Old Electricity

The nightclub band struck up the opening bars of I Have All Paris in My Heart. The master of ceremonies bowed to the wings, and out stepped an old lady with long orange hair, baby-doll eyes, a headdress of bird-of-paradise feathers and an armload of eight diamond bracelets. In lusty French she launched into her song. Thus, last week, a Manhattan audience got its first look in 28 years at Mistinguett.

Mistinguett, who was singing in French music halls when the sinking of the Maine set off the Spanish-American War, sometimes gives her age as 60, sometimes as 2,000 ("the age of Paris"). The average of informed estimates puts it about 80. But age has not stopped her yet. For over an hour she sang the songs she had made famous, Paris, Mon Homme, La Femme Qui Passe; made six costume changes, jitterbugged, and danced a cautious version of the breakneck Apache dance which she introduced almost half a century ago at Montmartre's Moulin Rouge. Curiosity seekers and old admirers who had come to be reminded of the days when Mistinguett was a star of the Folies-Bergere--and launching on their own careers such young hopefuls as Maurice Chevalier, Raimu and Jean Sablon--got a few flashes of her old-time charm.

When Mistinguett hiked up her skirts to expose her well-publicized legs (she once insured them for $3,000,000), even the sober members of her audience remarked that they were extraordinarily well preserved. In her comic numbers, Titina and Je Cherche un Millionaire, her Parisian brashness and high spirits seemed unimpaired. She kidded with the audience, snatched women's hats, put them on bald-headed ringside patrons, succeeded in getting nightclubbers to stand and join her in singing a final round of Paris.

"It's something electric," Mistinguett explains. "I take them like this. 'Come near me,' I say, and I draw them to me."

Why had she decided to come to the U.S.? "I like to move. I love New York. Everyone goes so fast. I do not like that people go slow." Mistinguett, whose shrewd business head has left her with a bulging bankbook, a safeful of jewels and three big houses, had another reason. "I love money. Not just to spend. I like to keep it--wash my hands in it." For her Manhattan engagement, the Martinique nightclub is paying her $4,000 a week.

Judy Garland, 28, made her debut at London's Palladium last week. Judy had them wiping their eyes in no time.

She was visibly nervous at the start; her voice choked up in the first number. "Never mind," came the shouts. "You're doing a good job." It was Over the Rainbow, from her first big hit, The Wizard of Oz, that got the audience really sniffling. Thereafter she couldn't do anything wrong. When she took an unscheduled pratfall during a bow, fans brought her to her feet with shouts of "Good old Judy!" and "Judy, you're wonderful!" After 40 minutes of singing and cheering Judy admitted in a trembling voice, "This is the greatest night of my life."

Next morning a few critics tried deep analysis. Said the Daily Express: "What if most of the final cheers are for the Wizard of Oz child who trod the yellow brick road to happiness for us in the darkest days of the war? It was sincere."

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