History, Paris, Sheet Music Covers

Le Train des Maris

train des maris011
‘Le Train des Maris‘ by Georges Bolle & Ludivic Turquet, published by Union Musicale (Paris, s.d.) and illustrated by Charles Biqual.

With the development of railways in the second half of the 19th century, the upper and middle classes started to enjoy the summer  at the seaside. Women and children could stay for one or two months while the husbands joined them each weekend.

Every Saturday evening, after work, a train full of happy husbands departed direction coast and returned back on Monday morning. These express trains from Paris or Brussels to and fro the North Sea resorts were called trains des maris (husband trains). In Germany it was the Ehemännerzug which brought the husbands from Berlin to the Baltic Sea and back again.

train des maris2

On the naive Parisian trade card above two men buy their tickets, first class of course, for the train des maris.

According to the Figaro there also existed ‘trains des amants’ or lover trains – so very French! On Monday morning these trains brought the young men from the cities to the ‘lonely’ married wives at the resorts. They returned home on Saturday morning before the arrival of the husbands…

The Belgian artist Félicien Rops made an amusing etching of a train des maris: a wife and her lover are seen kissing, behind huge and symbolic horns while in the distance the horn-bearing train takes her husband on his way.

Digital Capture

I don’t think it is a coincidence that Charles Biqual depicts the horned cows in the foreground of the sheet music cover, do you?

cows

Anyway, some women seemed very cheerful when the train des maris had left, as illustrated by Herouard for La Vie Parisienne.

halloween-apres-le-depart-from-theflappers-500

Dance, Entertainment, Film, Music

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

1 Comment

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

kinkajou
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
rasch girls
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.

Illustrators, Sheet Music Covers

Marcel·lí Porta

Babilonia, foxtrot by J. Demón (Editions Salabert, Paris, 1928)
‘Babilonia‘, foxtrot by J. Demón (Editions Salabert, Paris, 1928)

After many years our patience has been rewarded! With thanks to Santi Barjau’s blog we have been able to attribute the ‘MPortal’-monogram to a poster designer from Catalonia named Marcel·lí Porta Fernanda. He was born in Barcelona in 1900 or 1903. The joyous Mesopotamian cover for the Babilonia Foxtrot Song appears to be an early work (1928), as most of his other known creations are from the Thirties or later, such as his anti-fascist poster ‘Feixisme No!’ from 1938. Too little is known about the life and work of this artist, but he appears to have been actively involved in the Republican movement with his publication of posters, caricatures, cartoons and illustrations for satirical magazines.

PORTA-Feixisme_no
Feixisme NO! Poster designed by Marcel·lí Porta in 1938 for the PSUC (Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia)

As many of his compatriots at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 he was forced to exile from his native country, never to come back. He stayed for some time in Montpellier and migrated to Mexico City in 1942. In his new country Porta would be active for many years illustrating books and magazines, worked as a painter and even designed murals. Marcel·lí Porta died without leaving family in Mexico City in 1959 (or 1979 according to other sources).

Portrait of Marcel·lí Porta
Marcel·lí Porta in a photograph published in 1988 in the Journal of the Orfeó Català de Mèxic, an organisation that had become his second home (source: El blog d’història del cartell de Santi Barjau).

'Ceci et ça' about Illustrated Sheet Music