People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20648, 24 June 1935, Page 6

People and Their Doings.

“September Morn ’’ was Made Famous by a Faked “ Scandal ” : The Original Picture is Lost in Russia : The Star in “ Trader Horn ” is Suffering From a Strange Disease.

LTUNDREDS of people in Britain and America have written to Paul Chabas. the famous 66-ycar-old artist, asking if it was true that the girl who posed as a lake nymph for his famous picture “ September Morn,” was starving in a garret in Paris. The rumour was untrue. But it has called forth the truth. Paul Chabas told the story in his Paris studio recently, of the girl who helped make several people’s fortunes, whose likeness has been reproduced nearly 20,000,000 times. “ She is very happily married to a rich French business man. And they have three lovely children. I won’t tell you her name because, well . she is 41 now, and, I fear, no longer as slender as when she posed in the mountain lake for me. She was only 16 when 1 started the picture. She was exactly like the picture. . .” Paul Chabas painted “ September Morn ” in the summers of 1910 and 1911 beside Lake Annecy in the French Alps, near the Swiss border. His inspiration was no professional model, but a slim, golden-headed mountain girl, whom he met and persuaded to pose. THE PICTURE won no special fame till ■** shipped to New York in 1912. There Braun and Co., of Manhattan, reproduced it, and hired arch-publicist Reichenbach to boost it. Anthony Comstock, famous reformer, was told one morning of the scandal caused by a window display of the picture. “ It’s ruining the morals of youth! ” urged Reichenbach, taking the reformer to see the little boys crowding the pavement, flattening noses against glass. Comstock started

an agitation that spread throughout the United States—and made 7,000,000 Americans buy prints (at 6d each) within a few months. No one told Comstock that the crowd of little boys were paid half a crown each for their morning’s work. Despite the familiarity of its prints, the original picture is now lost. It has not been heard of since the. Russian Revolution. It was then in Moscow, owned by a collector, Leon Mantecheff, who had bought it for £2OOO. Paul Ch&bas has for a year been trying to discover if his masterpiece is hidden in some obscure Soviet museum or adorning the wall of a commissar’s private office. A NEW ROYAL STANDARD has been made, bearing across its top three diminutive anchors in black and white. These indicate it is the banner of the Duke of Kent, a member of the .Order of St Michael and St George. The ceremony of affixing the Duke’s banner in the chapel of the Order of St Paul’s Cathedral was performed with magnificent pageantry on May 24, at the annual service. The Duke took his banner from his squire and handed it to the Chancellor of the Order, who hung it over the Duke’s stall. The banner is of blue and red damask, with the English and Scottish lions and Irish harp appliqued in damask of other colours.

jVTISS EDWINA BOOTH, the American film actress who was stricken with a mysterious disease after her return from the filming of “Trader Horn” in the tropical African jungle in 1929, has been taken to London for treatment at the/Hospital for Tropical Diseases. Her father, Dr Woodruff, a white-haired Californian, says that his daughter is what is called in medical parlance a heliophobe, a person to whom the strong sun is absolute death. Her white skin never took on the protective sun-tan, and she came out of the jungle as white as she went in. Meanwhile, the sun had struck through her unprotected skin and done its deadly work. Miss Booth entered films because she happened to be sun bathing on a beach near where Mr Mason Hopper was directing a film comedy. She took the stage name of Booth because on her father’s side she is descended from the famous tragedian, Edwin Booth. In addition to her years of illness after her experiences in Africa she had to endure the anxiety of a suit for alienation of affections brought unsuccessfully against her by the wife of Mr Duncan Renaldo, who played the leading male part in “Trader Horn.” 999 CIXTY YEARS AGO (from the “Star” ° of June 24, 1875) Acclimatisation. —Yesterday Mr S. C. Farr, hon secretary of the Acclimatisation Society, purchased thirty-three C alifornian quail, and one hundred and seventeen skylarks from Mr R. Ball, who has recently arrived from Nelson.