When at New York for example, she had to be up at ten in the morning, dressed and ready to make a lecture on the “Misanthrope,” and her analysis of the role of Celimene. At noon there was a banquet set for three hundred. She had to speak again. Then, and it was the same each day, just enough time to hurry to the theatre and act in the matinee and evening performance. “Just imagine,” said said, “I had to ! take four methods of transportation r,o 1 get from New York to Chicago—airI plane, train, boat and automobile. : "But we had enormous success everyI where. Most of the time the show would end with cries of ‘Vive la France’ and to the tune of the Marseillaise. So you see, I was really well paid for this superhuman work. I willingly undertook the obligation of receiving a veritable cohort of reporters every morning and a thousand of other restraints. “Now you have some idea of what the life of a star can mean. All those exercises, all those rehearsals, all the obligations, all that is forced work. But I get such a satisfaction on the other hand that I should be most unfair to complain.” Queen of Music Halls. Mistinguette never needs to be introduced. For a long time she has been the Queen of the Music Halls, and her fame has crossed the borders. I spoke with her in her box at the Folies Bergere while she was making up. It was really a piece of luck in getting to talk to her. You really cannot imagine how difficult it is to get near the famous and popular star. Mistinguette seems to be the star with the most obligations—forced work—to meet in the minimum of time.

“What a dog’s life,” she replied banteringly to my question, when I asked her to tell me about her life as a star. “It certainly wasn’t for a joke that I sang around the world: ‘Toujour au turbin, du soir au matin, moi, j’en ai marre!’ (‘Always on the job from night until morning—I—I’m fed up with it!’> First of all I get up rather late and have no breakfart or I take just a little tea with lemon. I receive my secretaries who bring me the latest news, and I give them their instructions for the day. In the meantime the telephone is being kept busy, and there are fifty different calls to be made. Then come my physical culture lessons. I give these very careful attention. This is always followed by a bath.

“I am quite used to doing several things at a time. For example while my chamber-maids are massaging me, I open letters picked at random from the pile of morning mail, or perhaps I will arrange something by telephone: Rehearsal, try-outs, interviews with authors, composers, directors, reporters, agents, admirers, etc. They just don’t give us time to breathe. “Did I say,” she smiled at me with all her beautiful teeth, “did I say that I got up late? I was just fooling you. Sometimes I get up at 6 o’clock to go to the studio, where I act until noon. And after a light meal I have to ‘fly’ to the music hall to rehearse a sketch. “Let me tell you, it’s not a funny life. There is plenty of exercise to be done. Sometimes a dancer takes my body by the arms and swings me around horizontally above his head at full speed. Don’t you think you have to have a well-balanced indigestion for that? Keeping in Form. “But that isn’t the only thing that is not so funny. I have to have my ‘breakage’ appointments. Do you know that twenty days before the opening 1 am obliged to have my muscles broken in by a specialist? “I have myself torn apart.” She explained all this to me Hung by her feet, her limbs, are pulled in

order to render the muscles supple, after they have been stiffened from the dancing and violent movements of her abrobatic exercises. “Corporal punishment,” she called it. And I believe she was right. “Just imagine,” she said, “being obliged to remain suspended and jerked around for several minutes .... But what can you expect? One must. “Then, before beginning a revue I try to put on as much weight as possible for the performances make me lose weight.” It is time to come out on the scene. Mistinguette has on a magnificent red robe, and in her traditional feathered hat she dashes on to the stage. At the interval her box is filled with flowers, and she is assaulted by her many admirers. “Grande Dame,” that she is, Mistinguette has a kind word for each of them. Without losing a second, she replies to the demands and propositions that are stormed upon her. There is a mob of them, composers, directors, cameramen, authors, admirers, without mentioning the representatives of I don’t know what kind of beauty product, etc. But she has no more time for me, and she dismisses me politely, laughingly saying:— “I hope that you are satisfied, and that you will not advise anyone to take up this galley-slave life.” (Reproduction, even partial, forbidden World Copyright by: Litteraire Internationale.)