Caricature by Cappiello
ODETTE DULAC
Mademoiselle Dulac is Parisian from the butterfly in her cadmium orange hair to the points of her satin slippers. This inimitable artiste is made up of two parts deviltry and one part champagne. She handles the most risqué situations with a delicious delicacy, humor, and the tact of a finished comedienne. She is the life of the revue at the Boîte à Fursy. If you have heard Odette Dulac sing “Je Suis Bête,” in long years to come the memory of it will serve to lift you out of the blues. You will recall the daintiness of this piquant and chic divette, her silk stockings, her frou-frou skirt, the glitter of her bodice, and the irresistible merriness of her eyes as she winked at you over the tip of her impudent little nose.
But all this is the art of the comedienne. At her home I found Mademoiselle Dulac a very gracious and charming woman, unspoiled by the applause that nightly rings in her little ears.
It took the genius of Capiello to caricature Odette Dulac and to give in a few clever lines all of this amusing artiste’s personality. When Dulac laughs, her eyes close like tiny half-moons through which the pupils sparkle—very small windows to a big merry soul.
There are some women who never seem to grow old and to whom youth seems ever constant. To be merry yourself and to make others merry is surely one secret of keeping young.
The homes of artists of the Parisian stage differ from the domiciles of others in the artistic world. The tumbled rattle-trap of a dusty studio does not appeal to great actors or divas. The homes of many of the latter are models of luxury and cleanliness.
Much of the perfection of the Parisian actress’s ménage is due to her faithful bonne, who is companion, cook, waitress, lady’s maid, and who, in a thousand ways, protects and watches over the interests of her mistress.
Perhaps the most typical cabaret audience is that in the “Noctambules,” in the rue Champollion. It is an unpretentious little place of the old type, where nightly appear some of the best singers of Montmartre: Tiercy and Montoya, Charles Fallot, Paul Delmet, Bréville, Marinier and Madame Laurence Deschamps. The last is an artiste of rare charm, who possesses a voice sweet, pure and flexible, and whose interpretation of scores of exquisite ballades and berceuses have won for her the truest of all criticism: sincere applause. But I must not forget the veteran of them all, the bard of bards, Marcel Legay.
