FRANCE: Candy on the Beach

The French Government had spent 60 million francs ($500,000) to eliminate the scars of war from Deauville. The streets were repaved, the palace-like hotels and sprawling white Casino refurbished and redecorated for the longed-for invasion of moneyed Americans and Britons.

After a publicity campaign that recalled the gilded ’20s, northern France’s No. 1 beach resort held its first summer opening in six years. The 10,000-odd visitors, including some 2,000 Britons and a scattering of Americans, saw the-Normandy coast playground as they had seen it on picture postcards—tree-shaded streets, restful, gaily decorated buildings and a placid, dull-green sea.

The Bastille Day vacation swelled the crowds that plowed up the fine beach, cheered as postwar merveilleuses displayed the world’s scantiest bathing suits and vied in U.S.-style beauty contests. At the Bar du Soleil, Englishmen paid 200 francs for a thimbleful of whiskey. At the Hotel Normandy guests paid 1,200 francs for a room. Restaurants charged 200 francs for a dinner of soup, eggs or fish, one vegetable, one peach.

After dusk (not a single room was left and latecomers slept in the streets) fireworks crackled in the peaceful sky, and at the Casino there were sounds of snobbery by night: 40 British airmen who flew over for the occasion forgot their dress suits, and were turned away from the ballroom.

The Office of Tourism hopefully announced that the season was in full swing. But the opening’s aftermath was a sorry letdown. Last week, liveried flunkies and white-tied M.C.s stood at their posts in the Casino, ready to bow like diplomats; but on the ballroom’s vast parquet just one couple did their stuff and only a few new-rich lingered over the green baize tables. In the main, Deauville had reverted to its 5,000 year-round inhabitants.

Neglected on the beach was a low, thick-walled building—newly painted a bright yellow, bordered with flower boxes and surmounted by an elegant sign, A la Marquise de Sėvigné (after a famous chain of Paris teashops). Few of the English and French children who bought candy and ice cream there on Bastille Day knew that the building had been a Nazi pillbox.