Chapter One - Beautiful Riddle

Berenice de la Salle
Chapter One
The Wicked City
“Wherever I go, I meet some of the most interesting people.”
Suzy Parker
End of June, 1950
Paris
If you are looking for a biography of Suzy, read no further. You will not find a
chronology of her life in these pages, or the hundreds of anecdotal observations of
myriad people who may claim to have known her more or less. What I am about to
tell you are the experiences of the young man who lived with her and loved her while
she was on top of the world, as seen through the eyes of the old man I now am who
has had decades to reflect. I am recounting this so that you may peep into a world few
are allowed to visit. Like a bird on my shoulder, you will relive the moments I can still
picture vividly. Some people may call this book a memoir, but it is more than that. It
is a telling of what happens when we fail to march to the beat of our own drum.
There is a moral to this story, and it is timeless.
6
Beautiful Riddle
I am convinced that Suzy was attracted as much to my shortcomings as to my
qualities and, on the night Suzy and I met, I was inordinately preoccupied with my
inadequacies. I’d been living in Paris for about two years, completely broke. Sharing
an apartment on the rue Lord Byron with my oldest friend, Christian Marquand, I had
managed to obtain a job as a car salesman at a Ford dealership on the Champs-Élysées.
It was a career choice predestined to fail. You see, I can’t sell to save my life.
Americans find this difficult to understand but, in France, mercantilism is not a
profession, it is a class—one which all successful merchants are born into.
I had been born into a wealthy Belgian landowning family. My maternal
grandparents, Julius and Julia Roels de Rops, had married off their only daughter,
Ghislaine, to a French officer. My father, Gabriel Thoreau de la Salle, attended SaintCyr, one of France’s most prestigious military colleges and, by the time I was born in
July of 1925, was a captain in the 8th regiment intelligence corps of the French army.
I can trace my family lineage clear back to the fifteenth century. But, in the entire
line, I have never found a single merchant. The art of selling is just not in my blood.
Had my maternal grandmother, Julia, had her way, it would have never been
necessary for me to think about this let alone worry about it. When she died in 1944,
she left her entire estate to me in trust, by-passing her own daughter about whom she
had strong misgivings. Because of grand-mère Julia, my profession should have been
that of a wealthy gentleman rentier, managing important real estate holdings in
Brussels and Antwerp. Julia had received her financial legacy from her father,
Edward de Rops, a doctor who founded the Red Cross in Belgium and who
demonstrated his character by making his last wishes clear in a letter written to his
daughters from Borgerhaus in April of 1897. I was only given a torn fragment of this
letter, but I have cherished it all my life:
“[It is my] great desire to see my esteemed family occupy the
place reserved for them within society more by way of honor and
distinction than by way of money. I hope that my children will not
enter into any disputes among themselves and that my succession will
be made without any trouble being created in the family. I wish to be
buried at ten o’clock in the morning.”
Edward de Rops
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Berenice de la Salle
My father, to the right,
Gabriel Thoreau de la Salle,
circa 1918
With my mother,
circa 1922
Me, with my sister, Nicole, circa 1928
8
At age 5, circa 1930
Beautiful Riddle
Now, had I been lucky, the will of this wise philosopher
would have descended from generation to generation and, at
twenty-four years of age, I would have never found myself
working at a Ford dealership on the Champs-Élysées. But, within
a few decades of his passing, his last wishes truly had been
forgotten. I can clearly remember my statuesque grandmother,
clad from head to toe in a long black dress, wagging her finger at
my six-year-old face as she walked with me in her rose garden in
Brussels.
“Pierre,” she admonished, “I am about to teach you the
greatest lesson you will ever learn: Money, Money, and Money !”
Unfortunately, it was a lesson not heeded by my mother
who, having gained control of the inheritance left to me by Grand
Mama by way of fraud, would see to its complete dissipation.
As an adolescent growing up in Nice during the Second
World War, I had assumed a protective attitude toward her, in
spite of the fact that she had abandoned my father when I was
With my mother,
only two in order to live with her lover, Georges Cazals. For the
Nice 1944
sake of appearances, she changed my name to his while remaining
married to my father. And yet, I maintained a deep affection for her and a strong
maternal bond. Cazals, however, I detested. It was bad enough that, through chronic
infidelity, he had kept my mother in a perpetual state of hysteria and depression;
during the war, my beau père had shown his true colors as a collaborateur. Before
fleeing to the south of France in 1942 with my mother, my older sister and me,
Georges had cooperated with the Wehrmacht Kommandantur in the occupied north
near Dijon, while my father—who had received La Croix de Guerre at Verdun—was
killed defending a post of French resistance in the mountainous region of la BasseSavoie. Often, upon returning from school, I would encounter a row of German
officers’ caps on the entrance hall table of our home. Turned upside down and
crowned with their proprietors’ gray leather gloves, they forewarned me of the men in
uniform I was sure to find seated in the living room
with Georges.
As fate would have it, Cazals escaped the war
years relatively unscathed, needing only a few clever
explanations and a lot of powerful friends to carry on.
But the conflict in my mind, between the hero whom
my mother had deserted and the turncoat with whom
she had run off, created a hell hole of hatred. And,
with every step taken toward manhood, it grew
increasingly more intense.
Sensing this, Georges decided that I would
have to be controlled. Growing up, I was forbidden to
read the newspapers or listen to Radio Londres. The
With sister, Nicole, at the Villa Florido, Nice
9
Berenice de la Salle
few opinions I managed to form, and then voice about the world, he stifled with
ridicule. Looking back, I realize that the goal was to emasculate me; and, whether
willingly or unconsciously, my mother was his accomplice.
Such was my baggage on the night I met Suzy.
I had come to Paris upon Christian’s urging. Marquand was my spitting
opposite. Dark and heavy set, he was often told that he looked like Lawrence Olivier,
which suited Christian fine as the only thing he was capable of being in life was an
actor. We were different a bit like a gorilla and a giraffe are different. But we shared
one trait: a profound, pervasive and sometimes perverse sense of humor. Black
humor, you might call it. But then, we grew up in the shadow of Nazi Germany. We
peddled our bicycles past men strung up by the neck and hung from the lamp posts
that lined the avenue Massena in Nice. We witnessed men shot in cold blood in the
street. Never quite sure from where our next meal would come or if the next day
would break, we were certain of nothing. And, as a result, we took nothing—but
nothing—seriously.
“Ne jamais se sentir concerné.” That was our motto. Whenever a problem of
seemingly insurmountable proportions emerged, we were there to remind each other:
“Never feel concerned, by anything.”
At the end of June in 1950 it was easy enough advice for Christian to follow.
His future looked bright. He had already met with considerable success in Jean
Cocteau’s lyrical film, La Belle et La Bête: the stunning adaptation of a fairy tale full of
Freudian overtones. He was about to star with Pierre Brasseur in Les Mains Sales,
based upon Jean Paul Sartre’s Broadway play: The Red Gloves. Dashingly handsome,
Christian was on the precipice of becoming a national heartthrob. His life couldn’t
have been better. Mine, however, was posing some worrisome problems.
We were both prime targets for induction into the army, yet I was more
worried about it than Christian. There are precious oil deposits in the South China Sea
off the Vietnamese coastline, and the French were waging a fierce war to keep their
colony. Ho Chi Minh’s guerrilla forces were advancing in the jungles of Cao Bang
province and a number of attacks had been launched against French troops. With Viet
Minh conducting large scale military operations against France, men my age rapidly
were being called up to fight.
Ne pas se sentir concerné, I told myself, as I dressed for the bal brésilien to be
given in honor of Bolivian tin magnate, Don Antenor Patiño.
The party was hosted by the designer of haute couture Jacques Fath and his
wife, Geneviève, at their country manoir in Saint-Martin-des-Champs. Fath had
instructed the men to wear white silk shirts with tuxedo pants—no jackets. I hurried
to dress that night; I had to catch the metro to the rue de Varenne where I would pick
up Gérard and Hervé Mille before driving them to Fath’s country estate. Neither knew
how to drive nor wished to. The brothers preferred to avail themselves of young and
elegant chauffeurs from the throng that longed to be invited into their exclusive
group. I was one of the lucky ones. My ability to make people laugh had gained me
easy entrance into the world of les frères Mille. And what a world it was.
10
Beautiful Riddle
Gérard and Hervé were known as des brillants causeurs: dazzling
conversationalists in search of wisdom; it was their sole purpose in life. Under their
guardianship, I lunched weekly with the elite of Paris—with Jean Cocteau, Georges
and Joseph Kessel, André Malreaux and Coco Chanel; with Simone Berriau, the
directrice of the famous Théâtre Antoine where the existentialist plays of Jean Paul
Sartre were performed; with Sartre, himself, and with the editor of France-Soir, Pierre
Lazareff.3
Through them, I had been thrust into the young, creative milieu
responsible for La Nouvelle Vague in cinema: Claude Chabrol, Louis Malle, Jean-Luc
Godard, Eric Rohmer, Francois Truffaut and Alain Resnais. Through them, I gained
the courage to escape the world of car sales forever.
I knew that evening in June would be unforgettable, an evening peppered with
beautiful women and interesting men. Fath was famous for his parties set to a decor of
sons et lumières, with the champagne and caviar flowing and the gentle rhythm of the
samba filling the night air. It was the moment of the winter collections and Paris was
abuzz with photographers, fashion models, and le haute société from around the
globe. As one of the founding directors of the weekly periodical, Paris-Match, Hervé
naturally had been invited. Known as the right arm of newspaper magnate and
owner of Match, Jean Prouvost, to my good fortune, Hervé had taken me under his
wing. I was to accompany him to Fath’s party in order to report on the evening’s
events; and although I knew that whatever I submitted would fall into the hands of rewriters who would give me no credit for the report, it was nonetheless the hope for a
beginning.
Catching the metro for the rue de Varenne, my thoughts were on these two
powerful men. Their lives had intertwined to create a tapestry upon which mine
would now play.
In my spare time, I had already done some work for the French dailies, FranceSoir and Paris-Presse, following the existentialist plays produced by Simone Berriau at
the Théâtre Antoine.
But working for Match was
another thing entirely. Modeled on the format launched
by LIFE magazine, in the summer of 1950, it was the
periodical on the rise—a journalist’s dream. And the
only reason I was being offered the chance to contribute
was because of my friendship with Hervé. I was
nervous.
When I arrived at number 73 on the rue de
Varenne, I was greeted by the maître d’hôtel, André: a
pleasant little man with an owlish look who had been in
the Mille brothers’ service for more than twenty years.
Ushering me up the stairs to Gérard’s private study, he
amiably commented on the fine weather we were
having. He always found something to comment upon
amiably. I passed the threshold to Gérard’s study and
found him waiting for me, jovial as always.
Gérard Mille, Paris, circa 1960
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Berenice de la Salle
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he remarked, while raising his glass of scotch
in the air. “There’s a marvelous maisonnette for rent, just around the corner on the
rue Vaneau. Deplorable condition,” he added, before taking a sip from his cut crystal
tumbler. “But, I think I could turn it into something rather nice. You could rent it,
sublet it after a decent interval, and put some well needed cash into your pockets.”
Well needed cash. It was a phrase that resonated.
“I’m listening,” I answered.
“I thought that might interest you.”
In the short time I had been in Paris, Gérard Mille had become a father figure of
sorts, always on the lookout for ways of propelling me upwards and onwards. In
1950, he was known as the best interior designer of Paris. His reputation for
impeccable taste had him furnishing the wealthiest homes in Europe. An eclectic
collector of objets d’art and other historical pieces, he always had something
interesting to share with me. This night, it was a piece of parchment upon which one
of Hitler’s Jungen had pledged his allegiance to the Nazi party. It was set in a bronze
frame embellished with the insignia of the German spread-eagle, its claws perched
upon a Nazi swastika. Written in the blood of the adolescent, the parchment carried
the Hitler Jungen emblem of two boys marching in step, with hammers and sickles in
hand. I shuddered. The blood stained paper brought back horrible memories. I
preferred to admire the desk on which it lay: a rare Louis XIII bureau de Boulle, gilded
with bronze and inlaid tortoise-shell. It was a recent gift to Gérard from Coco Chanel,
as were the sofa and chaises directoire scattered throughout the room. Sitting on the
desk ticked an eighteenth century clock perched on the backs of two bronze elephants.
I wondered if I would ever be able to afford such luxuries. It is true that I have an eye
for the rare and exquisite, a fact that had not escaped Gérard’s attention. For months,
he had been teaching me the rudimentary tricks that allow the connoisseur to
differentiate between the authentic and the faux. But now, he was going a step
further; he was telling me that he stood ready to apply his artistic skill to my favor and
benefit. Realizing my incredible luck, my mind began to fly.
To make sure that Christian and I could pay the rent each month, we shared
our apartment on the rue Lord Byron with Beno Graziani, a reporter for Match
destined to become a European favorite of President John F. Kennedy. The apartment
was a center of bachelor excitement, but cramped, and the temptation to strike out on
my own was overwhelming. Still, the lure of making some extra pocket money
quickly overrode the deliciously fleeting thought. Rather than live in it, I would have
to sublet the rue Vaneau just as soon as Gérard helped me to get it into shape.
“The English Embassy would be a good candidate for a tenant,” Gérard
commented before sending André to see if Hervé was ready. “We’ll take a look at it on
Sunday.”
We had an hour’s drive ahead of us to get to Fath’s place. Minutes later I was
stationed behind the wheel of the 1949 custom Ford convertible Hervé kept for
weekend excursions. It was hunter green with a tan canvas top and white wall tires,
one of the rare cars I had managed to sell. Navigating the narrow streets toward the
12
Beautiful Riddle
auto route that encircles the city, my eyes were
distracted by the gray ramparts of Paris. “U.S. Go
Home” adorned the sides of buildings; the
lingering American presence after the war had
created a malaise. NATO was barely a year old
and Eisenhower, as Supreme Allied Commander
of Europe, was about to move to Paris to oversee
the creation of the SHAPE 4 in Marly-le-Roi. As if
to discourage his arrival, nobody had bothered to
clean up the graffiti.
“Will Coco be there tonight?” Gérard asked
his brother from the back seat of the car.
Chanel
“Of course, of course,” Hervé answered
from up front where he always sat with me. “Just pray Schiaparelli can’t make it.”
The feud in those days between Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli was
legendary. Chanel could weather accusations of collaboration with the Nazis with
complete equanimity; but one look from Schiap and she instantly lost her cool. Her
vituperative tongue would lash out slyly, decimating her enemy in the process. That
was the way of Coco. She had an inherent need to denigrate others, even her dear
friends. I know. I was one of them.
“She’s capable of setting poor Elsa on fire,” Hervé added.
“Capable of setting Elsa on fire?” Gérard questioned. “She did set her on fire.
Don’t you remember the night Elsa appeared at that costume ball just before the war,
dressed as an oak tree? And Coco steered her into a bunch of lit candles?”
The brothers laughed. Although they would never show it to Coco, the famous
feud secretly amused them.
“Well, who knows?” Gérard added, the tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Maybe that charming young man running Schiap’s boutique on the Place Vendôme
will appear in her stead tonight. What’s his name?”
“Hubert,” I interrupted from the driver’s seat of the Ford.
“That’s it,” Gérard quickly rejoined. “Hubert de Givenchy. Charming young
man. Coco seems to like him.”
Everybody liked Hubert! It was a bad sign if you didn’t. In a society that
thrived on mean whispers spoken behind one’s back, Hubert de Givenchy seemed out
of place. The handsome, talented and still unknown designer kept his tongue in
check, thinking carefully before using it.
When we arrived at the gate to Jacques Fath’s estate, we were met by a line of
cars waiting to enter the courtyard. The walls surrounding the property were lit, and
music from the garden drifted through the open windows of the Ford. I watched as an
extremely good looking man about my age descended from the driver’s seat of a white
XK-120 Jaguar. The leather seats were red and, strangely, the woman on the shotgun
side caught my attention. She would play a bizarre part in my future.
Her name
was Dolores Sherwood Bosshard Guinle; her husband, the international playboy,
13
Berenice de la Salle
Jorge Guinle, owned the Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio
de Janeiro, and her handsome escort for the evening was
a young man by the name of Tony Veiga.
As I stared at the woman, a horn honked, abruptly
shaking me from my reverie. I turned to see Christian in
the car behind us. Top down, he had arrived in a black
1938 Mercedes-Benz: a 540 K roadster, perhaps the most
beautiful Mercedes ever built. It was a gift from a rich
girlfriend who was mad for him. That was Christian.
Surrounded by rich girlfriends, all mad for him.
A valet opened the door of his car and Marquand
leapt from the front seat.
“Did you see Jacques Schoëller?” he asked,
Dolores Sherwood Bosshard Guinle,
referring to a rakish French gentleman known for keeping
with husband, Jorge, 1950.
company with the world’s most beautiful women.
Schoëller had plenty of time to devote to them. He
benefited from an inheritance left to him by his father, René Schoëller, the former
directeur général of les Messageries Hachette.5 His brother, Guy, was considered
the serious one of the two; Jacques, the roguish playboy.
“Pourquoi?” I answered, knowing Christian must have some scintillating
tidbit to share.
“Elles sont superbes!” Marquand responded with a glint in his eye.
He had given me fair warning. Obviously, Schoëller had arrived with two
beautiful women, which meant that one of them was fair game. Before I could turn
over the keys to the waiting valet, Marquand was off, and the hunt was on.
It didn’t take my friend long. Once inside the garden, I spotted Christian
immediately. He had a laugh that could rattle chair legs. It allowed me to zero in on
him instantly. Standing by the open French doors of the magnificent manoir,
Christian was amusing Ideala Vargas, a beautiful young woman who was married to
one of the sons of the newly elected president of Brazil: Getúlio Vargas. From 1930 to
1934, Vargas ruled Brazil as a dictator and had surprised the world by returning to
power through popular elections. Because of his platform of expanding social
legislation he was affectionately known as “father of the poor.” But, by the look of
Ideala, you could have fooled me. Her long neck was lightly sprinkled with emeralds;
she was dressed fantastically in a couture creation hot off the runway. And she was
trying to entice Christian into a samba.
There was a woman standing next to her. I had seen her before, but couldn’t
quite place the face. She had raven dark hair and appeared to be somewhere in her
early thirties. In a clinging black dress with a plunging neckline that revealed snow
white skin, I am sure she caught the attention of many men that night. But my
intensive gaze was on Ideala. Watching her from a distance, I engaged in a favorite
pastime; slowly, my eyes moved from the beauty’s neck down to her feet as, section by
section, I undressed her.
14
Beautiful Riddle
These diversions have a tendency to render a man oblivious to his
surroundings, which is most probably why I was so startled by the question that
shattered my fantasy.
“What are you staring at?”
The words hit me from behind with a tone of reproach. Turning my head, I
found a young girl not more than seventeen peering at me as if she had read my mind,
as if she could see the licentious visions running through my head.
“Rubirosa,” I replied without a thought. “Porfirio, that man over there. He’s
famous. He’s with a friend of mine: Gérard Bonnet.”
But she saw right through me.
“You’re lying,” she snickered. “You were staring at my sister’s legs.”
“Who, me?” I exclaimed, with feigned indignation. “Ça ne va pas!”
Regaining my composure, it took a few seconds before I realized that a most
beautiful creature was talking to me. Dressed in tea rose chiffon, her gown had a
slightly scalloped hem that rippled in the night breeze. Her arms were bare and her
hair fell to just above her shoulders. Five feet nine inches in her stocking feet, she was
wearing heels and I just barely surpassed her in height.
“You don’t have to pretend,” the young girl continued. “Everybody looks at
my sister that way. She took me to see Mr. Fuchs today.”
“Mr. Fuchs?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. He gave her the stockings, the ones you were staring at.”
It was then that I realized that the young girl had mistaken my gaze. She
thought I had been staring at the woman with the raven hair.
“He gives us a better exchange rate than the French banks,” she ambled. “But,
to get the stockings, we have to try them on for him first. My sister got some in black
today.”
At this point my jaw must have dropped for I didn’t know how to respond. The
girl seemed completely oblivious to the chain reaction of thoughts that naturally come
to mind upon hearing of such an encounter. But, before I could let my mind wander
too far, she had extended her hand.
“My name’s Suzy. What’s yours?”
“Pierre,” I answered. “Pierre de la Salle.”
“Are you a count?” she asked. “A fortune teller once told me I would marry a
count.”
Brash, I thought. I wondered whether I should explain to her that, much to
the chagrin of many present in the garden, titles of French nobility no longer existed,
having been abolished along with the monarchy at the time of the establishment of
the First Republic.6 But before I could respond, the handsome young man with the
white convertible Jaguar was upon us and, to my disappointment, Suzy acknowledged
him with glee.
“Tony!”
Veiga gave me a quick wink before grabbing Suzy by the hand and pulling her
on to the dance floor.
15
Berenice de la Salle
“You don’t mind, do you, Pitou?”
Pitou. There was that name. It’s pronounced Pee-too and it’s the moniker by
which most everybody knows me. I hate it. It has stuck since childhood, a vestige of
affection slapped upon me like a wet kiss by my older sister, Nicole.
With both hands in my pockets, I watched the roan-haired beauty glide across
the dance floor while wondering who she could be. I didn’t have to wait long to find
out. From behind me came a woman’s voice, which I recognized instantly:
“Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”
The voice belonged to Hélène Gordon Lazareff, wife of Pierre Lazareff and
founder of ELLE magazine. A phenomenal Parisian success, she had risen to the top by
adhering to the advice of Gaston Leroux: the adventurous French journalist turned
novelist who, in 1911, guaranteed his immortality with the publication of The
Phantom of the Opera. Leroux once said that “the first duty of a journalist is to be
read.” Hélène couldn’t have agreed more. Always on the prowl for the next new look,
she was sizing up Suzy’s American fraîcheur. Could it increase the circulation of
ELLE? Like Hervé Mille, she understood that it is, first and foremost, the image which
rouses the interest of the reader. Headlines may serve to complete that image, but it is
the image that compels one to read them.
“Her sister, Dorian, thinks she’ll be a fabulous success in Paris,” Hélène
remarked. “What do you think, Pitou? Should I put her on next month’s cover?”
I didn’t answer Hélène’s question. I was too taken by the sudden realization of
who “her sister, Dorian” was. In that instant I was able to
place her face. Suzy’s older sister was Dorian Leigh: the
celebrated American fashion model who had appeared in so
many editions of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, her name had
become synonymous with the publications. She had been
photographed by all the greats: Horst, Cecil Beaton, Serge
Balkin, George Platt-Lynes and Irving Penn. In just two
short years, she would become known the world over as the
“Fire and Ice” girl: the dazzling woman in the icy silversequin dress and fiery scarlet cape, chosen by Charles Revson
to give to American women everywhere what Revlon
advertising executive, Kay Daly, called: “a little immoral
The “Fire and Ice” Girl
support.”
Through one of the most effective ad campaigns in
1952
cosmetic history, Dorian Leigh would be immortalized as the
American tease and temptress...siren and gamin, or in the more descriptive words of
Revson himself: “a Park Avenue whore,” elegant, while still exuding raw sex appeal.
Revson liked to think that there was a little bit of bad in every good woman. Dorian
would come to symbolize his ideal.
In the days leading up to Fath’s party, however, she had failed to live up to that
ideal. Following a nasty run-in with Italian dress designer, Emilio Pucci, who had
slipped uninvited into her hotel room in Rome expecting amorous favors, Dorian Leigh
had become famous in the gossip columns of Europe as the prudish American, shocked
16
Beautiful Riddle
by the Romans. Through a feat of twisted Italian logic, somehow, the vulgarity of
Signor Pucci had taken a back seat to the amusing naiveté of the runway diva. The
thought of the ugly little Signor Pucci pushing himself upon this beautiful woman
while exclaiming that “Italians are the best lovers in the world” made me laugh and
want to vomit all at the same time. But then, I never thought much of the man’s
designs, either.
“Hervé is looking for you,” Hélène continued, pulling me from my thoughts.
“He wants you to mingle. You are supposed to be reporting on the evening’s events.”
I had almost forgotten. Turning my thoughts from Suzy and Dorian for a
second, I continued to take stock of Jacques Fath’s garden of guests. It is said that one
of the gifts of Napoléon Bonaparte lay in his ability to immediately size up a room upon
entering it. In one glance, he could quickly assimilate the full cast of characters before
him, sum up their strengths and weaknesses, and determine how best to use each
individual until he had obtained what he wanted. Les salons de Paris served as his
chessboard, and Parisians were his pawns. I often think of this image when present at
a large gathering. As I surveyed Jacques Fath’s guests that evening, my eyes were
treated to a host of Fifties’ notables—people who left their mark upon the era, people
who comprised le tout Paris. My gaze paused momentarily upon the familiar sight of
Philippe de Croisset, son of the French playwright, Francis de Croisset, and a
descendant of the “divine” Marquis de Sade. Francis was also the managing director
of French Vogue. He was seated at a table speaking with a sandy blonde-haired man
sporting a thin moustache: the host for the evening, Jacques Fath. They appeared to
be entertaining Don Antenor Patiño and ELLE magazine’s assistant editor, Daisy de
Galard. Turning my eyes to the other extreme end of the garden, I noticed Francine
Weisweiller: muse to Jean Cocteau. She was speaking with Coco Chanel. André
Malreaux and French playwright Marcel Achard were engaged in what appeared to be
light repartee with the elegantly witty novelist, Louise de Vilmorin. Achard was a
particularly good friend of Hervé’s, a friend whom I had come to know and respect—a
man both witty and hilarious, as anyone who has seen any of his plays will attest.
“You must always be silent with women,” he liked to tell me. “Women like silent men.
They think the men are listening to them.”
Had you been there that evening, you would have caught sight of Diana
Vreeland. She arrived accompanied by the art director of American Vogue, Alexander
Liberman. From the corner of my eye, I caught a quick glimpse of Hubert de
Givenchy. He was laughing next to Cristóbal Balenciaga, Philippe Venet, and
Christian Dior. The four of them had captivated the attention of a rich heiress, Hélène
Bouilloux-Lafont, more affectionately known as “May.” Two years after Fath’s party,
she would see to it that Hubert’s own maison de couture was opened on the rue Alfred
de Vigny. It is noteworthy that she played such an important part in Hubert’s life.
They would both play an important part in mine.
In all, the cast of characters that summer evening was a fascinating mixture of
philosophers and authors, photographers and couturiers, of charismatic men and eyecatching women: the packagers and the packaged. And I had to speak with all of
17
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them in order to gather the anecdotes I needed for my reportage for Match. Yet, all I
really wanted was to find Suzy and follow her around the garden for the rest of the
evening.
The usual set of runway and photographic models roamed the grounds: the
pale and statuesque Lisa Fonssagrives; perfectly Parisian Sophie Steur who, in a few
years, would marry the great Ukrainian film director, Anatole Litvak. And the most
famous of them all: the perky and inimitable Bettina.7 My memories of Sophie and
Bettina are particularly fond. They were old friends from the war days in Nice, where
they had grown up along with Marquand and
me. And, although they had known me as
“Cazals” and couldn’t understand why I was
now “la Salle,” we had remained close.
In
the war days before Paris, Sophie and Bettina
had known me as a carefree lad—the only guy
with wheels: a 1922 convertible Renault
Torpedo with a crank shaft and no floor
boards that we would jump start by pushing
with our feet from inside the car. Stopping
along La Moyen Corniche between Nice and
Monte Carlo when the jalopy would overheat,
Bettina
Sophie
Christian and I would piss in the radiator to
cool the engine down. Life was simpler back then. Happiness was not dependent
upon money.
With my hands still in my pockets, I looked through the crowd for Suzy while
my fingers played with some stray French francs, the only ones left from the prior
week’s meager pay. Their clinking sound as they hit each other only served to remind
me of my predicament—of le fric 8 it would take to entertain her.
What’s the point of dreaming? I thought, suddenly spotting her. A girl like
that could cost a guy a fortune.
But to my surprise, Suzy was staring through the crowd, too. Twirling on the
dance floor, her eyes discreetly tracked me down while waiting for the moment to
break away from Veiga. Christian gave her the chance. He made his approach in the
space of the interlude between two sambas, only to find me right behind him.
“Look!” I exclaimed, as I pointed up toward the night sky. And, in the split
second where I managed to distract him, I captured Suzy in my arms and carried her
off to a far corner of the floor while Christian’s laugh resonated through the crush.
“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” Suzy remarked as she willingly let me escape
with her.
“Why? Did you want another dance with Tony?”
“No, I can see him anytime,” she answered. “He’s in love with my sister.”
Her sister Dorian was dancing with Jacques Schoëller, the man with whom she
and Suzy had arrived. But, like a hen watching over her hatchling, Dorian’s eyes were
glued to Suzy.
18
Beautiful Riddle
In truth, you never would have thought them to be sisters. I always thought of
Dorian as Suzy’s mother. So did many other people in Paris. “Maybe she’s the sister,
maybe she’s the mother” was a common refrain in those days.
“You’re a lot prettier than Dorian,” I told her, while trying to shake off the Fire
and Ice girl’s frigid stare.
“No, I’m not!” Suzy protested. “My eyes are too far apart, my hips are too wide,
and I’m too tall!”
With one hand around her waist and the other on her palm, I looked down at
Suzy’s hips. They were big, unlike the French girls I normally hung around.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “One cheek of your ass is the size of both of mine
put together.”
“Are you looking for a slap?!”
“Depends on where,” I answered with a smile.
Were anyone else to make these comments, Suzy would have burst into tears.
She wasn’t one to take criticism well. But, from the moment we met, she sensed my
teasing nature. Or perhaps it was just that she knew how quickly I had fallen for her.
In any event, she never dwelled on my mockery. Spotting another friend, she changed
the subject.
“Do you see that man over there?” she asked. “One day, he will be known as
the greatest fashion photographer in the world.”
“You speak with such authority.”
“Of course I do,” she snapped. And then she said something I will never forget,
for she said it often and she said it loud:
“I’m Scottish, and we Scots are better than the rest of you!”
“I see,” I remarked.
I couldn’t have cared less what Suzy thought of the rest of us. I was too busy
feeling her back to see if she was wearing a bra. But, with her reddish brown hair and
freckles, she looked decidedly more Irish than Scottish—a fact that upset her
immensely whenever I bothered to point it out.
“What’s his name?” I asked while glancing at Suzy’s friend.
“Dick Avedon. He brought me and my sister with him to Paris. He’s doing the
shoot for Harper’s Bazaar.”
“Of the winter collections?”
My curiosity was peaked. When
you are trying to become a journalist,
particularly one for Match, knowing a
great photographer can’t hurt.
“Yes, and I’m going to model for
him,” she answered. “Although, I must
admit, I’d much rather be doing the
shoot myself.
I’m quite a good
photographer, you know. One day, I’m
going to do layouts for Vogue.”
Avedon, with Harper’s Bazaar editor in chief,
Carmel Snow, center
19
Berenice de la Salle
She said it as if she expected to astound me.
“Wow!” I exclaimed, lightly chiding her. “I’m impressed!”
“You’re too smart for your pants,” she added with a smirk. “Dorian thinks all
men in Europe are too smart for their pants and that Paris is a wicked city. She locked
me up in our hotel room for two days when we first got here. I had to climb out the
window to free myself. It’s a good thing we’re on the ground floor.”
I was familiar with the American Puritan ethic, the prim and proper demeanor
of stateside females so pervasive at the time. Right after the war, I had spent a year in
Philadelphia sitting in on classes at the University of Pennsylvania. It had left me
with an allergy for hairspray and white gloves. But, Paris? A wicked city? Who was
this woman who had such an influence over the young girl in my arms?
Had I known then what the next ten years would teach me, I most likely would
have run for the hills. For Dorian wasn’t the only person in the Parker family who
thought Paris was wicked. Suzy descended from Southern Baptists who wanted lives
of solemn domesticity for each of their four daughters and who found just about
everyone not of their ilk to be the children of the devil. Her father, George Lofton,
believed that if you were black, you were inferior; if you were a Jew, you couldn’t be
trusted; if you were a Catholic, Satan had a grip on you; and if you were European,
you were decadent. As for his wife, Elizabeth, the only thing of which she was sure
was that, if Lofton said so, it must be true. Little did I know that Suzy was attracted to
me precisely because I was everything that her parents disliked: a French existentialist
who was broke. At seventeen, she was determined to escape from their conformist
clutches.
“I don’t care what Dorian thinks,” I answered while peering at the peculiar
young girl. “What do you think?”
Hesitating, at first, Suzy didn’t answer. She liked to talk just for the sake of
talking. She didn’t expect to be taken seriously. And she certainly wasn’t ready to
reveal what she really thought. Her opinions were a jumble of closely guarded secrets,
as were her plans. Much of what I believe she was truly thinking, as well as many of
the actions she was about to take, would remain hidden from me for years.
“I don’t know what I think,” she replied. “Other than I am everything I don’t
like in other women. I have a career, you know. I’m ambitious, aggressive and
successful...”
“Oooh, la la!” I interrupted. “And you take yourself too seriously. How old did
you say you are?”
“I didn’t say…”
I cut her off in mid sentence before she could get carried away.
“Well, by the look of you, you can’t be more than sixteen,” I exaggerated.
“And by the sound of you, if you want my opinion, you should go back and repeat
those years, because they didn’t teach you much.”
With her mouth slightly open, Suzy looked into my eyes. She was not
accustomed to irreverence. It seemed to excite her; I got the feeling she thought she
could learn from it.
20
Beautiful Riddle
Throughout all the years I was with Suzy, learning was at the top of her list of
important things to accomplish. Unlike me, money was not a concern for her or, at
least, it shouldn’t have been. Already at seventeen, through the modeling jobs she
regularly obtained because of Dorian, she was clearing five hundred dollars a week—a
princely sum in 1950.9 At a time when most girls her age were looking for security
and wondering how best to snare a nice doctor or lawyer to provide for them, Suzy
was looking for adventure. She was drawn toward men who dared to question her
way of thinking, and Paris was full of them. She was a young woman in revolt, and I
offered the perfect battleground for her to conduct her personal war.
“Let’s go get some air,” I joked while nudging her to follow me. The music had
stopped; the band was taking a short break, and I needed to take advantage of the
pause to circulate.
Geneviève Fath had placed numerous round tables throughout her garden.
Swiftly, I navigated between them, with Suzy in tow. At every table I found someone
eager to chat. Lorraine Dubonnet was the first. The daughter of French apéritif
baron, André, of “dubo, dubon dubonnet” fame, she was biding the time with her
father’s mistress, Elise Hunt. Elise was one
of those Americans from Beverly Hills who
had adopted France while deriding the
necessity of learning its language—a not
uninteresting attitude given that she loved
to chatter mindlessly about anything and
everything and nothing. Spotting a fellow
compatriot in Suzy, she quickly seized the
opportunity to prattle, immediately finding
out everything there was to know about the girl. What schools had she attended?
Was her father wealthy? Did he know anybody? Who was anybody? If you wanted
the scoop on someone, Elise was your woman. She could quickly and effortlessly drag
the skeletons right out of your closets. Suzy didn’t seem to mind.
As I moved on, I tripped over Chanel who, with the help of Juliette Greco, was
consoling Jean Cocteau. By the sound of the conversation, I figured that the infinitely
wealthy Maggie van Zuylen couldn’t be far. Maggie and Coco were known as “des
amis experts”: friends who knew better than anyone else what was best for you.
They knew better than you what was best for you. And, when it came to letting you
know that they knew it, they were anything but bashful. This evening, Cocteau
seemed resigned to the fact that Coco knew best. In fact, I am certain that he found
her cocky commentary reassuring. The success of Jean Paul Sartre’s play, Les Mains
Sales, had Cocteau worried. A generation had grown up since Cocteau’s novel Les
Enfants Terribles first captivated the admiration of French youth. His film Orphée was
set for release in September and, not coincidentally, its theme revolved around a poet
beset by artistic rivals. Cocteau was acutely aware that he was being rejected by the
young, the new generation of Saint-Germain-des-Prés: my generation. His agony had
21
Berenice de la Salle
been intensified by French critics everywhere who, on moral
grounds, had condemned his recent screen adaptation of Les
Enfants Terribles.
“Is it possible,” he asked Chanel, “that Sartre will
actually win over the world’s youth instead of me?”
His thin lips were pinched as he spoke and he waved his
cigarette in the air with a flourish. Cigarettes were a wonderful
prop for Cocteau. They allowed him to show off his elegant
hands.
“Mais, non, cher Jean. Don’t be ridiculous,” Chanel
answered.
Suddenly spotting me, she caught my arm and held on to
it while continuing to reassure Cocteau. Now, normally Chanel
would do this when she wanted to shut someone up. Tired of
Cocteau, circa 1950
hearing your babble, and much preferring to listen to herself,
she could hold on to your arm for hours, thus paralyzing your
vocal chords. This time, however, she wanted her prey to talk.
“Just ask this young man,” Chanel commanded. “He will tell you. Sartre can’t
possibly compete with your work. You are a poet, Jean. Isn’t he, Pitou?”
Staring at me intently with her brown Auvergnat eyes, it never occurred to her
for a second that she might be asking the wrong guy. Through my work for FranceSoir covering le théâtre français, I had become an ardent follower of Sartre. I thought
of myself as one of the philosopher’s lost generation: that stratum of French youth too
young to have fought in the war, too old to have escaped its consequences. No matter.
I knew better than to disagree with Coco. Perhaps sensing the
alienated youth of the sixties generation still to come, I reassured the
old man:
“Jean, you're just ahead of your time. Your work foreshadows
the future.”
Cocteau took a long drag from his cigarette while examining
me. It was difficult to move under the weight of his penetrating gaze;
his eyes had me riveted to the spot. Just my luck, for in the moment
when I hesitated, Dorian approached. With Chanel still holding on
firmly to my arm, I felt Suzy’s presence slip from my side. I couldn’t
move. In the distance, I spotted Hervé walking toward me. I had
learned to read my mentor’s mind. I knew that it pleased the man to
see me with two of his closest friends. I could hear Hervé reasoning: He
must be picking their brains for the Match reportage.
As Suzy slipped away into the night, I felt a light squeezing
sensation in my heart.
It’s just as well, I lied to myself.
But, I couldn’t afford to screw up this assignment. My future
hung in the balance. I spent the rest of the evening jumping from table
Hervé Mille, Paris,
circa 1960
22
Beautiful Riddle
to table as Suzy’s eyes attempted to catch mine. Busy at work, I felt her constant
surveillance, as if knowing where I was would guarantee that we would meet again.
In the space of the few hours spent at that garden gathering, she had caught a glimpse
of her destiny. There was a look of enchantment on her face. She was surrounded by
everyone who would be of any importance to her over the next ten years. She stood at
the threshold of a new world, unable to speak its language, yet eager to cross through
its portal. Here, in the garden of Geneviève and Jacques Fath, lay Suzy Parker’s
affinities. And it wasn’t Dorian, with the key to their hotel room and her still stinking
memory of Pucci, who would hold her back. Only one person in the world was
capable of stopping her: one man from her past whose influence she would never
escape, one man whom I would never meet.
Suzy, 1950
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Notes
1: The Wicked City
3
Pierre Lazareff was a close friend of Hervé Mille’s, having worked with Mille at another
Prouvost publication, Paris-Soir, where he served as one of Jean Prouvost’s close advisors. His
wife, Helen Gordon Lazareff, founded ELLE magazine.
4
SHAPE: Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe.
5
Messageries Hachette: France’s biggest press conglomerate responsible for the distribution of
newspapers throughout France. It controlled two dailies, France-Soir and Paris-Presse. Prior
to the war, Hachette benefited from a distribution monopoly that left the French press at its
mercy. It was also involved in advertising and publishing.
6
September, 1792
7
Bettina was given her career name by the fashion designer, Pierre Balmain. Her birth name is
Simone Micheline Bodin.
8
le fric: slang for money
9
In 1950, a first class postage stamp cost three cents versus today’s cost of forty-five cents.
Using this as a gage of inflation, $500 in 1950 equates to $7,500 today. The average salary of
an American male in 1950 came to $2,992 per annum. Thus, at the age of seventeen, in six
weeks, Suzy Parker earned what it took the average American man an entire year to earn.
24