by Jeremy Scott
Hitler has racial purity, Fatherland and ‘living space’ as patriotic cause; for victim caste he has the Jews. Conveniently available to Trujillo as a readily identifiable hate group are ‘the Blacks’. He has negro blood himself, almost everyone on the island is of mixed blood and like many he uses make-up to lighten his complexion. Yet he is a negrophobe. In the west of the island numerous Haitians have crossed the ill-defined mountain frontier in recent years, to find work on the several large Dominican sugar-cane plantations, and remained squatting in the territory. Three months before Flor quits Paris to return home, Trujillo arbitrarily declared his country officially White, and put into effect an active policy of ‘blanquismo’. On his orders a ragtag army of goons armed with guns and machetes descended on the area to cleanse it of Haitian squatters. These were the same colour as everyone else but grew up speaking French rather than Spanish patois. The local population was subjected to certain tests, one of them to pronounce the Spanish word perejil (parsley), awkward for French speakers. Get it wrong and they were hacked to death. The butchery was relentless, close on twenty thousand people massacred. However, so remote is the area and so complete the control Trujillo exercises over the Dominican press that no word of the killings leaked for weeks – and then the international media was more engaged with Hitler’s plans for war than some past atrocity on the other side of the world, of which no photographic evidence existed.
GOD AND TRUJILLO! Hoardings displaying the slogan are everywhere on the island. As is another: TRUJILLO WE LOVE YOU, and the message is no less than truth. Astonishingly, this corrupt, brutal overweight tyrant is loved, even worshipped, by his people; he’s the great Father of all. And the Daddy to whom Flor comes home.
She still thinks of him as omnipotent, as do his people. That’s the image she’s had of him since infancy. Yet, despite the evidence of his coldness, harshness, cruelty, she believed he’d take her in his arms, hug her, restore her and set the world to rights. ‘Did I love him, or any of my husbands for that matter? I don’t know to this day. Perhaps … all my life I wanted only to be pampered by father.’ She confides that on this occasion she longed for him to embrace her, give moral support, soothe and restore her shattered ego … but also to come up with money to return to Paris on her own terms and make something of herself.
Secretly, I wanted no divorce, for Rubi was the husband I’d married in the church … For the first time in my life, I poured out my heart to father, telling him about my wild quarrels with my husband, adding up my complaints like a child. Then I grew afraid as I watched the terrible satisfaction on his face…
Then, in his shrill voice, Trujillo starts to shriek. A torrent of filth pours from his mouth as he denigrates Rubi ‘in gutter language’, disparaging, vilifying, ridiculing him as so often he’s done to others in public, reducing them to rubbish. Trujillo’s rages are a terrifying performance. Most are cowed to abject silence. Flor is shaken, deeply hurt, ‘If he felt this contempt, why had he married me off to him?’
The rant ends as suddenly as it began. Abruptly he hands her an automobile catalogue, telling her she can choose any model she desires. His behaviour is familiar to her, ‘Cash was the only language of love that father knew.’
But at least she understood that language and takes it in her stride. From the brochure Flor chooses a top-of-the-range Buick, asking that it be delivered in Paris. ‘But then comes Papa’s fiat: “I’ll never let you go back to that man.”’ Next day his lawyer calls on her to arrange a divorce.
‘I meekly complied. This was to be the pattern of my marathon marrying. I would think, naively, if I divorce and start afresh, this time Papa will approve.’ He never would – expressing his disapproval in one case by going so far as to have her husband murdered – nor will she ever break free from Daddy until his assassination twenty-four years later, and perhaps not even then.
But now she has cut free from Rubi, and done so before her spirit is broken. She’s an optimist – as nine marriages surely indicate. Back in the Dominican Republic, she sets to remaking a would-be independent life.
And Rubi? He is fired by a furious Trujillo from his employment and remains alone in Paris. No, not alone, Rubi is congenitally unable ever to be alone, but once again he’s single, a man lacking income and on the make in a big city at a critical moment in history, for the Second World War is about to break out.
† The emergent dictatorships were quick to seize on the advertising and promotional techniques resulting from mass media. Almost all of the methods currently employed in political advertising in Britain and the US were first defined by Hitler in Mein Kampf.
CHAPTER 3
DANIELLE DARRIEUX,
PARIS, 1940–41
It was the sound that told people life had changed – probably forever. When the citizens of Paris woke up on that spring morning in 1940 the noise reaching them from the street outside was unfamiliar. The usual din of traffic and autohorns had gained a deeper resonance, a heavy rumble identifiable solely by the old – and that only after a second of shocked astonishment.
It was the creak and grind of heavy wooden wheels, the clop of farmhorses dragging wagons over the cobbles. The great peasant carts each contained a whole family, plus most of their belongings piled high around them. The slow-moving stream of horse-drawn vehicles was broken up by cars trapped in its flow with overheating engines, mattresses and suitcases roped to the roof, open boots jammed with prams, bicycles, carpets and anything that could be crammed in the gaps between.
The journalist Fleur Cowles, staying at the Ritz while covering the early months of the war for Life magazine, became aware of the unfamiliar sound as soon as she awoke. She dressed and went downstairs to discover its cause. As she was crossing the lobby the Concierge stopped her to say, ‘You must leave Paris, madame, the Germans are coming.’
‘How do you know they’re coming?’ she asked.
‘Because they have reservations,’ he said.
For a week the sky over Paris was black with smoke from bonfires of burning files by every government building. People stood still in the street, craning their necks to stare up into the empty air, looking for paratroops. The roads were jammed with refugees streaming into the capital from the occupied countries of Denmark, Holland and Belgium, while a counter-flow struggled in the opposite direction as Parisians abandoned their homes to escape south. No trains were running. The railway stations were closed and guarded by soldiers. People gathered outside, rattling the locked gates in desperation.
On 11 June the French army cut the telephone lines and abandoned the city. An advance squadron of German tanks reached Porte St Denis next day and a truce party went forward on foot with a white flag to negotiate peaceful entry into the city, but came under fire from the rooftops. They retired, and General Küchler ordered an all-out assault for 8 a.m. next morning. That the city was saved from bombardment was due to the American ambassador, William Bullit, who received a surprise call appointing him Mayor of Paris, just before the government fled the capital to relocate elsewhere. Though the post was well outside the usual career path of a US diplomat, gamely he accepted, contacted Küchler and assured him German forces would meet no opposition. Paris was declared an ‘open city’; the right to resist was surrendered in exchange for peaceful occupation.
That same day a column of helmeted Wehrmacht troops marched twelve abreast behind a band down the Champs-Élysées, and a huge swastika was raised above the Arc de Triomphe. General Studnitz became military governor of Paris, requisitioning the Hôtel de Crillon as his headquarters. The Ritz, the Raphael and George V were taken over by the High Command with similar lack of fuss, continuing to provide the service for which they were renowned. Hermann Göring, in search of something rather more grand, annexed the Senate building, the Palais du Luxembourg, for his personal HQ.
Wehrmacht loudspeaker vans toured the streets, warning everyone to stay indoors. Panzer columns of tanks clanked down the main avenues, followed by military truck
s filled with helmeted soldiers seated to attention with rifles upright between their knees. Paris became a dead city; all its buildings were closed, every shop locked and shuttered. Once again the sound of the capital changed: no traffic except military vehicles, but the added ring of countless black metal-tipped boots striking on the cobbles.
On 17 June the new Prime Minister, 84-year-old Marshal Pétain, appealed for an armistice from Vichy, where the government had fled. The formal capitulation was signed at Compiegne, in the same railway carriage in which Germany had surrendered to France in 1918.
By now 100,000 French soldiers lay dead and two million were prisoners of war. To the south of Paris a dense mass of refugees dragged their way down dusty roads in columns stretching as far as the eye could see. The verge was littered with belongings they’d thrown away and cars abandoned when they ran out of petrol or their motors seized. Some had a pram, a makeshift cart or wheelbarrow heaped with baskets, bundles, sacks. Their clothes were torn, crumpled, filthy; they’d worn them for days, slept in them by the road. They were thirsty, hungry and exhausted, many were in tears, pulling along whining children by the hand. In among the endless procession were horses, cattle, dogs. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky, unbearably hot.
In Paris, when people emerged onto the streets after the curfew, great red flags with swastikas flew everywhere; huge Nazi banners draped the frontage of government buildings and hotels, obscuring several floors. German road signs stood at all major intersections. Every clock was set forward one hour to German time. A black-out was in force, but except for buildings with generators there was no electricity. The telephones didn’t work. The unwatered flowers drooped in the public gardens and the leaves of the plane trees withered in the heat. On the Left Bank sheep belonging to refugees from northern France grazed on the uncut lawns of the Palais des Invalides. Yet the familiar architecture of the city remained intact, unscarred by bomb damage. The occupation had brought with it no Sturm und Drang, instead – unique in history – it provided a model of good manners.
Wehrmacht trucks patrolled the streets distributing food to the population. It was handed out by smiling ruddy-cheeked soldiers with bared blond heads. At first their reception was wary, but quickly these healthy young animals were seen not to be dangerous. They winked at young women, who tossed their heads in disdain then glanced back flirtatiously. Restaurants and cafés reopened to receive these new uniformed customers who were liberal in their spending; they were polite, paid for everything and tipped well.
Paris became an enormous garrison. Flush with unspent wages, soldiers clattered into luxury shops to buy clothes for wives and girlfriends, and expensive gifts to send home. At the Café de la Paix on Place de l’Opéra and the fashionable open-air cafés and brasseries along the Champs-Élysées more than half the customers were German. On entering a café they took off their belts and flung them with a crash on the marble-topped table before sitting down. Backs of chairs and empty seats were hung with steel helmets and revolvers. They called for champagne, laughed, smiled at everyone, patted the children at near-by tables, gave them sweets and cigarette cards, let them examine their weapons. At first these kids were snatched back by their parents, less often as time went by. People were hugely relieved at the behaviour of the ‘Boches’, impressed, even enthusiastic.
At night the streets rang with song and cheers from the victorious celebrating soldiery. These happy high-spirited young men soon acquired girlfriends. The law of nature ensured fraternisation. Parisian women dyed their bare legs the colour of nylon stockings, and inked a line around the thigh to show where they stopped. Paris had been the capital of love and earthly pleasures for so long the inconvenience of war could not be allowed to extinguish its civilities. The tone was set early: on the third day following occupation when the curfew was lifted, one of the better brothels displayed a sign, BUSINESS AS USUAL AFTER 3 P.M.
There was another face to this coin of German courtesy, a face marked with brutality and persecution, and the inhabitants of Paris will catch glimpses of it quite soon, though they prefer to avert their gaze. But for the moment the business of daily life, though restricted, was not particularly oppressive. On doit continuer de vivre – as a city tribe Parisians are the most pragmatic species on earth.
The arts also continued, particularly the theatre. The occupation prompted a theatrical revival in the city; the German officer class was avid for culture and entertainment. There were 400 new productions in Paris during the occupation, including new plays by Camus, Sartre, Cocteau and Jean Anouilh. The cinema also continued to do well as it had throughout the latter half of the 1930s.
One of its stars was 23-year-old actress Danielle Darrieux, who by now had made twenty-nine films, including the international success Mayerling, directed by Anatole Litvak, in which she starred opposite Charles Boyer. Several of these pictures were Franco-German co-productions filmed in two-language versions. She was as popular with German audiences as with those in her native country. In the autumn of 1940 she completed filming the romantic comedy Premier Rendezvous, directed by the highly rated and much older Henri Decoin, to whom she’d been married for five years. This was produced and distributed by Continental, a German company set up by Joseph Goebbels, whose Paris office was run by his nominee, Alfred Greven.
At the end of September, three months after the occupation of Paris, Danielle is invited to a party thrown by Count André de Limur, a French diplomat with a taste for show business and fashionable company.
Her last film Battement de Coeur, also directed by her husband, has just been released to considerable acclaim. Premier Rendezvous is in the can and currently being edited for distribution. She is an established star with an international reputation at the height of her career and this party is in her honour.
She makes her entrance and is welcomed by the Count with due éclat. The others there are far too sophisticated to be hushed or show awe, but every eye circumspectly is on her as she is led on a circuit of the most important guests. One of the men presented to her is a deeply tanned Latin American of about thirty. He is introduced and she reaches out her hand. He takes it, bows and raises it to his lips to kiss the back of her fingers, ‘Enchanté, madame.’ His velvet voice has a faint but exotic accent. And what a delightfully melodious name: Porfirio Rubirosa.
Danielle’s host, the Count, leans to her to stage-whisper in her ear, ‘Be careful, this man is dangerous.’
She smiles, and those within earshot chuckle at the words.
Danielle had been born in Bordeaux into a middle-class family. Her beloved father, an eye-specialist, died when she was eleven, leaving little inheritance. His widow and three young daughters relocated in Paris, where Danielle went to school, showing herself to be imaginative and bright, with notable musical talent and a good voice.
Mother was ambitious for her daughters and prospects looked brighter in Paris than the provinces. But money was tight and she had to give singing lessons to help out. Danielle explains, ‘One of her pupils was married to a husband who had some sort of job in films. He sometimes came with her to class and mentioned to maman that he had two film producer friends who were urgently looking for a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl to play the lead in their next picture. The several they had already tested all came over as too old for the part. He suggested to maman that the daughter of the house should go see them.’
Her mother, who was well aware of the reputation of gentlemen in the film business, baulked at the notion, but Danielle insisted. ‘I was inquisitive and stubborn by nature; I was determined to try for it.’ Maman relented and Danielle, wearing her best sky-blue frock, set off alone for the production offices. There she ran into one of the producers about to leave for the studio at Epernay, where the film unit was shooting tests. So struck was he by the slim animated tomboy with her impish grin, he proposed that she accompany him there.
Clambering into his big car, the underage schoolgirl who wanted to get into movies and the mid
dle-aged producer who was casting one drove off for the studio. A key scene, since ever.
Arriving there without incident, Danielle found a number of girls, older than herself, waiting to be tested. Unlike them, she’d never attended stage school and was without any experience. But she took the pages of script given her and sat down to learn her part. When it came her turn before the lens she showed no nervousness. She spoke her lines spontaneously. What struck everyone was her vivacity, an irresistible gaiety; she had a natural gift for comedy.
Next day she was recalled for a further test. ‘I had to play a dialogue scene with a very good-looking young assistant director (out of shot) who I had to call “Maman” while in floods of tears.’ For a fourteen-year-old without any dramatic training to be able to summon desolating emotion and tears on command was a remarkable feat. ‘After a week of waiting without any particular agitation or impatience I learned that I’d got the part.’
She was that rarity – a natural. A teenager with a sunny nature and face spilling over with merriment and infectious high spirits, the camera loved her, and so did the public. She was immediately signed for another picture, Coquecigrole, which went into production that same year.
