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Photo by Eugene Robert Richee
Mademoiselle — Not Grisette
In Arlette Marchal, brought from France by Paramount, is found the carefully reared flower of that great institution, the French home, rather than the little devil of the boulevards.
By Myrtle Gebhart
WE have Pola the magnetic and dominant queen, the gorgeously frank pagan polished by superficialities into a cosmopolite. We have Vilma of Budapest, whose clear skin is untouched by cosmetics, Vilma whom we picture as the fraulein of a home, surveying with pride her stock of linens and her thick, rose-garlanded china. We have Renee the imp, in whom bubbles playfully a refreshing joyousness.
And now we have Arlette, a little bit of all three, to add one more interesting personality to the fast-growing foreign colony of Hollywood.
In Arlette Marchal I find something of Pola's tutored mind and love of literature, a trifle of Renee's infectious gayety, but, I think, she is most like Vilma. In this respect: that she is untouched by the glamours of the theater, for she came directly to the screen from a home.
Work and ambition and family ties leave little time in her life for the love affairs which publicize these European beauties. The press agents tried to hook onto her the title of "the toast of Paris," but they can't kid me. If any gay boulevardier got fresh with Arlette and begged to drink champagne from her slipper, she would send him trotting.
Romance is not aligned with Pola — it's part of her. Upon it she thrives and grows and from it she draws her art. It is, in a sense, a well-spring. Romance, when it comes to Arlette, will be the development, I fancy, of a slow, sweet, and proper friendship.
She is not a lady of the lights who bursts upon us of a sudden, the surface Parisienne seen by the tourists and gayly painted on the movie cabaret canvases ; she
represents the accumulation of centuries of old France, slowly and solidly building.
From the little glimmerings that our difficult conversational contact made possible, I pictured her home : quiet, restful, charming, artistic, a conservative and tradition-bound French home ruled by a stern yet tender pere, by a maman at once material and idealistic, a home in which filial obedience prevailed.
I imagine her, after her motion-picture work had taken her a bit into the world, attired in a short, chic Royant sports outfit rather than gowned in a sparkling Lanvin creation ; attending lectures at the Sorbonhe, or steeping herself in the melodies of the Conservatoire concerts, instead of reveling in the frivolities of the "Folies Bergere." Or strolling thoughtfully through the quiet lanes of chestnuts in the Tuileries instead of motoring, correctly accoutered, through the Bois de Boulogne.
Her afternoons were spent at work or sewing at home, not dawdling over gowns displayed by the mannequins in the shops along the Rue de la Paix, her evenings in family discourse, or entertaining suitors under the vigilant chaperonage of maman, not in flitting from one to another of the gay cafes.
• She is daytime France, not butterfly evenings — the restful, at once practical and artistic charm of France. She is the Frenchwoman who proved the backbone of her nation during the war, not the champagne-sipping, lightsome coquette. Mademoiselle, you understand, not grisette.
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