6 - Leslie Caron ... Looking for Gigi

On the set of Gigi 1958 with son Christopher and Maurice Chevalier

    I saw Leslie Caron again last summer.   Brenda and I had gone to Cadogan Hall in London for a concert of Rachmaninoff and Mahler.   I spotted her sitting about three rows in front of us shortly before the lights dimmed.

     It wasn't the first time I have run into Leslie Caron since we spent  part of Christmas Eve together at the Closerie des Lilas bar in Paris forty years ago.   That evening at the Closerie was for an interview.   I saw her by chance a few years later at a ballet performance at the Opera Comique.  Then another time in the 1980's at a revival of Gigi at the McMahon art house cinema where she was the guest of honor.

     I had already been at UNESCO a couple of years when I interviewed her back in 1975.   My newspaper days were well behind me, but every once in a while I still managed to set up a celebrity interview which I sold either to a local English language weekly or to After Dark, a short-lived New York show business glossy.

     She made a now-forgotten movie here when she moved back to France, and I requested an interview via the film company's press rep.   I think I said I was with The Village Voice, which of course I wasn't, but no one ever seemed the wiser.

     She was warm and personable during that interview, and I have a vivid memory of her contagious laugh and dazzling  smile.    Over the years I have followed her career, as with all those I interviewed, and just by virtue of the fact that we once spent x-number of hours together,  I have continued to feel some vaguely personal connection.    In fact, I have a repetitive dream where I am engaging in a long distance telephone conversation with her.   It usually ends badly and stressfully with the line disconnected.

     That December evening in 1975 she talked a lot about her time in Hollywood at the end of its Golden Age, about Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Cary Grant.   Also about her years with Warren Beatty.  I didn't know then that she had left her two children and husband in England for the then much sought-after Beatty.

     I read an interview not long ago in which she described herself and Beatty as the Angelina-Brad of the day.   I have since seen photos of her little son and daughter, dressing up as Bonnie and Clyde, playing with Warren Beatty during their summer vacation in California.

     In recent years she wrote a well received autobiography (she has also published an interesting volume of short stories) which I found first rate, very honest and entertaining.

     Back to Cadogan Hall.   I was in an aisle seat, and watched  at the intermission for her to pass by.  She was with her son, the same one who once played with Warren Beatty.    She looked great, as 84-year old ladies go, and I decided to speak to her as she approached.  I told her how good she looked, and said how much I had enjoyed her book.

     I had lived with the memory of a vivacious woman these last 40 years, and I was expecting a smile or a word of pleasure at my compliment.  Alas, there was neither.  She looked at me fleetingly,  and an unmistakably chilly "thank you" barely made it out of her mouth.  Then she was gone.

     Her son, now in late middle age, was holding her hand.  He stood slightly behind her, and he looked back at me and said, "Thank you very much."  It sounded sincere, and I interpreted it as akin to an apology.

     I was crushed, rather foolishly disappointed, I suppose, that Leslie Caron had been so totally indifferent to me or to my compliments.  Then I realized that had been the reason I gave up doing those celebrity interviews in the first place.   I always wanted the subjects of my profiles to really like me.  And somehow they never did.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr