American darlings of Paris

The poets of France, from François Villon to Paul Géraldy, have sung the triumphs of the Parisienne: but in that lovely procession of women there have been some who obstinately refused to be anything but American. . . . Adah Isaacs Menken, Sybil Sanderson, Isadora Duncan, Mary Garden, Josephine Baker, Jeanette MacDonald.

The latest of these idols, Jeanette MacDonald, is moderately popular in her own country. She has nice, long, straight legs, sings high and loud and fairly sweet, and is as wholesome as Penrod's big sister.

But the Jeanette MacDonald—darling of Paris! The girl who, during her two weeks of personal appearance at the Rex, Paris' largest movie theatre, drew more than 200,000 fans past the box-office—Jeanette MacDonald, the Woman of Mystery! Isn't there a mistake somewhere?

As a matter of fact, there is. It all began in 1929 when a French writer, Maurice Privat, in a volume about her, threw out a minute, mysterious hint which the French were eager to seize upon and enlarge. Rumors of all sorts grew until the story finally went that Jeanette MacDonald was dead, shot by the hand of a jealous princess whose husband had fallen desperately in love with her. Another story, equally well broadcast, was that she had not been killed, but shot in one eye and showered with vitriol. While Jeanette was dead or disfigured, her sister, Blossom, was supposed to be impersonating her in HollyAvood.

Naturally, rumors of her unhappy fate reached Miss MacDonald, who has red hair and, they say, a temper. Dead . . . blind in one eye . . . scarred by vitriol? Well, she'd show them! And she did. The allegedly deceased heroine of the scandal was suddenly announced to appear for a two weeks' engagement at the Empire. Paris thrilled. If, by some miracle, Jeanette were not dead, wasn't it likely that followers of the dictator X, once her devoted friend, would see to it that her first personal appearance in Europe would be her last ?

So, in the fall of 1931, Jeanette MacDonald walked on the stage of the Empire, —to all intents and purposes a ghost, a dead woman—sang her famous "March of the Grenadiers" from The Love Parade, and encored with a sentimental French ditty. The popular Mistinguett shrieked her approval, Morris Gest threw his hat in the air, a packed and brilliant house shouted itself hoarse. And today, though she rarely comes to the City of Light, la MacDonald is as well-known a figure as Mistinguett or Cecile Sorel.

GEORGE DAVIS

Does the Countess Pepito de Abbatino ever pause to dwell once more in memory on her pickaninny days in America? As she triumphantly descends the famed staircases of the Casino de Paris, acclaimed as "The Black Star," as "our Josephine," as Mistinguett's one rival, does Josephine Baker ever wonder what Sissle and Blake and all the other Harlem actors in her Shuffle Along days must be thinking about her? I wonder.

In April of this year, 1934, Mary Garden was singing at the Opéra-Comique, in Resurrection; as ever, Parisians flocked to hear her. Just thirty-four years before, on another April night, and in the same theatre, Madame Rioton was taken sick after the second act of Louise, and a young American singer called Garden stepped into her role and into operatic history.

In her dark, early, unsuccessful student days, when other friends had failed her miserably, it was to Madame Sybil Sanderson that Mary Garden turned; and it was Sanderson who introduced her finally to Albert Carre, the director of the OperaComique. But who was Sybil Sanderson, that lovely, late idol of Parisians?

Not many Americans remember. She appeared at the Metropolitan during the seasons of '95 and '98, but with no real success. Nor did she fare much better in London and St. Petersburg. Only in Paris was she an undisputed idol.

" Sanderson was born in Sacramento, in 1865; her father was a judge in the California Supreme Court. At nineteen she went to Paris for study at the Conservatory under Sbriglia and Marchesi, and made her operatic debut in 1888 at The Hague. Her voice, though small, had a range of three octaves; and for her Massenet composed his operas, Esclarmonde and Thais. "All charms were hers," Massenet said of her, "first beauty sovereign and radiant; then voice, brilliant, light, with an extraordinary range; then grace, natural, with no affectation whatsoever, that of a woman who remains womanly on the stage as in her life." She sang Esclarmonde ninety-nine times before the crowds at the International Exposition of 1900. She died in 1903, in Paris.

The happiest and the saddest days of Isadora Duncan's wonderful life were spent in Paris. There, at the Trocadero, she danced Gluck's Orpheus, while the great French tragedian, Mounet-Sully, recited the Choruses. There, at the Chatclet, she gave the most magnificent concerts of her career, with the orchestra of Edouard Colonne. I am glad that Allan Ross MacDougall, in his book on Isadora, has preserved Yvette Guilbert's tribute which appeared in L Oeuvre a few days after Isadora's death: " . . . Feminine image, unique Goddess, come down to the country of the unworthy, Resurrectress of a great dream, of a great art, we thank you for having quenched the thirsts of us, the thirsty, the ARTISTES! Genius of flesh and of blood, may Olympus greet you! The great dead poets will thrill at your entrance!

Upon a slab of grey stone, in Montparnasse Cemetery, rests a funeral urn. Its one side bears the words "Thou knowest , its other side the inscription:

"Adah Isaacs Menken Horn in Louisiana, United States of America.

Died in Paris, August 10, 186S."

There lie the mortal remains of the first American woman whom all Paris loved.

Menken—"0 sleepless and deadly Dolores," one of her admirers, Algernon Swinburne, called her—had achieved fame long before she revealed her charms to the Paris of the Third Empire. Much nonsense has been written about her then and since. I think that Charles Read, the novelist, probably hit her off in his diary, as "a clever woman with beautiful eyes; a bad actress, hut made a hit by playing Mazeppa in tights; goodish heart."

In December, 1866, she became the rage of Paris, at the Gaite, in Les Pirates de la Savane. A scene was introduced into the play in which Menken impersonated Feorio, a dumb Mazeppa; thus enabling Parisians to see the daring actress "ride an untamed horse, to whose back-side she was lashed, up a steep and narrow runway to the dome of the theatre . Parisians loved it; and they loved Adah. Les Pirates played one hundred nights, and the last performance was witnessed by Napoleon III. the King of Greece, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Prince Imperial. Prince Jerome presented a diamond ring to the American star after the performance.

In I860, Menken returned to Paris to rehearse in a new play, but contracted bronchial pneumonia and died. She was buried in Père Lachaise, but through the generosity of the Rothschild family her body was removed to the Montparnasse Cemetery. Today she is still a subject for entranced biographers in France; and that is as it should be. She was the first of those women to whom—because they were triumphantly American and triumphantly themselves-was offered one of the world's shining tributes—that of being called a true Parisienne.