Filming The Folies-Bergere

For the first 24 years of its existence, France's famed Folies-Bergère enjoyed no other distinction than that of being the first music hall in Paris. Then one night in its 24th year – 1893 – the curtain went up on a naked woman, Paris was deliciously scandalized, and the Folies as we know it was born. In 1894 – one short year after that historic nude – the first flickery motion picture emerged from the laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison. Irrelevant? Completely. For it was not until 1956 that these two delightful diversions – the films and the Folies-Bergère – got together.

They have gotten together with a vengeance, in wide screen and color, at a cost of a cool million dollars – puny potatoes as American film budgets go, but able to buy a big, beautiful bushel of celluloid extravaganza in La Belle France. This first French filmusical (appropriately titled Folies-Bergère) is certainly big, will assuredly be beautiful, but may or may not fulfill the bushel of spicy expectations nursed by non-French moviegoers, depending on where it is seen. For the film's producers, demonstrating typical Gallic practicality, have shot several of the scenes in three versions. Version One (for French, Japanese and Scandinavian consumption) makes a clean breast of things and admits visually that one of the Folies' chief charms is its unabashed revelation of the female form divine. The second, or Long Underwear, version is destined for the British Isles, portions of the Far East, Spain, and (alas!) the U.S. Then there's a compromise version in which the showgirls are sprinkled with a few strategically placed rhinestones, for those countries that haven't yet decided whether they're really for sex or agin it.

But bare or bowdlerized, the film is sure to arouse interest everywhere, if only for the unique quality of its stars. Eddie Constantine – an American singer who could only get Pepsi-Cola jingle jobs here but is now France's highest-paid film performer – shares the spotlight with that slim, pantheresque recruit from ballet, Jeanmaire. This is her first French film, but the mademoiselle has already starred in two U.S. movies – Hans Christian Andersen and Anything Goes. Constantine (he plays an American G.I. who stays in France to court a Folies queen) is to French women what Boyer once was to ours – with a bit of Bogart thrown in. Constantine can return to the U.S. any time he likes, with a good deal more to look forward to than Pepsi commercials: Columbia has signed him to do six films of his own choosing. The radiant stars of Folies-Bergère, relatively unknown in their own countries, are now the toast of two hemispheres.

Statuesque nudes and long chorus lines typify the Folies. Many of the scenes were actually shot at the Folies-Bergère, but the backstage area of the theatre is traditionally off limits to men and the Folies' manager refused to make an exception for the film's technicians, so the backstage scenes were shot on especially built studio sets.

Statuesque nudes and long chorus lines typify the Folies. Many of the scens were actually shot at the Folies-Bergère, but the backstage area of the theatre is traditionally off limits to men and the Folies' manager refused to make an exception for the film's technicians, so the backstage scenes were shot on especially built studio sets.

Below: Jeanmaire in two of the several striking costumes she wears in the movie. Jeanmaire's husband, ballet director Roland Petit, coached Eddie Constantine for his dancing debut in a torrid Apache number.

Below: Jeanmaire in two of the several striking costumes she wears in the movie. Jeanmaire's husband, ballet director Roland Petit, coached Eddie Constantine for his dancing debut in a torrid Apache number.

Eddie Constantine: expatriate extraordinaire, skyrocketing star of the filmed Folies-Bergère.

Eddie Constantine croons cozily to Jeanmaire. Though he is a top recording artist in France, this is the first film in which he sings. It is also the first film in which he speaks English: he has become France's highest salaried cinema luminary by portraying tough guys, speaking French and warbling nary a note.

Above: a showgirl displays the degrees of nudity permitted in (1) France, Japan, Scandinavia

A showgirl displays the degrees of nudity permitted in (2) other European, some South American countries

a showgirl displays the degrees of nudity permitted in (3) Britain, Spain and the U.S. Above, right: the Folies' finale as it will be seen in this country and

Below: the circus sequence, with bare breasted showgirls prominent in background, as it was filmed for French audiences.