CABARET. Cont'd.

 

 

Just like La Goulue, she developed her own style and refused to wear the white skirts as it was required by the cabaret management. All the other girls had to follow the rules and wear long white “jupons” but, Jane broke all the rules like La Goulue. She began to dance as a Can Can girl. At the beginning, she was very timid. But, few days later, her eccentricity and sudden improvisations for lack of proper training  provoked the enthusiasm of the customers.  Weeks later, she took Paris by storm. And exactly as La Goulue did before, she leaves Le Moulin Rouge, not to create her own cabaret but to work as a super star   at “L’Eldorado”, “Jardin de Paris”, even at “Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt”, “Les Follies Bergères” and the fabulous “Casino de Paris” where she met France’s Great Mistinguett (First Star of France) and became her partner! What a remarkable luck! One year later, she leaves « Le Casino de Paris » to become the queen of the French Can Can at « Palace Theater » in London and Madrid. In the United States, she becomes a comédienne. She stars in various Broadway shows including “La Belle de New York”. She returns to France to star in « Claudine à Paris” at  “Bouffes Parisiennes”. Her private life was a dramatic continuation of her performance on stage. She loved men. She collected lovers. Tons of them. Some, were not very nice to her. One particular lover gave her the nightmares of her life. He embezzled money from her, cheated on her, even caused her bodily injuries. Brought before a magistrate, the prosecutor asked the judge to lock him up for a very long time and throw the key. Jane objected. Not because she feared this brutal man but, as she told the judge « Don’t put him in jail, I want to give him another chance in life, provided that he promises me, that as soon as he leaves this courtroom, he will go looking for a prostitute, any prostitute he can find in the streets…he will give her every single penny he has in his pockets and he will get her off the street for good, no matter how he does it… he has to do it. If he can do that, if he can save her life, I will save his!”. This is Jane Avril!

 

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