Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

production, Arletty was wonderful in the role of Blanche (which was played by Vivien Leigh at the same time in London). It was her first stage part since she had been banned from acting. Her film,
Portrait d’un assassin,
with Maria Montez and Erich von Stroheim, came out on 25 November, during the play’s run.
    One night, Arletty had an unexpected visitor in her dressing room after the performance. Marlon Brando was in Paris for a long holiday after making his name as Kowalski in the original American production. He had several reasons for wanting to see her.
Les Enfants du Paradis
was his favourite film and he had adored Arletty in the role of Garance. In the States, he had been cast as the peasant assassin in
The Eagle Has Two Heads,
a part which Cocteau had written for his lover, Jean Marais. But Brando’s ‘Method’ peasant had been so conspicuously churlish, with nose-picking and crotch-scratching, that Tallulah Bankhead as the Queen with whom the assassin falls in love (the part played by Edwige Feuillère in the Paris production) had taken his crude insouciance as a personal affront. Largely at her insistence, he had not accompanied the production to Broadway.
    Brando’s notions of diplomacy had not improved. To meet Arletty, he turned up wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Arletty, a true Parisian in matters of dress, was affronted and gave him an obviously frosty reception. Brando shrugged and transferred his attentions to the Boeuf sur le Toit, that new right-bank colony of the Left Bank, and spent his time with
Germano-pratins
whose sartorial standards were more relaxed. He found himself a modest Mobylette and Juliette Gréco gave him conducted tours of Paris from the pillion; but the singer he fell for at the Boeuf was Eartha Kitt.
    *
    The nightclubs in Paris offered a richer variety than anywhere else in the world. The Bal Tabarin was perhaps the most dramatic. Before the show it looked like any other club, with tables and chairs grouped round a dance floor; but the semi-nude show itself was a breathtaking display, with trap doors, trapezes, lights, sounds, mirrors and circus animals creating magical effects. The Carrousel, at 40 rue du Colisée, a few doors along from the Boeuf sur le Toit, had female impersonators in beautiful costumes as its main attraction. But the night ended with a can-can danced by the girls from the Folies Bergère who came over after their performance.
    There were any number of male homosexual or lesbian establishments, such as Le Monocle in Montparnasse; but La Vie en Rose, despite its less romantic nickname of ‘
la salle viande
’, or ‘the meat parlour’, was the most endearingly eccentric. Sir Michael Duff and David Herbert, two eminent English queens, took Louise de Vilmorin, Diana Cooper and her young son, John Julius, there one evening. ‘It’s a small dancing hall,’ wrote Diana, ‘with orchestra and couples of middle-aged dentists dancing very well together, not cheek to cheek, as the languorous youth and maiden dance, but briskly and business-like. A “
patron
”, with a face painted an inch thick, hangs about waiting for the moment when his shirt and trousers are exchanged for a sequinned Edwardian evening gown and hat, à la Boldini. Then at a beat from the band out troops a corps de ballet of oldish gentlemen en décolletage and maquillage – delight as best they can, while between numbers the male couples go prancing round with here and there a couple of tweedy women.’
    Another White Russian nightspot in succession to the Schéhérazade and the Troïka was the Dinarzade, run by Alexis de Norgoff and Colonel Tchikacheff, with their staple fare of caviar, shashlik, vodka and champagne. Les Grands Seigneurs in the rue Daunou, near Harry’s Bar, otherwise known as Ciro’s, had velvet curtains, burgundy walls, huge wine-coolers and gypsy violinists playing in your ear. Like the old Monseigneur in the rue d’Amsterdam which it resembled, it was only for starting a relationship unless you wished to be financially ruined.
    Less expensive but also less predictable entertainment was offered by Suzy Solidor at her Club de l’Opéra in the rue Joubert. Solidor had a collection of over a hundred portraits of herself, including works byChristian Bérard, Cocteau, Dufy and Van Dongen. For those who liked tropical rhythm, there was La Cabane Cubaine in Montmartre, or the Martiniquaise Canne à Sucre in Montparnasse. There were informal jazz clubs like that of