Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [193]
Those visitors who could afford it wanted to go to the most famous places. Albert, the maître d’hôtel at Maxim’s, now back in his old job, bowed to the rustle of dollar bills, the currency of what the Communists called the ‘new occupying power’. The Tour d’Argent was still famous for its pressed duck and the view of Notre-Dame by night. On warm summer evenings, middle-aged romantics were tempted by the Pavillon d’Arménonville in the Bois de Boulogne, where they could dine out by the lake with Chinese lanterns in the trees, and the ubiquitous violinists playing Tzigane music. Or there was the Pré Catalan nearby, sited on the traditional duelling ground.
For most Anglo-Saxon visitors with limited French, the theatre tended to mean the Folies Bergère, the Lido or the Casino de Paris, rather than the Comédie-Française. But for those who could understand the language, the Parisian theatre in the early autumn of 1949 had a lot of entertainment to offer. Jean Gabin was reputedly brilliant in Henri Bernstein’s La Soif at Les Ambassadeurs. David Bruce described it as ‘a sexy piece, rather old-fashioned in the sense that it is a repetition of all Bernstein plays’.
On Saturday, 1 October, the Ballet de Monte Carlo, produced by the Marquis de Cuevas, opened its season. Tamara Toumanova and Rosella Hightower, one of the American principals whom Cuevas had brought over from the United States, were hailed as superb. George de Cuevas, a Chilean married to a Rockefeller heiress, had taken over the ballet in 1947 from Serge Lifar, with whom he had allegedly fought a duel. Nijinska was Cuevas’s maîtresse de ballet and he also recruited Lichine and Markova. The capricious and egotistical Cuevas renamed his company ‘Le Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas’.
The following month, Un Tramway nommé Désir by Tennessee Williams opened and became one of the hits of the year despite hostile reviews. For those who had seen the controversial original in New York with Marlon Brando in his famously ripped T-shirt, the French version offered a different originality. Jean Cocteau, who adapted it, made many changes. For a start, his evocation of New Orleans was rather curious, ‘with some pretty odd erotic Negro dances’. David Bruce went to the first night in a large party with Paule de Beaumont, who had translated the play. The scenery was brilliant; it needed to be, since it was in competition with another European winter. The curtain rose to the sound of crickets to convey a sweltering hot southern night, but the audience was freezing.
Although the critics were unimpressed by the 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