RUE DE LA PAIX
Sog.: dall’omonima pièce di Abel Hermant e Marc de Toledo. F.: René Guissard, Maurice Guillemin. Scgf.: Jacquelux. Int.: Andrée Lafayette (Thérèse), Suzy Pierson (Mady), Malcolm Tod (Laurent Baudry), Flore Deschamps (il garzone), Léon Mathot (Ally), Armand Bernard (Abramson), Jules Moy (Robert), de Chavardez (Dufour). Prod.: Les Films Diamant, Natan Productions. DCP. D.: 83’.
Film Notes
Laurent, a dress designer, is in love with a model named Thérèse. Mady is jealous. She wants to see them break up. Ally, a millionaire also in love with Thérèse, sets her up in her own couture house. But will the inauguration see romantic differences erupt into conflict?
I bought the rights to a play by Abel Hermant entitled Rue de la Paix and entered into partnership with a man who was becoming increasingly influential in cinema, Bernard Natan. I hired Andrée Lafayette, just back from the US where she had attracted too much attention by entering into competition with Mary Pickford for the attentions of a man. Thus it was that only two months after coming home from America myself, I started work on this movie. The cast was impressive, with Léon Mathot, Armand Bernard and an old chansonnier named Jules Moy, a small, fat, bald man with eyes protruding from behind steel-rimmed spectacles perched astride a bulbous nose. Jules looked like a provincial lawyer in his long jacket and indeed he had kept his day-job at the Stock Exchange to insure against the ups and downs of life in Bohemia. I further hired him as a gagman, an American job description thus introduced into France for the first time. “I’m Henri Diamant-Berger’s man and I’m gaga”, was how Jules put it. And when I asked him, “What’s your address in case we need to get hold of you in a hurry?” he replied in his usual solemn tones, “From five to six every day outside the synagogue on the rue de la Victoire and from six to seven at the brothel on the rue Pasquier!”.
Extract taken from Henri Diamant-Berger’s Memoirs