by Jeremy Scott
Other French film actresses of the period were all in their thirties, playing much younger roles on screen. By chance, accidental timing and God-given talent, Danielle created a brand that was hers alone. In 1932–3 Danielle completed three films, the following year no fewer than six. Her audiences watched her grow up on screen, saw her blossom and come into flower as a young woman. She had thousands of fans by now in both France and Germany, who copied the way she cut her hair, did her make-up, her look, clothes, style. She was a recognised star – and at the same time a most dutiful daughter. Her salary went into a bank account controlled by her mother. Success did not turn her head and there was no teenage rebellion; between filming she studied design at L’École Commercial and played cello and piano at the Conservatoire.
In 1935 she was cast in J’Aime Tous les Femmes by its director, Henri Decoin, whom she’d met on her previous picture when he was hired to rewrite the dialogue, adding lines specifically designed for her. An experienced cineaste more than twenty years older than she, he was captivated as much by her personality as her talent – indeed the two were inseparable, her screen persona was an aspect of herself. She married Decoin in the winter of that year, aged eighteen.
The reception to J’Aime Tous les Femmes was enthusiastic, the director-wife partnership were rehired for Le Domino Vert. Then in 1936 director Anatole Litvak offered her the starring role in Mayerling. The picture had a prestigious cast that included Charles Boyer and Jean-Luis Barrault. Danielle’s part – that of the young mistress of the Empress’s son involved in a tragic love affair ending in a joint suicide pact – called for a wider emotional range than she’d previously attempted. She was doubtful of her capability, but Decoin encouraged her to accept the role. ‘I always believed in him and obeyed him in everything. Without his advice I would always have remained a pretty young thing singing and playing in minor films and would probably have left the profession quite early. He knew how to make me into a proper actress, to realise my worth. It is due to him and him alone that I became what I did become.’
In Mayerling – which proved a huge success, not only in France and Germany but internationally – she gained a new dimension in her work. As a comedienne she could get an audience to laugh and shriek with delight, as a tragic actress she could make them weep. ‘Until now I hadn’t really taken my job very seriously. I enjoyed it and it amused me to do it, but that’s as far as it went.’
With this new commitment to her art came the offer of more and very varied parts, but also a punishing schedule. Between 1936 and 39 she completed ten films, four of them directed by her husband. Most were Franco-German co-productions, some shot in Berlin studios.
In 1939 she started shooting Premier Rendezvous with Decoin as director. In it she played an orphan who runs away from her boarding school. At twenty-three she was still a slim gamine with a cheeky face, she could get away with teenage roles. The picture was produced by Continental. ‘As I’d very often filmed in Germany (along with many other French actors) I didn’t have a very clear idea of the significance of that particular company or what it represented,’ she explains.
It was then, after the filming of Premier Rendezvous and while the footage was still being assembled in the cutting room, that she was invited by Count André de Limur to a party where she meets Rubi…
Rubi takes her extended hand in his, folds it in his own and bows to kiss the knuckles, ‘Enchanté, Madame.’ Straightening up, he looks her back boldly in the face. Her host murmurs something about him being dangerous and she smiles at the remark. Then the Count’s touch on her elbow urges her on to meet the next important guest.
The mix of people at the party reflects the occupation; there are a number of smartly uniformed German officers present. The barrier between victor and defeated has broken down quite quickly, assisted by the continuing presence of an international community in Paris. Cosmopolitan smart society has no frontiers, for the rich are their own nationality and nothing can disrupt the interconnections on which their life depends. The film business has long been a Franco-German collaboration, its actors and actresses possess a following in both countries. Every major country maintains an embassy here, for America is not yet in the war. Many of their staff are at the soirée as the host is himself a diplomat. The French author Claude Mauriac writes that at a similar party of Mrs Jay Gould’s he was ‘stupefied to be shaking hands with one of those German officers whose contact I find so repugnant on the Metro … the champagne and atmosphere of sympathy and youth made everything too easy. I should not have been there.’
Danielle does not speak with Rubi again until she’s about to leave the party, when he offers to drive her home. She hesitates, but Count de Limur points out that they live almost next door to each other in Neuilly…
All private cars had been requisitioned on the second day of the occupation; petrol is sold exclusively to those with ration coupons. The only vehicles allowed to drive the streets are required to display SP plates (Service Publique), granted solely to doctors and those in the international community in favour with the High Command. It is characteristic of Rubi that he possesses a car with chauffeur, plus the correct plates and gas to run it.
Nothing happens on the drive to Neuilly, he does not hit on her, doesn’t even suggest a further meeting. She is still married to Henri Decoin. It’s been a successful partnership, he’s been instrumental in advancing her career – and she his. They are living together and still on good terms but, after five years, there is no longer the same sexual chemistry between them; aged forty-four, he’s become more of a father figure. The girl child he married has grown up to become a woman and star in her own right, with her own bank account and a desire to run her own life … yet the terms of an established relationship are very hard to change.
A few days after Limur’s party Danielle runs into Rubi at a nightclub, then again at Maxim’s, the smartest restaurant in Paris, frequented by both French and Germans, where the cuisine remains excellent. This time he asks her for a date. It is followed by others.
Rubi has come on in the three years since his last wife left him. Where there was once a cocksure swagger is now a laid-back urbanity. No rough edges remain visible. Of course he is perfectly dressed by the leading Paris tailor, preferring dark suits woven in a mix of silk and wool to the heavier cloth standard at the time. His shirts, ties and specially made underpants come from Jermyn Street. His shoes are custom built; no one could call them lifts but the heel does add a crucial half-inch to his height. Yet these elements do not entirely account for the change. The puppy fat has gone from his face. The mouth is still full and sensual, but the rather podgy nose has acquired a fineness and definition that wasn’t there before. His hair, expertly cut by the best barber in town, is no longer crinkly though it tends to curl. No trace remains of his racial or provincial origins and he’s grown in presence: he has a reputable job, a house in a fashionable neighbourhood, a car with chauffeur, salary, expenses, and the façade of a man of substance. Yet he does not appear to take his respectability too seriously, he’s great fun to be with. A shade taller than Danielle, he is faultless in his role and manner. The New England philosopher Emerson re-states a truth communicated to him by a Boston grande dame of that period ‘who declared that the sense of being well-dressed imparts a feeling of tranquillity religion is powerless to bestow’.
Rubi and Danielle make a glamorous couple and no one fails to be struck by them. For her this is flirtation, an assertion of independence. Their affair is not covert or conducted in out of the way places, but played out in public at a handful of smart restaurants and nightclubs. She is still living with her husband and conceals nothing from him. Their marriage has been lacking the vital spark for some time and he takes the development with good grace.
So this is a dalliance of an acclaimed movie star at the height of her career, with full confidence in her worth, who is invited everywhere and requires a handsome escort and suitor who looks the part. Rubi plays it exquis
itely. He writes, ‘This might have been an agreeable flirtation, a light episode of the sweet life in the eyes of others. But one day she said to me, “I’ll tell you, I think this is very serious for me.”’
‘For me too, Danielle,’ he answers.
CHAPTER 4
DANIELLE DARRIEUX, PARIS, 1941–45
Why do some women fall for shits? Perhaps this trawl through the lives of six who did so may flag up aspects of their character and provide notes toward an answer, though one which illuminates them rather than the love object. Any hypothesis is partial and incomplete without reference to the particular shit. You had to meet Rubi in the flesh to get an idea of it.
There were the looks – we obtain an idea of those from photographs – and there was the bearing, his poise and laid-back assurance, plus the obvious fitness and vigour. There was the silky voice and accent, the teasing lightness of delivery and alert attentiveness to how you replied. Presentation and performance he’d finessed to an art. Yes, he was personable but there was more to it than that. The word charisma is now devalued to become a cliché, in Rubi’s case let’s call it ‘mystique’.
What added to Rubi’s allure was the hint of mystery; he enjoyed a louche reputation. This did not stop anyone from inviting him as a guest – he was amusing and entertaining. Though some were jealous, most men liked him. He was an exhilarating presence and dependable set dressing at any gathering. People were only titillated by the rumour that he was a crook.
When Flor walked out and Trujillo fired him in a rage at the casual way he’d treated his daughter, Rubi was in poor straits for he never had any inclination to save and possessed no money of his own. When he met Danielle Darrieux three years later he was a man of substance with a house, a job, bespoke wardrobe and chauffeur-driven car. It will be of no surprise to learn that he came to this privileged estate by a curiously winding stair.
Danielle Darrieux
Life had not been easy after he’d lost his job. However the Dominican ambassador in Paris (Trujillo’s elder brother) had rescued Rubi’s face if not his salary by finding him a place in a legation serving both Holland and Belgium. That had collapsed with the German occupation of those countries but he’d hung on to his diplomatic passport and residence. Unsurprisingly in these straitened circumstances he found the answer in a woman, one he had kept on the hook since their affair in the republic. La Môme Moineau was back in Paris, living at Rexach’s luxurious townhouse while her husband remained involved in further construction projects in Ciudad Trujillo. She didn’t have a career as a chanteuse any longer and was well past her prime, but she owned a fleet of cars, had plenty of money and an established place on the circuit. Rubi was expensive and unreliable, but he represented a stylish feather in her cap.
Of great advantage to Rubi in his career (which was social climbing and seduction rather than work, he despised work) was that he was completely without conscience. It opened the range of possibilities wider than to most. The Spanish civil war – particularly the communist forces’ siege of Madrid – had caused a number of the city’s wealthier residents hurriedly to move elsewhere, some of them in such urgency they were unable to take their assets with them. One such individual was Majuel Aldao, owner of the leading jewellers in Madrid, who had been obliged to leave a substantial portion of his stock in a safe, guarded by a trusted employee. Anxious to recover this while the man remained so, he made Rubi a proposition: that he use a Dominican embassy car with diplomatic plates to drive to Madrid, collect the jewellery, and bring it back to Paris in the diplomatic pouch.
The Raffles-type adventure appealed to Rubi’s romantic nature. It fazed him not at all that he no longer was on the embassy staff and did not have the use of its cars, still less custody of the diplomatic bag. He’d performed several small favours for the Dominican ambassador, who permitted him still to use the term ‘consul’ in describing himself; he was confident the matter could be arranged.
The smuggling trip held further promise in that he knew another refugee keen to move his assets out of Madrid. Johnny Kohane, a Polish Jew previously resident there, had left behind some $150,000 in gold bullion. A plan was hatched. Rubi obtained use of the embassy’s Mercedes and, for a fee, borrowed the uniform and passport of its Dominican chauffeur, who bore a passable resemblance to Kohane. With Rubi seated in style in the back, Kohane drove the car across France and into Spain – still torn by civil war – by way of the frontier post at Port Bou.
For almost two weeks Aldao, expectantly waiting in Paris, received no word from Rubi. Then he reappeared, without Kohane but bearing two thirds of Aldao’s jewellery together with a harrowing tale. It seemed that leaving Madrid the two had been halted at a road-block by a party of armed men. Kohane had slammed his foot down and crashed the barrier, but they’d been pursued and fired on. Kohane had been killed in the fracas and he, Rubi, was extraordinarily lucky to have escaped alive.
Rubi knew how to spin a tale. Years later, back in Trujillo’s employ, the dictator would praise his diplomatic skills: ‘He’s a great liar and the women like him.’
But where was the inventory that had been with the jewels, Aldao wanted to know. Rubi said there had been no inventory when he collected them. But Aldao was not convinced and made his own enquiries, discovering that the embassy’s Mercedes had sustained no damage in the fray; it was unmarked by a single bullet hole.
There was little he could do and he’d at least retrieved two thirds of his gems, but he remained sore. Many men were sore at Rubi just then, with good reason, and the list would grow – pretty soon someone would shoot him.
It required money to be Rubi, the running costs entailed in keeping up the façade and maintaining his reputation were high. He’d never possessed capital wealth, though he’d rubbed up against it often. La Môme Moineau had been happy to pay for his company, but she’d come up the hard way herself and saw life too clear to fund him in an independent lifestyle. However, now he had collected. He was in the chips and back in the game.
Aldao wasn’t about to publicise the smuggling caper: it made him look a sucker. Nor was Rubi tempted to brag about it, but inevitably there were rumours. It detracted from his social desirability not a whit: This man is dangerous.
A few months after his successful theft, Rubi was once more living his life to the full when one day he received a telephone call from the Palace in Ciudad Trujillo. On the line was an aide who said, ‘The President, who is beside me, would like to know if you could see after his wife and son, who will arrive in Paris in a few weeks. You will have to find them a house of appropriate size, accompany them, show them around…’
‘I was so stupefied that I couldn’t answer straightaway,’ Rubi recalled. ‘At first I wondered what sort of a trap it was. I couldn’t see one.’
He rose to the occasion, as always. He met Dona Maria and Ramfis off the boat at Le Havre, concealing his astonishment that the First Lady was over eight months pregnant. He proved the most assiduous courtier, attentive, courteous, charming. He took care of everything, including arrangements with the clinic where she would give birth. During which period he looked after Ramfis, aged ten and now a brigadier general who in the republic was attended by several staff officers and a negro shoeshine boy singer, become his personal minstrel. Ramfis was a monster, a miniature despot, easily bored and used to demanding instant gratification. His tantrums were uncontrollable and no one dared to try to discipline him, but only to appease. It is evidence of Rubi’s diplomatic subtlety that, by treating the boy not as a child but an adult and a male like himself, he created a mentor role which would stand him in good stead in the years to come, when Trujillo himself became certifiably unstable. It was a very astute move.
To Dona Maria he was the cavaliere to dream of, sensitive to her moods and reliable for advice on fashion and what best suited her rather full figure. He was pathologically incapable of not flirting with any woman, whatever her situation, but here everything was at stake. He was generous with his time
but also with gifts of jewellery. Such princely gestures became him and cost nothing; he had a drawer full of pieces he couldn’t dispose of in France or Switzerland without questions about their provenance.
Dona Maria, healthy and happy with her new baby, spoke highly of Rubi in her letters to Trujillo, and was enthusiastic about the delights of Paris. So much so that the Benefactor decided to visit his wife and family in the French capital which, despite the threat of impending war, was enjoying a spell of almost feverish gaiety.
Once again Rubi was driven in the embassy’s Mercedes to meet the dictator off the boat. Despite his cool, he must have experienced some trepidation; his rupture with Trujillo had not been pretty, for a while he’d feared for his life. But, ‘in place of a furious father-in-law and an autocrat exasperated by my impertinence, I found a friendly and agreeable man.’
He took care of him in the same diligent manner as he’d looked after Dona Maria and Ramfis. He was an excellent guide to the city: he could recommend tailors, shoemakers, gunsmiths. He possessed equal familiarity with nightclubs and the demi-monde. It turned out the dictator had particular interest in the demi-monde, which back home didn’t amount to much. The scope of Rubi’s services effortlessly expanded to include the role of pimp. He took pleasure in the job, he had an eye for excellence. Indeed the capability he displayed in performing every task required of him convinced Trujillo what an indispensable fellow he was, how well-connected and what an elegant and worthy ambassador for his country. Before the Benefactor sailed for home, followed by his family, Rubi had been reappointed to his post at the Paris embassy.
In the winter of 1938–39 (six months before Rubi will meet Danielle), Nazi troops marched into Austria to annex the country in the Anschluss and occupied the Sudetenland, the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia. Conditions for Jews and the restrictions on Jewish businesses had long been oppressive. In Germany they were banned from public swimming pools, sports stadiums, parks, cafés, theatres and restaurants. Now occurred the infamous Kristallnacht (night of broken glass) when the windows of more than 7,000 Jewish shops were smashed and their contents looted; 400 synagogues were torched and burnt down.