French Dressing

Paris was Paris again. Bejeweled blondes and their bejowled escorts were swarming, last week, to the Folies-Bergere's first new revue since the war began. Called C'est de la Folie (It's Madness), this latest mounting of a spectacle that has more tourist appeal than the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower was decidedly up to snuff. It was so glamorously dressed and undressed by turns that the critics slid right over its dull tunes and dreary gags to write rave reviews.

The spotlight caught the show's two star nudes: blonde Parisienne Nicole Roy, cafe-au-lait Haitian Fortunia.

In a succession of 21 gorgeous gowns, Actress Roy sang, danced and emoted, proved most popular when she limited her toilette to three strategically placed bits of white fluff.

Beauteous 18-year-old Fortunia burned up the stage in a sizzle of tropical dancing. Daughter of a Haitian father and a blonde Polish mother, Fortunia was brought up in Poland, thrown into a Nazi concentration camp during the war, liberated by Negro G.I.s.

Education for the Dance. Reminisced Fortunia in her best throaty pidgin: "At school I learn only classic ballet, but one month with Chicago black boys I learn beaucoup tricks, much swing, rumba. They teach me so good I have enough to dance at Folies."

Yet it was not so much sex as sumptuousness that made C'est de la Folie a smash hit. In threadbare postwar France, Producer Paul Derval had staged a revue that made many Broadway productions look like sideshows. The quantity of material used for the 1,200 costumes could be measured in miles, and quality surpassed quantity.

Endlessly, actors as well as actresses paraded in satins, velvets, delicate lace, period gold & silver brocades. In one scene Actress Roy used 60 yards of diaphanous veils to conceal none of her charms. For three years the Folies bought, rescued, hoarded every scrap of material, fur, feathers and jewelry it could lay its hands on.

And the sets in the new revue were possibly even more spectacular than the costumes. For the set of a Venetian palace used for three minutes, the paint alone cost 350,000 francs ($2,939).

But, for the cast at least, something was missing: the G.I.s who used to whistle and stamp, shout "Oh, my aching back!" and start climbing out of boxes at every display of nudity. Sighed Actress Roy: "Out front there's no more electricity in the air, and there are no more second lieutenants backstage."

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