FRANCE: Maxim’s Is Back

Heut’ geh’ ich zu Maxim,

Dort bin ich sehr intim.*

So sang The Merry Widow’s dashing Prince Danilo. Less vocal (for reasons of state), Britain’s gamesome King Edward VII and gamey King Leopold II of the Belgians were just as intime chez Maxim. To many another princely sprig, millionaire, archduke and demimondaine of the fey ’90s, Maxim’s in Paris’ rue Royale was the most elegant bistro in Europe, the gaudiest symbol of the mauve decadence. Its décor was the most glittery, its women the most ravishing, its top-drawer scandals the most toothsome. No Manhattan nightclub captain was ever so suave or tactful as Maxim’s famed, monocled Chasseur Gérard, who, with a handy grasp of the Almanach de Gotha unsurpassed by any dowager in Europe, discreetly arranged introductions between the world’s great ones and Maxim’s incomparable ladies of the evening.

In the drab years after World War I, automobile tycoons and politicians of the Third Republic elbowed out dukes and princes. Business came before pleasure even at Maxim’s. Over Maître d’Hôtel Albert’s homard à l’américaine, Cabinet careers were made and broken, and million-franc deals consummated. Maxim’s ladies, the poules de luxe, often sat in lonely splendor until at long last a U.S. sugar king or Bolivian tin baron whispered in Gérard’s ear.

Then came the Nazi occupation. German officers, many of them old habitues, took over Maxim’s for their own. For a Frenchman to be seen entering its mahogany vestibule was equivalent to collaboration. Upon liberation, Maxim’s was closed and turned over to the British for use as a staid Empire Club.

But last week Maxim’s was back in business. Mahogany, glass and brass glistened as of old. Albert was on hand to welcome the bejeweled and tail-coated guests: Princess Faiza of Egypt, Couturier Jacques Fath, Cartoonist Roger Wild, Mlle. Constantinesco, Fred McEvoy, Mme. Audemars and a safari of minor movie officials, businessmen and actresses. Gallantly, the sprinkle of oldtimers and pleasure’s eager neophytes strove to revive the tradition of flaunting frivolity. But something more was missing than Gérard, who had retired to a sumptuous château near Biarritz which he had bought with tips. The world had changed; even Paris had changed. And one must be so careful these days; Maxim’s manager, uncertain of volatile Parisian reactions, had drawn tight the forbidding metal blinds of the war years. Over the threshold of pleasure, a single electric bulb, flickering with Paris’ spastic electric current, lighted strayed revelers through the night.

* * *

Fun among the Ruins. Gaiety tried to make a brave comeback in another once gay city. The center of Munich, one of the most beautiful of Europe’s medieval monuments, is a heap of bombed rubble, but last week Müncheners eagerly jumped aboard bicycles, cars and trains bound to suburban Riems. Reason: horse racing was back. The scene at the track was almost like old days. The horses’ names had been changed to others more in keeping with the spirit of the times: Bombe (Bomb) had become Bonne Chance; Offensivgeist (The Spirit of the Offensive) had become Olymp, but Munich’s bettors, who poured more than a million marks a day into the tote windows, could still catch a glimpse of the Bavarian aristocracy strolling in the paddock, dressed in the last word in Paris (1941) fashions.

In the city itself couples strolled again through the Englischer Garten. Old ladies took their ease in pleasant tearooms among the city’s ruins. More & more restaurants were offering (in discreet side rooms) full course dinners for 30 marks ($3) and plenty of pockets were ajingle with war profits.

Beer gardens were going full swing; here & there a brass band blared out the Blue Danube. G.I.s and Germans jammed merry-go-rounds and snap-the-whips at the Theresien-Platz, theaters and the opera in Prinzregenten-Strasse. As throughout Germany, excellent performances were played to jampacked audiences in roofless theaters. U.S. plays were a fad. Thornton Wilder’s fantasy, The Skin of Our Teeth, (TIME, Nov. 30, 1942), was playing to full houses in Munich (as in London). Even Munich’s Schaubuden, satirical little theaters like Am Platzl, whose stock in trade is poking fun at politicians, thrived again. Their current butt: the Military Government. The Am Platzl called its newest show Der Alte Traum in Neuen Raum (“The Old Dream in a New Setting”).

* I’m off to Maxim’s,There I feel so at home.