Out of the Depths

The high point in Corinne Luchaire's life was in 1939. She was 18, rich, beautiful, and the star of a French film that got top U.S. reviews--Prison without Bars. The low point came for her last week in a musty, obscure courtroom of Paris' Palace of Justice. Racked by fits of tuberculous coughing, her 25-year-old face seared and drawn like a crone's, she heard herself accused of sleeping with a prize package of Axis agents--Count Galeazzo Ciano, Nazi Envoy Otto Abetz, a long list of others, a Luftwaffe flyer to whom she bore a daughter.

Two months ago her father, Publisher Jean Luchaire of Le Matin, had been shot as the archcollaborator of the Paris press during the occupation. There was nothing much anyone could say for his daughter. Said the judge: "While Frenchwomen suffered and fought, you led a gay life. . . ." Quavered Corinne: "I was young and stupid . . . I did not realize. . . ." Cried her lawyer: "What can you expect of a girl brought up in the depths of the elite!"

The jury thought it over for an hour, condemned her to ten years of "national disgrace." Divested of all rights as a French citizen, Corinne Luchaire would live in a prison without bars.

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