Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

Culver Servtct Her role in "The Barker" was an end and a beginning for Claudette. An end to worry over grocery bills, and the beginning of her first real romance. The second lead was a "dark young man" — Norman Foster, and this scene between them was not altogether acting to Grandpere Chauchoin's house in central France. The family had talked about it for days, and Papa had warned all his customers that the pastry shop would be closed for a little while and Lily had been told that if she ever intended to be good in her life this was the time. They arrived rather late in the afternoon and saw Grandpere standing, with a welcoming smile, on the terrace of his charming little house which lay quietly in the dusk. That is Maman and Papa saw Grandpere; Lily and Charles saw only the tiny balcony that hung over the old man's white head. The balcony was very ancient and you got on to it through an upstairs bedroom, by way of doors whose hinges were rusted in disuse. Lily and her brother, the next morning, made them creak for the first time in thirty years. Old boards covered with dust made small indignant noises when the two children stepped timorously out; but they seemed firm enough. Charles decided, finally, that it would be fun to jump up and down on this pretty old balcony, to hear the sound it made and to watch the dust come up. It gave way, of course. "We were dreadfully banged about and bruised," Claudette remembered, adjusting the hot pad to her neck; "and of course we screamed our lungs out. But I felt it was so unfair, because both of us were scolded and punished for breaking the balcony just when we expected sympathy. Which is entirely typical of the French method of discipline." I raised questioning eyebrows "Well," she told me, "one never, under any circumstances, was allowed to say anything art mealtime. Since we had no servants there was no separate table for the children We sat with Father and Mother, and ate, and kept silent. In the park I spoke to none of the other children, and played with none. You understand, though, that I didn't expect •anything else. I was quite happy — except for my great thwarted ambition to play in the streets." The first four or five years of her life passed in this manner, ami were pleasant ones. Little Lily was six years old, and had gone to school for eight months in Pari-, when the "great blow" fell QHE and her brother were aware, first, only of a great disquiet between Maman and Papa. M. Chauchoin's handsome dark face wore a haggard look and beautiful Madame Chauchoin gathered a tight-lipped silence around herself. Anil once in awhile, there would be explosive arguments in rapid French about something neither of the children could understand. "Poor Dad," Claudette said to me. " He was so vague about business — someone had persuaded him to sell his pastry shop and buy an ink factory. And of course it was a big trick and they ran away with all his money He didn't know quite what to do, then." A friend came to the apartment on the Bois. finally, and said to the depressed Chauchoin, "Why don't you go to America? They have jobs in the States, and you need neither capital nor business connections to make a living." " Never!" shouted the mother. "That awful country: We'll stay here in our own France, in our own Paris, and live the life we know—" But two weeks later, with what money he could gather together, Chauchoin sailed from Marseilles for New York, leaving Madame weeping noisily on the I please turn to page 76 I