The Girls of the Alcazar d'été

Fame is not reserved
just for royalty, politicians, and other luminaries.
Sometime even a pretty petite dancer
can become a celebrity
recognized for her acclaimed contributions
to the world of entertainment.

 

Meet Miss Williams,
 a star of the Alcazar d'été revue
in Paris, France.

 

Standing gracefully in the photography studio of Walery, Paris, Miss Williams gives a proud salute as she models her frilly costume which reveals just a hint of seductive skin. The photo print has a rich depth of sepia tones that give it an illusion of a color photo and a premium quality that surpasses most entertainers' souvenir postcards from this era.  

As was the custom in France, the stamp and postmark are affixed to the picture side of the card and it was posted from Vitry-le-Croisé, a commune in the Aube department about 125 miles southeast of Paris, on 5 Jan 1905 to Mademoiselle Liger of the same town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Miss Williams posed with her dancing partners in another photo by Walery. In this postcard she is the shorter girl on the right neatly forming a ballet line with Miss Clara Davine, Miss Birks, and Miss Robinson. All wear the same dress style that has been colorized in shades of pink and blue with accent in gold.

 

The photographer was Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg, also known as Lucien Waléry, (1863–1929), who was a Polish photographer who was first active in London at his father's photography studio and then in Paris between 1890 and 1929. His studio was renowned for photographing many entertainers of Paris, especially beautiful women like the American dancer, Josephine Baker, published as a series in 1926.

 

 

 

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Poster for Alcazar d'été, 1896
Source: Wikimedia

The Alcazar d'Été was a Parisian café-concert, also known as a café-chantant, described as a variation on an outdoor cafe/wine garden and a French music hall. The Alcazar d'été opened in 1869 at 8 Avenue Gabriel near the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and closed in 1914.  In addition to food and drinks it offered high-class musical performances which included many celebrated French singers, instrumentalists, and dancers of the Belle Époque. This so-called "beautiful time" of the Third French Republic lasted from the end of the Franco-Prussian War to the beginning of World War One and marked a peaceful era in French culture when all the arts and sciences florished.

This next Walery postcard is a 3/4 portrait of Miss Robinson, the tallest dancer of the quartet. I call her a dancer only because they wear dancing slippers. It's quite likely that they also sang and played parts in theatrical skits. Here Miss Robinson is wearing a very low cut dress or silk wrap around her bare shoulders as she gazes wistfully into the camera. A penciled note on the border gives a date of 8 March 1903 which is confirmed by the potmark on the back. It was sent to Mademoiselle Alice Berta of Corbeil-Essonnes, a suburb of Paris. 

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Long time readers may remember a similar quartet of pretty dancers from the Alcazar d'été that I featured in my November 2018 story: Charming the Snook. Like that group, these young ladies all have English names. Whether they are actually English, or Scottish, Canadian or even American nationals I can not say as there is little history recorded on the internet about this kind of French entertainment.

 

 

 

This next Walery postcard has the four women posed in a cluster with Miss Robinson seated and the others standing close. Their costumes are detailed in color and look identical to the previous fashion. This card was sent 15 November 1902 from Beveren in Belgium, which is on the west bank of the River Schelde, opposite the port of Antwerp.

 

 

 

 

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Poster for Alcazar d'été, circa 1900
Source: ArtVee

 

One of the many celebrities associated with the Alcazar d'été was La Belle Otero who appeared on this poster for the café-concert in about 1900. She was a Spanish actress, dancer and courtesan whose full name was Agustina del Carmen Otero Iglesias (1868–1965). Her costume resembles the dresses worn by the English dancers and gives another perspective of what their revue might have looked like.

 

 

 

 

 

This last postcard of Mss. Robinson, Birks, Davine, and Williams has them bent over as if they are about to come onto the stage for one last bow. The postmark is February 8?, 1903. It's not surprising that these attractive postcards were used from 1902 to 1905, but because the girls are pictured in the same outfits, I believe all the photos were taken together in 1901 or 1902.

 

 

 

The Alcazar d'été presented a musical variety show or revue that offered Parisians and tourists a night of lighthearted French entertainment. It was not classical or operatic music but it was still more sophiosticated than the street ballads and folk music heard at cabarets. Like British music halls and American vaudeville theater, the French café-concert represents a branch of early popular music that connects directly to modern entertainment forms. It's not difficult to image these same dancers/singers performing on a contemporary stage of today.

 

This set of postcards is part of a larger collection that I have started acquiring on the entertainment at the Alcazar d'été, so stay tuned for more.  

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately I couldn't find any historic films of  Parisian nightclub dancers 
that date from 1900 but here is a British Pathé newsreel entitled:
Famous Parisian Clubs And Cabarets No. 2 (1933)

 

 

 

This second short film is also from the late 1930s
but it does evoke a style of dance
that may have resembled the dancers at the Alcazar d'été.
Some of these girls are very limber indeed.
It's entitled simply:
Paris Dances (1939)

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where even granny can put her best foot foward.