The Shapely Girls

In France, where inconstancy is a constant, republics, dictatorships, monarchies and empires have gone with the wind. But whatever else goes, the Folies-Bergere remains. The Folies, a pleasure dome dedicated principally to the delights of the eye, is probably the world's most famed theater. Its fame rests securely on a basic theatrical principle, viz., if men like anything better than a shapely show girl in satins and sequins, it is a shapely show girl oujt of them. The Folies supplies both.

This year, as usual, a million people will squeeze into the Folies to see the current revue, Ah! Qnelle Folie. It is the third most popular tourist attraction in France.* Spectators who return after many years note that the faces of the girls change, but the figures seem to stay the same. In Folies-Bergere (219 pp.; Button; $3.95), Paul Derval, director and titular head of the theater for almost 50 years, tells the naked truth in unadorned prose about Paris' most ancient music hall. It is the first time the story has been told at length in English.

Vipers & Pearls. The name "Bergere" has nothing to do with shepherds, but was borrowed from the nearby Rue Bergere; the term "Folies" once denoted a lushly thicketed lovers' trysting ground, later came to mean a public place for open-air entertainment. When the Folies-Bergere first opened its doors on May 1, 1869, it specialized in jugglers, acrobats, clowns, wrestlers, singers, a woman with two heads and a "prodigious magician who swallows live snakes, rips open his stomach, and instead of vipers, pulls out Oriental pearl necklaces which he distributes to the ladies."

For many years, the only naked part of the female body that could be seen on a French stage was that bit of a cancan dancer's thigh between her black silk stockings and her frilly white drawers. Then, during World War I, the Folies-Bergere started slowly to get undressed. When Italy came into the war on the Allied side, a military march burst from the Folies orchestra, and 20 superb girls dressed as Italian soldiers charged bravely across the stage, each with one breast bared, as cheers rang out and flags waved. In 1918 the first Folies nude appeared. She was "a delicious blonde." Each evening there was a deep hush, followed by a murmur of admiration when she appeared on stage, transported in a flower-decked chariot and clad only in a crown of flowers and a sparkling smile.

Machinery & Veils. Anatomy at the Folies was so beautifully plastic that Rodin wanted to sculpt it; the theater was so colorful that Manet painted it. To see and meet the Folies' beauties, European royalty made pilgrimages to Paris.

Today the Folies has acquired a mid-century tone. It takes Director Derval ten months and $430,000 to put on a new revue. The stage is only 20 feet deep, but it holds a swimming pool, a treadmill and a grand staircase. For each revue, 1,200 costumes are used, and at times dancers are unconcealed in as much as 60 yards of diaphanous veils.

With the help of a staff of 340 behind-the-scenes technicians and a large amount of complicated machinery, the Folies puts on a 3 1/2-hour show nightly that conscientiously avoids verbal sparkle or wit (the large number of foreigners in the audience would not get it anyway). Derval's principle is to present a lot of girls and a lot of spectacle--so much spectacle indeed that he clearly has the most overdressed undressed show in the world.

* More popular: Versailles and the Eiffel Tower.

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