Category Archives: Film

The Vendor of Pleasures

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Postcard of a ‘Marchand de plaisirs’, late 19th or early 20th century

‘Marchands de plaisirs’ were cookie vendors in France. They announced their arrival into villages and markets by rattling a metal handle on a wooden board: clac-clac!  They carried and protected their cookies in a large cylindrical container. On the lid of the drum was a roulette wheel. Children, but also elder customers, paid a few coins to spin the wheel that would tell them how many cookies they won.

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A more luxurious cookie container than the one photographed on the postcard above.

The cookies were called plaisirs, which is the French word for ‘pleasures’. These were simple very thin wafers rolled into a cylinder or cone.

oublies
Wafer-thin rolled cookies, called ‘plaisirs’ (also known as ‘oublies’ or ‘oublis’).

Recently I saw a wooden variant of the container at The House of Alijn, a museum in Ghent dedicated to everyday life. It thus appears that the game or treat was also popular in Belgium during the late 19th and early 20th century. But in the Flemish variant no wafers were involved: one could win roasted hazelnuts or almond-vanilla flavoured macaroons instead. The device though was cleverly rigged: the odds were higher to win nuts rather than the more prized macaroons.

Belgian container 'Makaronkast' at the House of Alijn museum
Belgian container ‘Makaronkast’ at the House of Alijn, Ghent

Marchands de plaisirs or ‘pleasure vendors’ have been active in France since the Late Middle Ages. They were then called oublieurs or vendors of oublies, the original name for the cookies of which the origin is closely linked to the bread used in catholic liturgy. Their trade was to wander through the streets of Paris every night and to go into the bourgeois households after supper to offer their wafers as desert. However, under the pretext of an innocent cookie-lottery, many of them organised illegal high-stakes gambling and some of them even robbed their patrons. So oublieurs became known as rascals, crooks and thieves. Soon the police forbade these con men to enter the houses at night and imperceptibly the oublieurs vanished. They were succeeded by the marchands de plaisirs who sold their wafers in the public space.

'Le Marchand de Plaisirs', partition musicale illustrée par Poulbot
Le Marchand de Plaisirs‘, waltz composed by Marcel Lattès and cover illustrated by Poulbot (published by Eschig, Paris, 1923).

The lifestyle of the vendor of pleasures inspired the imagination of songwriters and storytellers. Le Marchand de Plaisirs is a waltz composed in 1923 for a silent movie with the same name. The dashing actor Jaque Catelain, who also played the leading role of the vendor named Gosta, directed it. Gosta is a poor young man with an alcoholic father and a ragged mother. He falls in love with a beautiful and rich lady. When his father breaks into her home to steal, Gosta shoots him dead and returns the loot to the beautiful lady. She is thankful to Gosta but marries her rich fiancée –also played by Catelain- who is the spitting but nonetheless more sophisticated image of Gosta. In short, the perfect plot for delicious late night television.
The composer of the waltz is Marcel Lattès who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. The sheet music cover for Le Marchand de Plaisirs was illustrated by the Montmartre personality Francisque Poulbot who also designed the film poster.

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Jaque Catelain as illustrated by Poulbot for the movie ‘Le Marchand de Plaisirs’ (left) and a still of Jaque Catelain (right).

The cover for Gaston Maquis’ song about the female vendor of pleasures was created by one of our favourite illustrators: Léon Pousthomis. His sharp drawing makes it perfectly clear that her all-male clientele is not interested in buying cookies but in another kind of pleasure. Are they game enough to spin her wheel?

'La Marchande de Plaisirs', illustrated by Pousthomis
La Marchande de Plaisirs‘, music by Gaston Maquis, cover illustrated by Pousthomis (La Chanson Moderne, Paris, ca. 1905)

Zouzou

Haïti, illustrated by Ch. Roussel
Haïti‘ by Vincent Scotto, published by Salabert (Paris, 1934) and illustrated by Ch. Roussel

Last night I watched the movie Zouzou directed by Marc Allegret in 1934. Jean and Zouzou are two orphans adopted by a sideshow talker. He presents them in the circus as freaky twins because Jean is white and Zouzou is black. Very strange indeed.

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Josephine Baker as Zouzou and Jean Gabin as Jean.

As adults, Jean (Jean Gabin) becomes a sailor and Zouzou (Josephine Baker) a laundress. Zouzou has an unrequited love for Jean who is only able to love her as a sister. A few intrigues later Zouzou, who is a talented singer and dancer, starts to work in a music hall. And this leads us to the climax of the film when Josephine Baker sings Haïti. Scantily clad in some feathers she sits on a swing in a gilded bird cage like an exotic bird, ending the song with an elegant stage dive.

Bizarrely, for the cover of the sheet music the illustrator selected another scene from the film. Was the scene in the cage too risqué? You can judge for yourself or just enjoy the talented Miss Baker.

The Kinkajou, One of the Many Dance Crazes of the Twenties

A kinkajou is a small mammal native to Central and South America with nocturnal habits and related to raccoons.

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Kinkajou

The name of this cute little animal was used for a dance novelty in the late 1920s. An article of the Examiner in 1927 explained how to dance the Kinkajou: ‘You must sway the shoulders, tango like a sailor manipulating a gangway, and then change from one foot to the other as though in pain, lifting each foot well off the ground.’

While the dance originated in the 1927 Broadway musical Rio Rita, there was a serious disagreement in Paris on who created the original dance routine: the dance teacher Jean Mesnard, the beautiful Irvin Sisters or Albertina Rasch? In fact, all three of them contributed to the pseudo-craze.

'Le Kinkajou' sheet music cover illustrated by Würth
Le Kinkajou‘ composed by Harry Tierney, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, published by Francis-Day (Paris, s.d.) and illustrated by Würth

 

The Albertina Rasch Girls illustrated by Würth
The Albertina Rasch Girls, as illustrated by Würth
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The Albertina Rasch Dancers in costume for Rio Rita (1927).

It was Albertina Rasch,  leader of her own troupe The Albertina Rasch Girls, who choreographed the Kinkajou for the original Ziegfeld production on Broadway. The Albertina Rasch Girls also performed the Kinkajou dance routine at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, together with Harry Pilcer.

Strangely, at exactly the same period Publications Francis-Day edited another version of the Kinkajou sheet music, also by Würth. This time Würth chose not the stage of the Moulin Rouge as the central theme, but drew a highly stylised close-up portrait of the two main actors.

The Kinkajou‘ composed by Harry Tierney, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, published by Francis-Day (Paris, 1926) and illustrated by Würth

Also in 1927 Paddy & Zez Confrey composed The Black Kinkajou. Although the manager of the Irvin Sisters insisted they had nothing to learn from a dance teacher and that they could very well invent their dance routines themselves, it was Jean Mesnard who choreographed the dance moves that were presented by the Irvin Sisters at the Concert Mayol in Paris.

A lot of quarreling for nothing, because the Kinkajou was never really succesful…

The Black Kinkajou‘, music by Paddy & Zez Confrey, words by Auguste Olivier, published by A. Olivier (Paris, 1927) and  illustrated by Pigeot

Pigeot, the illustrator of The Black Kinkajou had presumably never heard of a kinkajou and thought a drawing of a cat might do as well.

In 1929 the stage musical Rio Rita was made into a film. A rare excerpt with the Kinkajou dance routine made it to YouTube.