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Spinning wheels: cosmopolitanism, mobility, and media in Monaco, 1855-1956

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Spinning wheels: cosmopolitanism, mobility, and media in Monaco, 1855-1956

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Content Spinning Wheels: Cosmopolitanism, Mobility, and Media in Monaco, 1855-1956 by Mark Braude 1 Table of Contents Dedication 3 Acknowledgments! 4 Introduction! 7 Chapter One Monte Carlo, Open City: The Making of a Cosmopolitan Company Town! 36 Chapter Two “Cosmopolitan Pandemonium:” Performances and Critiques of Social Mobility in Belle Époque Monte Carlo! 85 Chapter Three One-Way Street: Mobility as Privilege and Power in Monaco! 139 Chapter Four: The Wedding of the Century: Myth, Media, and Marriage in Monaco! 200 Epilogue ! 237 Bibliography! 240 Appendix: Figures! 263 2 Dedication For Eleanor and Jeremy Braude, my first teachers. 3 Acknowledgments This project would not have been possible without generous support from the University of Southern California, where I was privileged to be a College Doctoral Fellow. USC’s Visual Studies Graduate Certificate program provided additional funding, as well as an exciting second intellectual home to complement our wonderful History department. I wish also to acknowledge the help I received from the staffs of the archives I consulted in Monaco, Nice, Paris, New York, College Park, and Los Angeles. I must thank especially Charlotte Lubert, archivist of the SBM. In Los Angeles: Elinor Accampo, Daniela Bleichmar, Leo Braudy, Phil Ethington, Richard Fox, Karen Halttunen, Deb Harkness, Paul Lerner, Richard Meyer, Steve Ross, and Nancy Troy each contributed a great deal to my academic formation. As members of my dissertation committee, Professors Accampo, Ethington, and Troy deserve a special thank you for so carefully reading and commenting upon my chapters. I benefited from having a committee whose members were so varied in their areas of expertise, which is a testament to the vibrancy of USC’s academic community. Peter Mancall, William Deverell, Lori Rogers, Joe Styles, Laverne Hughes, and Sandra Hopwood kept things running smoothly, and their efforts on my behalf are much appreciated. Thanks also to those USC students who went before me and offered guidance: Catherine Clark, Brian Jacobson, Laura Kalba, and Ryan Linkof. I count myself as especially fortunate to have matriculated alongside Matthew Amato. He read 4 and reread several drafts of these chapters, and in dozens of coffee shops from Venice Beach and Miracle Mile put up with many hours of my riffing on all things Monaco. A person could not ask for a more engaging colleague nor a better friend. No single person has had a greater influence on this project or on my academic trajectory than my graduate advisor and the head of my dissertation committee, Vanessa Schwartz. Vanessa was the first person to believe that a history of Monaco could make for a valuable research project, and she spent more time hearing and reading about this subject than any one person should ever have to in one lifetime. She pushed me in directions I would not otherwise have explored and I am exceptionally grateful for her efforts. Readers familiar with her work will, I hope, recognize her profound influence on this project. Vanessa is both an intellectual mentor and a cherished friend. In New York: I am still realizing the full effects of the year I spent completing my Master’s at NYU’s interdisciplinary Institute of French Studies. Herrick Chapman, Stéphane Gerson, Kenneth E. Silver, and George Trumbull were wonderful teachers. Professor Silver, whose Making Paradise: Art, Modernity, and the Myth of the Riviera is the premiere art historical study of the Cȏte d’Azur, was especially influential. I cannot do enough to sing the praises of my NYU chum, the brilliant Vanessa Agard-Jones. Zack and Amanda Silverman were recent gracious hosts when I more recently returned to New York for research. In Paris: A special thank you to Dominique Kalifa, who was very generous with his time and pointed me to some particularly valuable sources at the BNF. 5 In Nice: Thank you to Nik Jenkins and Jennifer Morone for making us feel as though Nice was home, if only for a short while. In Vancouver: Alejandra Bronfman and Chris Friedrichs offered valued advice, both while I studied with them as an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia, and more recently as I navigated the PhD waters. My brother Jon Braude continues to challenge and inspire me and knows more about Grand Prix racing than I ever will. Eleanor, Jeremy, Daylan, Ayelet, Poppy Jane, and Esther Braude have encouraged this project in innumerable ways and I am forever grateful for their love and support. Above all, I thank my wife, Laura Braude. She knows why. 6 Introduction Son Monaco sopra uno scoglio, Non semino e non raccoglio; Ma pur mangier voglio. I am Monaco upon a rock, I neither sow nor reap; But all the same I want to eat. ! - Traditional Monegasque Proverb. 1 On April 3, 2013, an international consortium of investigative journalists released documents exposing the identities of several prominent individuals - including the President of Azerbaijan, the co-treasurer of François Hollande's election campaign, and the husband of a Canadian senator - who had recently moved considerable sums of money into overseas tax havens. 2 The previous summer, while campaigning to become the President of the United States, the Republican candidate Mitt Romney spoke openly with a journalist about his own offshore financial dealings in Panama and the Cayman Islands. 3 Today it is not only possible to move money into an offshore account with the click of a button, denying one’s home country a portion of one’s taxable income, it is also possible to talk brazenly about doing so while seeking election to the highest public office in the world’s most powerful nation. How have the interests of the financially self- 7 1 As quoted, in the Monegasque dialect, in Egon Corti, The Wizard of Homburg and Monte Carlo (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1934), 134. 2 David Leigh, ‘Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore.’ The Guardian, April 3, 2013. 3 Robert Costa, ‘Romney on Tax Returns.’ National Review Online, July 17, 2012. interested individual diverged so greatly from those of his or her home country? How is it that many people today would consider hiding money in an offshore account as a shrewd financial move, even a mark of privilege, rather than as a treasonous act? This dissertation suggests that we can begin to answer these questions by considering how as new technologies allowed bodies, capital, and ideas to circulate at ever increasing speeds over the last two centuries, many individuals, especially elite and highly-mobile individuals, changed how they thought and acted in relation to their local communities. 4 Prior to the nineteenth century, elite status was intimately linked to the promise of duty to an entity greater to oneself. As individuals, members of the nobility were undoubtedly marked by their mobility, traveling by the fastest and most comfortable means of transportation to survey their estates. 5 But as a class, the nobility largely derived its privileged status from its ties to land and from the promise of protecting the community that worked these lands, or by holding judicial or 8 4 Concerning the intertwined histories of the rise of industrial capitalism, increased physical mobility, and individualism, see Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Penguin, 1988); Tim Cresswell, On The Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World (London: Routledge, 2006); David Harvey, The Condition Of Postmodernity (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991); Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983); Hartmut Rosa and William E. Scheuerman, High-Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009); John Urry, Mobilities (London: Polity, 2007). For broader considerations of the cultivation of the self, see Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby et al. Histoire de la vie privée (5 Volumes) (Paris: Seuil, 1985-1987); Zubin Meer (ed.) Individualism and the Cultural Logic of Modernity (New York: Lexington Books, 2011). For specific studies of the tenuous relationship between personal interests and the fostering of civic bonds in the nineteenth century, see Phil Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society Fin-de-Siècle France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 5 Concerning pre-modern elites as highly mobile individuals, see Lewis Mumford, who suggested that “the great feudal lords had succeeded in feeding their retainers, collecting their rents, and securing a modicum of peace and order in their domains only by being in continual movement from one estate to another. The court was a mobile camp: vigilance and movement were the price of power.” Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Mariner Books, 1968), 353. administrative posts that in theory entailed a measure of public service. 6 By the nineteenth century, as people could increasingly be regarded by society as elite without hailing from the landed or titled classes, the ties between privileged status and a sense of rootedness or service to one’s local community began to loosen. Whereas the nobleman’s access to the fastest means of transport had once been a symptom of his privileged status, access to speed began to offer the very path towards achieving such privilege. As industrialists and merchants made fortunes from rail, steam, and engine power - mixing among the landed gentry to form a new elite - and as people aspiring to attain such levels of wealth and power began to regard displays of physical mobility as a means through which to gain esteem, the ties that bound elite status to a sense of rootedness loosened further still. The principality of Monaco, which housed the world’s first modern casino-resort in the nineteenth century and functioned as the world’s first modern tax haven in the twentieth century, provides a valuable site through which to explore the loosening of these ties. This dissertation examines the transformation of Monaco from an isolated and nearly bankrupt principality into a nexus of international recreation and investment in the period spanning the legalization of gambling in Monaco in 1855 and the wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier just over a century later, in 1956. I analyze Monaco’s institutions, built environment, social life, and media representations to trace the connections between the international capital that circulated in its Monte Carlo casino- resort and the subsequent culture of spectacle that emerged throughout the principality. 9 6 Concerning the ties between noble status and land, as well as the differences between the noblesse d’épée and the noblesse de robe, see William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Albert Soboul, La Révolution française (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1982). While we often attribute increased personal mobility, internationally-connected markets, and cross-border cultural exchange to our contemporary moment of globalization, this history of Monaco traces an earlier moment in which we see how such a system emerged and took root in the culture as people, money, and images traveled and mixed in new ways. 7 Prior to 1855, a visitor to the tiny principality of Monaco bold enough to wander east into the remote area known as les spéluges, or 'the disreputable haunts,' would have found little more there than a patch of lemon trees clinging to a particularly rocky stretch of the Mediterranean coast. But in that year Prince Florestan Grimaldi, faced with impending bankruptcy, unruly subjects, and the threat of annexation by stronger neighboring powers, legalized gambling in Monaco. With Florestan’s decree, the principality, whose territory spans less than half the size of New York’s Central Park ,became the only place for hundreds of miles where one could turn a card or spin a wheel without fear of legal reprisal. 8 Lacking both the funding and the expertise to operate a gambling enterprise, Florestan formed a joint-stock company called the Société des Bains de Mer et du Cercle des Etrangers (‘Sea-bathing Society and 10 7 Concerning contemporary globalization, see Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003). 8 At the time, small legal casinos could be found only in spa towns in Northern Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, and a few German territories. With the closing of German spa casinos in 1872, Monaco enjoyed a virtual monopoly on legalized gambling until 1907, when France loosened its prohibition of gambling. For an overview of gambling-related legislation in Europe, see David G. Schwartz, Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (New York: Gotham Books, 2006). Foreigners’ Club,’ hereafter referred to as SBM), to which he granted exclusive rights to oversee the Monaco gambling concession. Florestan then sought out investors interested in purchasing the right to operate this company. The “Foreigners’ Club” was appropriately named as, during the period traced in this dissertation, its directors would all hail from outside of Monaco. In 1863, after eight years of failure by under-funded and inexperienced concessionaires, the French entrepreneur François Blanc acquired the right to run the SBM. Rather than simply relying on Monaco’s monopoly on legalized gambling in Southern Europe, Blanc surrounded the casino he had inherited from his failed predecessor with an entire town, to be promoted as a spa resort, where gambling would be but one of many possible diversions. In conceiving, operating, and advertising this town (which would in 1866 come to known as Monte Carlo) as a tourist destination, where the casino provided the bulk of profits though it was not advertised as the town’s main attraction, Blanc invented the concept of the modern casino-resort. He stood apart from all previous casino operators by not only presenting gambling as both a legally and socially acceptable practice, but by glamorizing the very act of transgressing against one’s home country. Blanc encouraged his clients to think that to enter the Monte Carlo casino was to shrug off the bonds of traditionalism, conformity and social obligation made through modern nationalism. 9 By gambling in the Monte Carlo casino and performing privileged activities in its surrounding resort, bourgeois patrons sought to be regarded by society as elite individuals, a rank that had once been the reserve of the 11 9 On the history of glamour, see Liz Willis-Tropea, “Hollywood Glamour: Sex, Power, and Photography, 1925-1939” (PhD Dissertation, University of Southern California, 2008). nobility. But in Monaco these elites were not saddled with the accompanying burdens of noble service and civic duty. The profits from legalized gambling proved so lucrative that, in 1868, Prince Florestan’s successor Prince Charles abolished income taxes in the principality, unknowingly creating the modern world’s first tax haven, and sowing the seeds for the banking trade that would eventually replace gambling as Monaco’s main industry. 10 Just as people who disliked the laws of their home countries, and who had the means, could travel by train, ship, and eventually automobile to cross Monaco’s uncontrolled borders and gamble at Monte Carlo, so too by the second half of the twentieth century could people who disliked the laws of their home countries, and who had the means, use real- time banking technology to “cross” Monaco’s borders and move their money into offshore accounts. Tax exiles needing to establish residency in Monaco enjoyed the resort infrastructure that was the legacy of the principality’s first lucrative industry. 11 In both iterations Monaco’s boosters, whether operating a cosmopolitan casino-resort or a haven for tax exiles from around the globe, profited by providing services unavailable in larger states while providing a surrounding service infrastructure intended to have 12 10 Pierre Abramovici, Un rocher bien occupé: Monaco pendant la guerre, 1939-1945 (Paris: Seuil, 2001), 26. 11 Tax exiles who have chosen to reside in Monaco no doubt do so primarily for financial reasons; but they are also responding to the principality’s history as a glamorous destination: its high-end service industry, its high levels of security, favorable climate, and its real estate infrastructure. As Ruth Bloomfield has recently written in the Wall Street Journal, people buying real estate in Monaco do so in part because of the principality’s “mild Mediterranean climate, fabulous boutiques and restaurants, the timeless, iconic allure of Princess Grace.” As one property developer quoted in the article asks: "If you were living in Moscow, would you not rather have your wife and children in a nice, safe, sunny place without the fiscal problems which are present in, say, France?” “Monaco turns a corner.” Wall Street Journal. March 7, 2013. clients become as attached to the principality as they were to the specific services it provided. This dissertation traces the history of Monaco largely by chronicling how several generations of managers of the SBM worked in collusion with the Grimaldi dynasty (still a major shareholder in this company) to create a viable economy in a place almost completely devoid of natural resources and with a small population that, in the words of the Monegasque proverb quoted above, did “not sow nor reap.” 12 The archives of the SBM, which have so far been left largely unexplored by scholars, reveal how a particular set of speculators could profit precisely by being open to foreign influence. 13 The managers of the SBM hired foreign labor to build and operate the resort and sought the expertise of foreign professionals, such as the French architect Charles Garnier and the Russian expatriate ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev, to broaden its cultural appeals. The SBM advertised heavily in the foreign press, and, as the Monegasques were barred from the casino unless for work, the company depended completely on the gambling losses of foreign tourists for their profits. As the managers of the SBM sought 13 12 As we will see in Chapter One, the people of Monaco had for much of their history depended almost entirely on the citrus harvest from neighboring communes of Roquebrune and Menton, which were under Grimaldi control until the people of Roquebrune and Menton declared these “free cities” amid the revolutionary fervor of 1848. 13 The exceptions to my claim concerning the SBM’a archives are Judith Chazin-Bennahum, René Blum and the Ballets Russes: In Search of a Lost Life (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2011) and Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1998). For general histories of Monaco, see Corti; Xan Fielding, The Money Spinner: Monte Carlo and Its Fabled Casino (New York: Little, Brown, 1977); Charles Graves, Monte Carlo: The Big Gamble (London: Hutchison and Co., 1951); Stanley Jackson, Inside Monte Carlo (London: Virgin Books, 1975); Labande; Didier Laurens, Monaco (Paris: Hachette, 2007); Ethel Coburn Mayne, The Romance of Monaco and its Rulers (New York: John Lane, 1910); Adolphe Smith, Monaco and Monte Carlo (London: Grant Richards, 1912). Thomas M. Kavanagh’s, Dice, Cards, Wheels: A Different History of French Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 187-214, provides some rich analysis of Monte Carlo. to make the casino more accessible via the latest means of transportation technology, they hired an international array of commercial artists to create advertising campaigns and they funded costly public events to celebrate these same technologies. From the roulette tables inside the casino, to the various celebrations of modern machine speed in the surrounding resort, spinning wheels provided the means through which to achieve and display both financial and social distinction in Monaco. By showing how a small group of speculators thrived by building, running, and promoting their “company town” as an international hub of resort culture, this project challenges established approaches to transnational history. 14 Historians adopting transnational methodologies have, paradoxically, continued to reinforce a traditional state-based frame of understanding historical change. Victoria de Grazia, for example, has recently explored how cultural and financial exchanges influenced relations between Europe and the United States, but ultimately tells the story of the attempts by one specific nation, the United States, to build a “market empire” by exerting “soft power” over other nations. 15 In similar fashion, Daniel T. Rodgers, though offering a more interactive model wherein Americans and Europeans developed and debated 14 14 I deal specifically with the issue of Monte Carlo as a company town and the associated company town historiography in Chapter One. For broad considerations of transnational approaches, see Thomas Bender, who in Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 3, has argued that “one can no longer believe in the nation as hermetically sealed, territorially self- contained, or internally undifferentiated.” Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier in the introduction to their magisterial The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, have offered the strongest definition of the transnational approach by arguing that in their studies they “are interested in links and flows, and want to track people, ideas, products, processes and patterns that operate over, across, through, beyond, above, under, or in-between polities and societies.” Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 15 Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2006). social policies and politics, ultimately remains focused on understanding how these trans-Atlantic relationships specifically influenced American history. 16 Scholars have begun to offer more transnationally attuned models for understanding how ‘global cities’ such as Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, and Los Angeles have acted as cultural, political, and financial nodes within larger global networks. 17 Their studies concern global crossroads wherein people have primarily worked and sometimes played; my project, too, examines a global crossroads, but an unlikely one when placed alongside these megalopolises, wherein people have mostly played and sometimes worked. While considering how Monaco and its Monte Carlo casino-resort functioned as a node within broader networks of international capitalism, this dissertation is primarily concerned with the ways in which the principality and its resort were built, operated, and advertised as a nexus of cosmopolitan sociability. My project suggests that we can expand our scholarly lens not simply by adopting more interactive methods of historical investigation but also by looking at places that historians may have deemed unworthy of serious study. Given the ties between the scholarly practice of history and modern nation-building projects, as well as disciplinary practices that divide scholars by 15 16 Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). 17 Here I follow the lead of sociologist Saskia Sassen, who investigates how global forces affect the local economic and social orders of three financial centers: New York, Tokyo, and London. Sassen does not take the nation state as her starting point, nor the transnational corporation, but rather focuses on a network of ‘global cities’ that rival both of the former for international influence. Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). See also, Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Pascale Casanova and M.B DeBevoise (trans.), The World Republic of Letters (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage, 1992); Vanessa R. Schwartz, It's so French!: Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). geographical regions, historians may be forgiven for privileging the study of large states. Yet in so doing we overlook the ways in which small spaces functioned as key centers of transnational exchange precisely because their political and economic leaders recognized the special advantages that such small sovereign territories offered in a world dominated by larger states. While we have become increasingly attuned to considering how historical changes take place within globally-connected networks, many valuable sites of global encounter remain unexplored. Monaco, the preeminent gambling destination of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, and a place often discussed by contemporary observers, has been conspicuous by its relative absence from scholarly inquiry. 18 We have so far largely ignored this potential site of study because of Monaco’s tiny size and its presumed lack of global influence. I suggest that the principality is worthy of study precisely because of these same qualities. The history of Monaco reminds us that while the modern era saw the vast swath of humanity placed under the control of some form of national power structure, the same forces that led to the creation of modern nation-states also paved the way for the emergence of territories that profited by allowing people to escape political, economic, and legal control in ways that they never had before. 19 People first came to Monte-Carlo because Prince Florestan, as the sovereign ruler of an independent territory, could legalize gambling at a time when that practice was widely prohibited. Political 16 18 Again, see FN 13 for exceptions to this claim. 19 Concerning nation-building, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) Concerning nation-states as controllers of movement, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1995); James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). sovereignty was therefore Monaco’s most valuable economic asset, but one that only gained currency in relation to developments far beyond Monaco’s borders: the leaders of other sovereign states first had to prohibit gambling in order for Florestan’s law to appeal to foreigners. Just as the builders of modern nations, by enforcing the power of sovereignty simultaneously paved the way for territories that allowed people to escape the control of the state, so too did the new technologies of mass transportation and mass communication - so vital to modern state-building projects - also make it easier for people to release themselves from the grip of state authority and to act in ways that were antithetical to any kind of communal good. 20 Monaco’s boosters transformed their principality, which in 1855 boasted five roads, some citrus trees, and a few hundred locals, into Europe’s most popular gambling destination in matter of years, revealing much about the tremendous power of these new technologies, and of the increasing speed with which international capital flowed during this period. 21 The development of new communication technologies allowed small territories such as Monaco to develop economies around selling certain kinds of spectacles to a broad clientele, fostering vibrant cultural lives in places that had not previously functioned as international cultural 17 20 See, for instance, Anderson’s consideration of the printing press; and Weber’s use of the railway. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991); Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1977). Concerning transportation technologies in the nineteenth century see Kern; Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley University of California Press, 1987); Weber. 21 Statistics concerning Monaco’s massive popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are offered in Chapter One. centers or as desirable travel destinations. 22 As Monaco’s gambling industry was entirely dependent on foreign business, its economy grew only as this principality (whose very inaccessibility had long been its chief military asset) became more accessible to outsiders. The SBM only began to turn significant profits after Monaco was connected to the railway in 1868. 23 While this dissertation focuses on Monaco’s history as a casino-resort between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, it also illuminates the historical changes that would allow the principality to function as a tax haven in the years following the period traced here. Small sovereign territories that profit by undermining the standard tax practices of larger states might appear to function on the margins of the world economy, but they in fact form a vital part of our financial systems and are one of the main causes of contemporary financial instability. 24 Because tax havens “skew the distribution of costs and benefits of globalization in favor of a global elite,” the economist Ronen Palan suggests, they are “at the very heart of globalization.” 25 Historians would seem to have little to contribute to this important field of study, given that tax havens rely so heavily on discretion, making archival research an exceptionally difficult task. By 18 22 Concerning the emergence of the popular press in the nineteenth century, see Dominique Kalifa, L'encre et le sang: Récits de crimes et société à la Belle Époque (Paris: Fayard, 1995); Dean de la Motte and Jeannene M. Przyblyski (eds.), Making the News: Modernity and the Mass Press in Nineteenth- Century France. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999); Gregory Shaya, “The Flâneur, the Badaud, and the Making of a Mass Public in France, circa 1860–1910,” American Historical Review, vol. 109. no.1, February 2004; Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de- Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 23 Statistics concerning SBM profits in the 1860s are offered in Chapter One. 24 Ronen Palan et al., Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 3. 25 Ibid. tracing a pre-history of a tax haven, while striving to avoid teleological interpretations of historical change, my project suggests one possible approach through which historians can contribute to scholarly inquiries into such territories. I do not propose that Monaco’s particular history caused people to engage in financially-self-interested ways, nor do I suggest that it automatically necessitated our contemporary practices of offshore banking. Rather, I wish to show how the history of Monaco and its Monte Carlo casino- resort reflected the broader historical changes that made such practices possible. To do so, I pay special attention to the ways in which the principality’s boosters profited by providing a place where one such practice, gambling, was made not only legal and socially acceptable, but was presented as an appealing and enviable act. Sites of escape such as Monaco are ultimately more than mere political and economic fictions; they are physical spaces, whose histories have been deeply informed by their specific geographies. 26 While placing Monaco within its broader environment at the edge of both the European continent and the Mediterranean, this project shows how the principality’s specific course of development was influenced by its limited territory and by the sense of being wedged between two more powerful neighbors, especially during a period when Monaco’s two neighboring rival city-states, Nice and Genoa, were absorbed into larger national fabrics. By tracing this transnationally-informed history at a local and regional - rather than exclusively national - level, this project thus suggests a different approach to the history of Modern Europe. Thinking beyond the nation allows us to reevaluate the importance of region (be it, in this case, the Côte d’Azur, the 19 26 Concerning the ways that power operates in relation to physical space, see Appadurai; Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (London: Polity, 2000); Cresswell; Hardt and Negri; Harvey; Rosa and Scheuerman; Scott; John Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy (London: Sage Publications, 2007); Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 1986). Mediterranean, or Southern Europe) in directing historical change. This more fluid approach to understanding social, economic, and cultural interaction can help us to bridge the gap separating histories of modern nation-states from histories of global capitalism, enriching our understanding of both topics while also shedding light on the kinds of cross-border exchanges undergirding the creation of more recently formed transnational structures, such as the European Union, the G8 Forum, and the G20. In thinking locally and regionally, in addition to trans-nationally, this project builds on recent scholarship concerning the ways in which the Côte d’Azur became a popular international tourist destination and a hub of cultural production and exchange in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 27 Scholars have begun to pave the ways for inquiry into the complex international networks of patronage that lay behind the Côte d’Azur’s “invention” as a site of leisure, yet their analysis has so far formed only small sections of studies that are not primarily concerned with the history of the south of France. 28 This dissertation goes further than any previous study in tracing the specific ways in which 20 27 Mary Blume, Côte d’Azur: Inventing the French Riviera (London: Thames & Hudson, 1994); Marc Boyer, L’Invention de la Côte d’Azur: L’Hiver dans le Midi (Paris: Editions de l'Aube, 2004); Yvon Gastaud, Nice Cosmopolite 1860-2010 (Paris: Editions Autrement, 2010); James C. Haug, Leisure and Urbanism in Nineteenth Century Nice (Lawrence, Kansas: Regents Press, 1982); Michael Nelson, Americans and the Making of the Riviera (New York: McFarland, 2008); Brigitte Ouvry-Vial, René Louis, and Jean-Bernard Pouy, (eds.), Les Vacances: Un Rêve, un Produit, un Miroir (Paris: Autrement, 1990); Deborah Rothschild (ed.), Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Kenneth E. Silver, Making Paradise: Art, Modernity, and the Myth of the French Riviera (Boston: MIT Press, 2001); Tania Anne Woloshyn, ‘La Côte d'Azur: The terre privilégié of Invalids and Artists, c. 1860--1900.’ French Cultural Studies 2009 20: 383; Harvey Levenstein’s Seductive Journey: American Tourists in France from Jefferson to the Jazz Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) and We'll Always Have Paris: American Tourists in France since 1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) include brief discussions about Americans in the South of France. 28 Chazin-Bennahum and Garafola, respectively, discuss the SBM’s patronage of the Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes within their broader studies. Schwartz, in It's so French!, considers the financial forces driving the development of the Cannes Film Festival; again within the context of a larger study. locally-based stakeholders, in this case the Grimaldi dynasty working in harmony with the SBM, built and promoted a resort town along the Côte d’Azur by trading on the glamorous appeals of cosmopolitanism. While Monaco’s boosters profited by their close alliance with French culture, French investment, and French political power, and while Monte Carlo’s popularity could be used to strengthen the claim that the southern coast of Europe was a distinctly French cultural space – claiming the primacy of the so-called French (rather than the Italian) Riviera in the international tourist imaginary – Monaco’s local boosters also strove to place themselves apart from (and occasionally directly at odds with) this same French identity. While considering the complex interplay between French and Monegasque interests in Monaco and along the south of France, this dissertation also challenges scholarly frameworks that over-emphasize the influence of American expatriates along the Côte d’Azur. 29 While American expatriates certainly played key roles in making the south of France a fashionable leisure destination, we cannot ignore the important roles that French men and women, as well as members of other expatriate communities (most importantly, the Russians and the English) played in this history. And yet while paying attention to the contributions of these expatriate communities, my project proposes a more interactive history of the Côte d’Azur by also examining how local populations, especially local speculators and workers, developed their own practices that, while responding to this expatriate presence, did not simply adopt American of French styles and practices wholesale, but instead created a new 21 29 See Nelson, op. cit. kind of cultural space that was neither exclusively American, French, Russian, English, nor other. 30 While scholars have suggested that Los Angeles is “the most mediated town in America,” this dissertation shows how Monaco trumped many destinations in terms of mediation, especially when one considers how widely the reach of its reputation exceeded the grasp of its tiny territory. 31 Before there was a glamorous and modern Monte Carlo, there were stories about a glamorous and modern Monte Carlo; popular representations of the casino-resort not only reflected life in the principality but were also fundamental to its economic functioning. 32 As the literary scholar Thomas M. Kavanagh has suggested, the overwhelming majority of the resort’s patrons first 22 30 For examples interactive models of Franco-global cultural interactions, see Casanova; and Schwartz, It's so French!. 31 Michael Sorkin, “Explaining Los Angeles,” California Counterpoint: New West Coast Architecture, 1982 (San Francisco: San Francisco Art Institute 1982), 8. Davis, City, builds on Sorkin’s arguments. 32 My ideas about what constitutes “popular culture” are influenced by the definition of the term as those “beliefs and practices, and objects through which they are organized, that are widely shared among a population.” Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 3. Understanding culture as something that is ‘poached’ rather than simply produced and consumed in a void, I try to assess how these stories shaped, as much as expressed, popular opinions. On the ‘poaching’ of culture, see Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), xxiv. Concerning the ways in which popular representations have reflected and influenced everyday life in particular localities, see TJ Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (Princeton: Princeton University Press: 1999); Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 1990); Ann Fabian, The Unvarnished Truth: Personal Narratives in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Karen Halttunen, Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the Gothic Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); David Henkin, City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Sharon Marcus, Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Gyan Prakash, Mumbai Fables (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Gyan Prakash (ed.) Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). encountered the Monte Carlo casino-resort as an idea rather than as reality. 33 Often this idea was presented as an alluring image, carefully crafted by the SBM managers and the commercial artists they hired, or by foreign journalists, many of whom were directly or indirectly in the pay of the SBM. 34 In the first years of the Monte Carlo casino-resort, such images did not necessarily correlate to lived reality. As we shall see in Chapter One, for instance, François Blanc promoted Monaco as a spa resort offering modern sea-bathing facilities even before such facilities had been built. The power of the popular press allowed the SBM to begin attracting an international clientele large enough to allow the company to create the level of infrastructure that they had initially advertised; and as the SBM’s managers used popular media to disseminate the idea that Monaco would be a hub of cosmopolitan sociability, people attracted to this idea began to congregate in the principality and act in the very ways that they had been encouraged to act by years of consuming such heavily mediated versions of Monaco and the particular lifestyles that could supposedly be found there. As the profits flowed in greater quantity into the SBM’s coffers, the company poured ever greater amounts into hiring foreign impresarios, allowing the resort to “live up” to its original aspirations of being a hub of certain kinds of culture. Meanwhile, journalists, anti-gambling reformers, fiction writers, painters, and writers of song produced so many representations of the resort that visitors to the principality were occasionally disappointed that the real Monaco did not coincide with what they had been promised through so many Monte 23 33 Thomas M. Kavanagh, Dice, Cards, Wheels: A Different History of French Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 193. 34 I trace SBM bribery of journalists in Chapter One. Carlo stories. 35 That the Monegasques recognized how heavily their livelihood depended on their ability to produce and circulate spectacular versions of the resort is evident in their exuberant reaction to their Prince Rainier’s 1956 engagement to Grace Kelly, an American and a foreigner, rather than to a Monegasque or to a member of the remaining European nobility. By adopting a transnational methodology to research a modern gambling resort, this dissertation adds new layers to histories of modern resort spaces and to histories of gambling. Historians of nineteenth and twentieth century resorts have tended to consider these spaces as geographically and socially distinct “laboratories” in which the members of a particular nation worked through that country’s specific socioeconomic issues, or learned how to perform their appropriate social roles, within the relative safety a sequestered leisure setting. 36 My study avoids reducing the Monte Carlo casino-resort to an exceptional space that, by its very idiosyncrasy, proves a broader rule about the 24 35 I trace such reactions in Chapter Two. 36 See John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Phyllis Hembry, Leonard W. Cowie, and Evelyn E. Cowie, British Spas from 1815 to the Present: A Social History (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997); Eric T. Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Douglas Mackaman, Leisure Settings: Bourgeois Culture, Medicine, and the Spa in Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Jon Sterngass, First Resorts: Pursuing Pleasure at Saratoga Springs, Newport, and Coney Island (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Armand Wallon, La vie quotidienne dans les villes d'eaux : 1850-1914 (Paris: Hachette, 1981); John K. Walton, English Seaside Resort: A Social History, 1750-1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1983). For broader considerations of the history of tourism and its cultural and economic links, see Alain Corbin, The Lure of The Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World 1750-1840 (London: Penguin, 1995); Fred Gray, Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Society, and Nature (London: Reaktion Books, 2006); Orvar Löfgren, On Holiday: A History of Vacationing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Dean MacCannel, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Louis Turner and John Ash, The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery (London: Constable, 1975); John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1990). larger state in which it is housed. Instead, the history of Monte Carlo suggests that the growing popularity of a network of cosmopolitan enclaves in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reflected the emergence of “post-national” identities as new signs of privileged identity among individuals hailing from many parts of the globe. This equating of seemingly post-national identity with elite status - displayed by gambling ostentatiously while the practice was widely prohibited - offers evidence of the tremendous power of the bourgeoisie, whose leaders could simultaneously found modern states while also flaunting the very same rules they had created to support their state-building projects. Historians of gambling, who have considered how debates about this practice informed and reflected popular ideas about the rise of industrial capitalism and its accompanying ethos of risk-taking individualism, have conducted their studies almost exclusively within nationally-defined frameworks, wherein contemporary debates about 25 gambling illuminated broader debates about issues of specifically national concern. 37 My study again suggests a more interactive framework through which to understand how gambling functioned as a discursive object. I investigate popular discussions about the Monte Carlo casino-resort expressly to show how exposure to this gambling site prompted people from many countries to think about how capitalism influenced (and, according to some anxious contemporary observers, threatened) the very concept of nationhood itself. Yet while I consider how the Monte Carlo casino-resort sparked contemporary debates about broader social issues, I go beyond simply considering gambling as a discursive object, which has so far been the dominant approach to understanding the history of gambling. 38 My project instead considers how the specific design, operation, and visual practices of the Monte Carlo casino informed its social 26 37 Concerning the history of gambling and gambling spaces, see Everett John Carter, “The Green Table: Gambling Casinos, Capitalist Structure, and Modernity in Nineteenth Century Germany,” (PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002); Ann Fabian Card Sharps and Bucket Shops: Gambling in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Routledge, 1999); John Findlay, People of Chance: Gambling in American Society from Jamestown to Las Vegas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Kavanagh, Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993) and Dice; Jackson Lears, Something for Nothing: Luck in America. (New York: Penguin, 2004); Gerda Reith, The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture (London: Routledge, 1999). Concerning the history of Las Vegas, see Hal Rothman, Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century. Routledge, 2003. Mike Davis and Hal Rothman, The Grit Beneath the Glitter: Tales From the Real Las Vegas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Mark Gottdiener, Claudia Collins, and David R. Dickens, Las Vegas: The Social Production of an All-American City (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000); David Littlejohn and Eric Gran, The Real Las Vegas: Life Beyond the Strip (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1999); Eugene P. Moehring, Resort City in the Sunbelt, Las Vegas, 1930-2000 (Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2000); Hal Rothman, Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty- First Century (New York: Routledge, 2003); David G. Schwartz, Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond (New York: Routledge, 2004). Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, and Robert Venturi, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977) has also been instructive. 38 See SN 26. functions and cultural meanings, while also considering how the casino operated within the context of its specific resort infrastructure and natural surroundings. 39 This project also sheds light on the history of the European aristocracy in the modern era. One of the dominant narratives of Western history is that power shifted away from an aristocratic elite and into the hands of a bourgeois elite between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 40 In such characterizations, the aristocracy fell because its members were politically short-sighted, socially provincial, and culturally chauvinistic; and because they lacked and denigrated entrepreneurial skill. 41 In turn, the less rigid and more mercantile bourgeoisie rose to prominence, alongside their creation: the democratic nation-state. And yet, a few vestiges of the feudal social elite remain, just as there are Western states whose histories do not fit neatly within the standard master-narratives. Members of the old elite who avoided being swept into the bourgeois mire typically did so by holding on to wealth - inherited from years of ownership of land, 27 39 Studies of Las Vegas offer examples of how to productively consider the relationship between casinos and their broader surroundings; there is much value in analyzing European gambling spaces in the nineteenth century in similar fashion. See FN 31. 40 Sven Beckert has offered the following summary of this trajectory: “Throughout the Western world, the nineteenth century saw the rise of the bourgeoisie…the first elite not to derive its status from the accidents of birth and heritage….Accumulating ever more capital and power, this new social class gained the upper hand over an older, feudal social elite and eventually shaped the economy, ideology, and politics of all Western nations. Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 4. See also Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience, 5 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press and Norton, 1984-1998); Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (New York: Scribner, 1975). Scholars have shown that the bourgeoisie did not triumph without some contestation from the traditional elite, but the general trajectory of power remains largely indisputable. See Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981). Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003) is also instructive. 41 David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London: Vintage, 1999); Dominic Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). control of natural resources, and taxation of subjects - accumulated prior to the period of bourgeois ascendance. Such is the case of the House of Windsor, for instance. 42 The history of the Grimaldi dynasty in Monaco offers an altogether different case. The Grimaldi princes did not survive the modern era by clinging to money or power accumulated prior to the nineteenth century, but rather attained their wealth and strengthened their rule precisely during this period of supposed aristocratic decline. The House of Grimaldi flourished while other dynasties fell because its members were so willing to collude with bourgeois and non-Monegasque interests, and were so adept at co-opting bourgeois and foreign practices to achieve their local goals. Yet, as this dissertation will show, the SBM-Grimaldi alliance was only able to foster such a purportedly open and cosmopolitan atmosphere in Monaco by exerting rigid control over local workers, and by keeping the signs of labor safely out of sight of foreigners. The managers of the Monte Carlo casino profited by promising that any fortunate individual might quickly ascend the social hierarchy with a spin of the wheel, but actual power in Monaco was concentrated in the hands of select few. The four chapters of this dissertation take us chronologically through Monaco’s modern history, beginning with the legalization of gambling in 1855 and ending just over a century later with the 1956 wedding of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly. This periodization represents Monaco’s transition from remote backwater to booming gambling town, and ends with the 1950s because by that decade other resorts, 28 42 See Antonia Fraser (ed.) The House of Windsor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) has also been a useful source here. especially Las Vegas, challenged Monte Carlo’s claim to being the world’s preeminent gambling destination. Chapter One traces the 1863 founding and first two decades of the Monte Carlo casino-resort, which I refer to as a “cosmopolitan company town.” Monte Carlo, as with other nineteenth-century company towns, was built around a single industry and controlled by a small and localized power bloc. Yet Monte Carlo’s founders built, operated, and advertised their town as an “open city,” encouraging patrons to think that in the casino-resort they could eschew their rigid, traditional, and locally-based identities in favor of more open, modern, and cosmopolitan ways of seeing and being in the world. While Chapter One focuses on Monte Carlo’s resort infrastructure, Chapter Two takes us inside the casino itself to explore how the managers of the SBM presented the Monte Carlo casino as a stage upon which gamblers might attain and display their privileged status through wagering on games of chance. In so doing, the SBM’s management drew on the performative styles of high-stakes gambling that had typically been practiced in the aristocratic spa resorts of early modern Europe; updating these practices for a largely bourgeois clientele. The SBM encouraged clients to approach gambling as a highly subjective experience, where one’s individual actions might outdo the seemingly all-powerful whims of fortune. Anxious contemporary observers in turn worried that the SBM, by pandering to the egotism of their clients, was fostering in Monte Carlo a pathological state of anomie, gender upheaval, and degeneration. If Chapter Two suggests that the SBM conceived of the Monte Carlo casino as a theatrical space encouraging self-conscious displays of social mobility, then Chapter 29 Three shows how Monaco’s boosters paired this strategy with a celebration of physical mobility in the surrounding resort, promoting the idea that freedom of movement would be the ultimate reward of the financial gains that might be attained in the Monte Carlo casino. Chronicling the long embrace of machine speed in Monaco, this chapter focuses on the intersections of bourgeois and aristocratic interests that led to the SBM’s funding of the 1924 Ballet Russes production of Le Train Bleu, and to the 1929 staging of the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix. The dissertation closes by considering the 1956 wedding of Prince Rainier Grimaldi and Grace Kelly as the apotheosis of a century-long history of Monaco’s boosters trading on mass communication and mass transportation technologies to promote their principality as a glamorous and cosmopolitan resort. Chapter Four suggests that it was more than coincidental that Monaco’s Prince and his handlers should look to the myth-making power of Hollywood at a time when the principality’s tourism industry was struggling. Rainier’s wedding to an international celebrity was an attempt to continue and strengthen Monaco’s claims to cosmopolitanism through a widely-broadcast celebration that harnessed the power of global film culture. Focusing on how foreign journalists reconciled Monaco’s heavily mediated myth with the realities they experienced while reporting on the wedding, this chapter uncovers the problems inherent in trading upon visual spectacle in an age of real-time reportage. Each of the dissertation’s four chapters concerns some form of aristocratic practice updated for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: from the evolution of the aristocratic spa town into the modern casino-resort (Chapter One); to the creation of a theatrical casino space encouraging aristocratic-style displays of privilege through 30 gambling (Chapter Two); to the hosting of sporting competitions in which competitors demonstrated their mastery of horsepower to achieve distinction (Chapter Three), to the arranged marriage of a dynastic ruler and a Hollywood ‘princess’ (Chapter Four). In the nineteenth century, the period covered in the first two chapters, Monaco’s boosters looked to members of the aristocracy as social and cultural leaders whose styles and modes they could adapt for a bourgeois clientele. By the twentieth century, the focus of the final two chapters, Monaco’s boosters looked ever more towards bourgeois pursuits and styles, which they then reworked to suit Monaco’s quasi-aristocratic setting and dynastic power structure. By showing how the managers of the SBM, working alongside the Grimaldi princes, succeeded precisely by negotiating the tenuous balance between elitism and popular appeal, this dissertation challenges reductive frameworks that treat small-scale, aristocratic, and nominally pre-modern practices and large-scale, bourgeois, and modern enterprises as mutually exclusive entities. 43 This project instead suggests how modernity was in many ways constituted though a complex alchemy that fused the traditional and the vanguard to create something wholly unprecedented. While mobile populations, from so-called wandering Jews to rail-riding tramps, have long bred unease, current thinkers, from post-Marxist theorists to liberal financial columnists, declare that we now live in an age in which a person’s access to mobility not 31 43 Here I build on Nancy Troy’s study of the business strategies that Paul Poiret pioneered to “both undermine and to exploit the apparent contradictions between aristocratic elitism and populist appeal.” Nancy J. Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 16. Lawrence Levine’s Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990) has also been a useful source. Concerning the persistence of aristocratic modes into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Cannadine; Hobsbawm and Ranger; Mayer; Robert Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). only reflects his or her privilege but also provides the means through which to attain power, both economic and social. The contemporary era is one in which we regard the most mobile members of our societies with envy rather than with fear. 44 By considering the ways in which Monaco’s boosters thrived by harnessing the power of modern mobility and selling appealing images of their resort as a cosmopolitan center for the world’s most mobile individuals, this dissertation suggests a longer intertwined history of privilege, power, and mobility. Though it concerns a tiny and retrograde principality ruled in an absolutist manner, the history of Monaco thus asks us to consider the future of large, modern, and 32 44 Concerning nomadic populations as the objects of anxiety and scorn, see Tim Cresswell, The Tramp in America (London: Reaktion Books 2001); Liisa Malkki, “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees,” Cultural Anthropology 7, no. 1 (1992): 22-44; Scott; Joanne Sharp et al. (ed.) Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/ Resistance (London: Routledge, 2000); David Sibley, Outsiders in Urban Societies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981). For studies suggesting that mobility now reflects and provides the means through to attain power and privilege, see Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (London: Polity, 2000); Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005); Hardt and Negri; Harvey. Histories of cross-border Jewish networks have also been informative in tracing debates about mobile individuals as the objects of scorn and of envy. See Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Fred Rosenbaum, Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). democratic nations. 45 Despite the global influence of concepts such as “the republican ideal,” “the social contract,” “the nation above all else,” – concepts that, however abstract, have been powerful enough to prompt people to execute their kings and queens, endure civil war, and to torture, kill, and die in global conflicts - many individuals, when fortunate enough to have the means to do so, have chosen to live in ways deemed detrimental by, and to, their home countries. Perhaps the modern nation is little more than a convenient abstraction meant to keep the less socially- and physically-mobile masses in check, while the fluid elite of these nations operate in ways that are antithetical to the communities they presume to lead. The durability of the nation-state has been put into question by the fall of Empires, by World Wars, and by ethnic violence. Meanwhile, the ascendance of the self-interested homo economicus has continued largely unabated, and small sovereign territories reap tremendous 33 45 Concerning my claims that Monaco is ruled in an absolutist manner, see Jean-Baptiste Robert, who in the Grimaldi palace-endorsed Annales Monégasques (Monaco: Imprimerie de Monaco, 1999), 1 writes: “In terms of executive power, the Prince can take, without hearing any other opinions, “Sovereign ordinances,” which take immediate effect.” A locally-printed guide to Monegasque identity, while highlighting Monaco’s various representative bodies, such as the National Council, also acknowledges that the prince has ultimate executive power. See Gilbert Marangoni-Navello, L’identité Monegasque, (Monaco: Self-published, 2003). The Monegasques were granted a constitution in 1910, but their participation in the democratic process is limited by western standards. Investigative journalists have been harsh in their assessments of political life in Monaco. See Pierre Abramovici, Un rocher bien occupé: Monaco pendant la guerre, 1939-1945 (Paris: Seuil, 2001); Didier Laurens, Monaco: un pays ensoleillé dirigé par un prince magnifique (Paris: Hachette, 2007); Frédéric Laurent, Le Prince sur son rocher (Paris: Fayard, 2003). An investigation into Monaco’s financial system, launched by France’s National Assembly, has also been instructive. See Vincent Peillon and Arnaud Montebourg, Monaco et le Blanchiment: un territoire complaisant sous proctection française; Mission de l’Assemblée nationale sur la déliquance financière, (Paris: Assemblée nationale / Edition 1, 2000). benefits from such developments. 46 Monaco offers a standard of living far higher than that in Nice or Genoa, its former city-state rivals, which were absorbed into larger national projects while Monaco clung so doggedly to its sovereignty. But would the people who claim citizenship in Monaco be as willing to fight and die for the principality as would the French and Italian citizens of Nice and Genoa? Many of the roughly thirty thousand people who make up Monaco’s current populace, eighty-four percent of whom hail from outside of the principality, likely consider themselves less as the loyal the subjects of Prince Albert and more as citizens of the world, temporarily residing in his principality for financial reasons. The Grimaldi princes prospered by offering gambling when that practice was widely prohibited, and later profited by allowing people to secret their money away from their home nations; but were they wrong in doing so? Concentrating certain forms of speculation and finance into places where no questions are asked and then vilifying these places (while not working overly hard to actually abolish their practices) allows us to excuse the darker aspects of global finance while still participating in the system. This dissertation shows how important culture, play, and motion have been in considerations of the history of capitalism and in the end asks, if it does not answer, the question as to whether the filtering of various forms of “anonymous wealth” into Monaco, a place 34 46 Concerning homo economicus, see John Stuart Mill’s foundational proposal that "[political economy] does not treat the whole of man’s nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of judging the comparative efficacy of means for obtaining that end." John Stuart Mill, "On the Definition of Political Economy, and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It," London and Westminster Review, October 1836. Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1874). Other economists suggest a model of homo reciprocans, suggesting that humans are instead primarily interested in collaborating and improving their communities. See, for instance, Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huffman and Uwe Sunde, “Homo Reciprocans: Survey Evidence on Behavioural Outcomes.” The Economic Journal , Vol. 119, No. 536, (March 2009), 592-612. where state and corporate interests have long worked in close collusion, marks an aberration in the history of global capitalism or is an especially blatant expression of its fundamental order. 35 Chapter One Monte Carlo, Open City: The Making of a Cosmopolitan Company Town Monte Carlo is planned and conducted to draw not only those who wish to try their luck, or are likely to succumb to the temptation when they have run in its way, but all who can enjoy life. As the nets hereabout sweep the seas, the attractions of this fascinating spot are addressed to all tastes. - “Monte Carlo.” The Times. April 11, 1879. For real, subtle, subterranean, but omnipresent power and influence there is only one system in the world to be compared to the [Monte Carlo] Casino, and that is De Beers, in Cape Colony…the Casino has reached the condition of being “the State within a State.” - “Riviera Notes.” The Guardian. February 6, 1905. Whereas a journey ordinarily gives the bourgeois the illusion of slipping the ties that bind him to his social class, the watering place fortifies his consciousness of belonging to the upper class. - Walter Benjamin, Rolf Tiedemann (ed.), Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (trans.), The Arcades Project (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 414. 36 In the spring of 1882, Karl Marx spent a month in Monte Carlo under the orders of his physician, Dr. Kunemann, who believed that the resort’s mild climate and modern sea-bathing facilities might ease his patient’s pleurisy. 47 Marx apparently enjoyed his surroundings, writing to Friedrich Engels, “you will know everything about the charm exerted by the beauties of nature here. […] Many of its features vividly recall those of Africa.” 48 But in another letter sent the same day to his daughter, in which he jokingly compared Monaco to the fictional comic-opera principality featured in a Jacques Offenbach operetta, ‘The Duchess of Gerolstein,’ Marx revealed how clearly he saw the brutal economic forces behind the resort’s surface niceties. Marx noted that Nature here is splendid, further improved by art – I mean the magical gardens on barren rocks that slope from steep heights all the way down to the blue sea, like the hanging terraces of Babylonian gardens. But the economic basis of Monaco-Gerolstein is the gambling Casino; if it should close up tomorrow, Monaco-Gerolstein would go into the grave – all of it! 49 There is no record that Marx entered the casino. “I do not like to visit the gambling hall,” he wrote his daughter, and remarked that upon seeing gamblers filing into the casino clutching their supposedly irrefutable mathematical guides he had “the impression of seeing inmates of a lunatic asylum.” 50 Marx reported that he did not “expect to leave this robber’s nest before early June…Whether or not to stay longer, Dr. Kunemann is to decide.” 51 37 47 Marx’s recuperation in Monte Carlo is also mentioned in ‘Letter from Engels to Sorge,’ March 15, 1883. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Volume 46 (New York: International Publishers, 1992), 460. 48 ‘Letter from Marx to Engels.’ May 8, 1882. Marx and Engels, 253 49 ‘Letter from Marx to Jenny Longuet,’ May 8, 1882. Marx and Engels, 255. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. That Dr. Kunemann should instruct a patient as ill-disposed to gambling as Karl Marx to convalesce in Monte Carlo indicates how successfully its founder, a French entrepreneur named François Blanc, had built and promoted the gambling town as a modern spa-resort catering to a variety of tastes. Blanc was the first casino proprietor to recognize that the future of his industry lay not simply in selling his guests the opportunity to partake in games of chance, but in imbuing them with the feeling that they were participating in an exciting and exclusive lifestyle simply by being in the resort in which the casino was housed. 52 At a time when casino gambling was widely banned across Europe, Monte Carlo’s founder not only presented casino gambling as a legally and socially acceptable practice, but glamorized the very act of transgressing against one’s home country. 53 He built, operated, and advertised Monte Carlo in such ways as to encourage his patrons to think that in the casino-resort they could eschew their rigid, traditional, and locally-based identities in favor of more open, modern, and cosmopolitan ways of seeing and being in the world. As visitors to Monte Carlo enjoyed the many non-gambling amenities in a town built expressly for their amusement, they could imagine themselves having gained entry into a privileged group consisting of the era’s most socially and physically mobile individuals, who, like themselves, were unfettered by the responsibilities and laws of their home countries. The Grimaldi dynasty was (and remains) a large shareholder in in the Société des Bains de Mer (SBM), the joint stock company that Monaco’s Prince Florestan 38 52 Concerning the history of nineteenth century resorts and broader studies of tourism, see Introduction, FN 29. 53 On the history of glamour, see Introduction, FN 9. formed in 1855 to oversee the gambling concession in his principality. 54 In 1863, Florestan’s successor, Prince Charles, granted Blanc control of the SBM and the monopoly on gambling in the principality. With his fortunes so deeply intertwined with those of Blanc, the Grimaldi prince gave this non-Monegasque free rein, allowing Blanc to become the sole major commercial developer in the principality, and even granted him the editorship of the Journal de Monaco to help him curry the support of the often unruly Monegasques. 55 Blanc experienced none of the speculative one-upmanship found in other resorts that emerged in the same period, such as Coney Island, where individual business-owners building spectacular attractions to outdo their competitors collectively drove the area’s development in an iterative and uneven fashion. 56 SBM profits paid for everything from gas and roads to water and garbage collection, playing such a fundamental role in developing Monaco’s built environment and fostering its civic, social, and cultural life that the principality in many ways functioned as an extension of this corporation. 57 Built with foreign investment, staffed with foreign workers, publicized in the foreign press, and dependent on the gambling losses of foreign visitors, the Monte Carlo casino-resort proved tremendously profitable 39 54 An SBM report lists the top four shareholders in the SBM as Prince Charles Grimaldi, Mme. la Princesse Radziwill, Mme. la Princesse R. Bonaparte, and Edmond Blanc. ‘Letter from Jalivot to the Governor General,’ undated (Numbered 1074), 1882. Archives the Société des bains de mer (hereafter SBM), Folder 1882. 55 For general histories of Monaco, see Introduction, FN 13. 56 For histories of the development of Coney Island, which, like Monaco, became a popular resort in the 1860s, see Kasson; and Rem Koolhaus Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: Monacelli Press, 1997), 29-80. 57 ‘Granting of Gambling Privileges to Francois Blanc.’ April 2, 1863. SBM, Folder 1863. for the Blanc family as well as for the Grimaldi family: it was a company town that traded on cosmopolitan ideas to attract a multinational clientele. The pairing of the terms “cosmopolitan” and “company town” would appear to be a paradox. Cosmopolitanism is a philosophical and political concept whose adherents value the ability to think beyond the limits of the territorially-limited state. 58 Company towns are planned settlements built, owned, and operated by a single business. 59 While cosmopolitanism is an open, border-transcending, and abstract idea, the company town is a fixed, localized, and concrete entity. Yet even the most transnationally-informed concept can become decidedly provincial when put into practice. By exploring the intersections between cosmopolitan ideas and the practices of urban planning in Monaco, this chapter suggests that we can add to our understanding of the history of both subjects. Building on the recent work of Judith R. Walkowitz, who has considered cosmopolitanism less as a political ideal than as “a system of distinction and taste,” this chapter considers how the founders of the Monte Carlo casino-resort capitalized on new ideas about thinking beyond the limits of the state, not in pursuit of any border- 40 58 Legal scholar Jeremy Waldron defines cosmopolitanism as “a way of being in the world, a way of constructing an identity for oneself that is different from . . .the idea of belonging to or devotion to or immersion in a particular culture;” and as the "utopian ideal of a polis or polity constructed on a world scale, rather than on the basis of regional, territorially limited states.” “What Is Cosmopolitanism? ” Journal of Political Philosophy. vol. 8, no. 2 (2000): 227–243; 227, 228. Concerning difficulties in defining cosmopolitanism, see David Simpson, “The Limits of Cosmopolitanism and the Case for Translation,” European Romantic Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (2005), 141–152. 59 John S. Garner, in The Company Town: Architecture and Society in the Early Industrial Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), defines the company town as “a settlement built and operated by a single business enterprise;” while Oliver J. Dinius and Angela Vergara, in Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities (Savannah: University of Georgia Press, 2011), define the company town as “a planned community owned and controlled by a single company.” See also .D. Porteous, “The Nature of the Company Town.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers , no. 51 (1970), 127-142, 127. transcending humanist or utopian goals, but to achieve local commercial gains and consolidate local power. 60 Given Monaco’s small size (less than two square kilometers), autocratic form of government, small local population, influx of foreign investment and labor, and particular form of industry, the founding of the Monte Carlo casino-resort offers a particularly rich case study through which to expand upon current scholarship concerning the history of 41 60 Walkowitz writes that cosmopolitanism, as popularly advertised in popular print during the Edwardian period, “was less associated with Kantian concerns of universal justice or disinterested humanitarianism than with transnational forms of commercialized culture and with transnational migrants.” Judith R. Walkowitz, “The "Vision of Salome": Cosmopolitanism and Erotic Dancing in Central London, 1908-1918.” The American Historical Review , Vol. 108, No. 2 (April 2003), 337-376,; 338, 339. For an overview of cosmopolitanism as a category of historical analysis, see Glenda Sluga and Julia Horne, “Cosmopolitanism: Its Pasts and Practices.” Journal of World History , Vol. 21, No. 3,(2010), 369-373. Foundational studies of cosmopolitanism include Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007); Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds., Cosmopolitanism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, eds., Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); David Held, Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities (London: Polity, 2010). For recent historical studies concerning cosmopolitanism see, Judith Walkowitz, Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012); Michael R. Auslin, Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S – Japan Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012). Histories of cross-border Jewish networks have also been informative to my study. See, Introduction, FN 42. company towns. 61 While scholars have recently called for comparative studies that consider how company towns functioned as nodes within broader networks of international capitalism, this chapter employs the transnational approach at a local level to show how a small group of speculators built and promoted their town as a nexus of transnational sociability. 62 Unlike other company towns, Monte Carlo was not devoted to manufacturing or to extracting resources, nor was it the handmaiden of a larger colonial project. Building their resort on European soil, largely with the speculative capital, labor, and disposable income of other Europeans, Monte Carlo’s boosters profited from the monoculture of gambling, bolstered by the selling of spectacle to an international and increasingly mobile clientele. The SBM’s managers and the Grimaldi princes worked together to make Monaco a place that would appeal to members of the aristocracy as well as to middle-class clients by fostering an environment that was equal parts 42 61 Concerning company towns, see Daniel J. Walkowitz, Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton- Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855-84 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981); Rex Lucas and Lorne Tepperman, Minetown, Milltown, Railtown: Life in Canadian Communities of Single Industry (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2008); Laurie Mercier, Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana's Smelter City (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001); Margaret Cole, Robert Owen of New Lanark (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953); Christian Devillers, Le Creusot: Naissance et développement d'une ville industrielle, 1782-1914 (Champ Vallon: 1981); Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). For an overview of the history of company towns that traces the shift from relatively informally-planned nineteenth century company towns to “institutionalized and professionalized” company towns planning in the twentieth century, see Margaret Crawford , “The "New" Company Town.” Perspecta , Vol. 30, Settlement Patterns (1999), 48-57. My understanding of the history of company towns has also been informed by scholarship concerning colonial urban planning. See Zeynep Celik, Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830-1914 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008); Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London: Routledge, 2007); Robert Home, Of Planting and Planning: The making of British Colonial Cities (London: Routledge, 1996); Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash (eds.) Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon (London: Routledge, 2007). 62 See Oliver J. Dinius and Angela Vergara, in Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities (Savannah: University of Georgia Press, 2011), x. openness to, and escape from, life outside the principality. Yet this SBM-Grimaldi alliance was only able to create such a purportedly fluid and cosmopolitan atmosphere by exerting rigid control over local workers and by keeping the signs of labor safely out of sight of those who had traveled to Monaco to escape - however temporarily - such realities. Prior to the founding of Monte Carlo, casino gambling took place largely in the spa towns of Northern Europe. 63 Spa proprietors catered primarily to members of the European nobility who nominally came to “take the cure” by drinking and bathing in mineral waters. These aristocratic spa patrons would stay for weeks and months at a time, returning, like pilgrims, to their favored sites. 64 Despite their nominally medicinal raisons d’être, spa towns were as much places to socialize as they were places to rehabilitate, and people hoping to display their privileged social status or to secure good marriages appreciated the concentration of people of ‘quality’ in these relatively contained environments. 65 Metropolitan newspapers reported the arrivals and departures of notables at popular watering places, and to find one’s name on such a list was a mark of social distinction. 66 Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, as 43 63 For the history of European spas see Alain Corbin, The Lure of The Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World 1750-1840 (London: Penguin, 1995); Fred Gray, Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Society, and Nature (London: Reaktion Books, 2006); Lise Grenier (ed.) Villes d’eaux en France (Paris: Institut Français (1985); Eric T. Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Mackaman; Armand Wallon, La vie quotidienne dans les villes d'eaux : 1850-1914 (Paris: Hachette); Walton. 64 Jennings, 41. 65 Ibid. 66 Mackaman, 129 . spa towns shifted increasingly from primarily curative to primarily social spaces, their clients, many of whom were completely healthy, turned to other distractions to while away the hours, with gambling being foremost among these non-medicinal pursuits. 67 By the mid-nineteenth century, Europeans had grown accustomed to the idea that people might gamble in spa towns within territories where the practice was legal, so long as such play was kept as physically and legally separated from everyday metropolitan life as possible. 68 In the case of Monte Carlo, Blanc took the established relationship between casinos and spa towns and stood it on its head. While spa proprietors had built casinos as but some among many amenities designed to complement the curative appeals of their existing towns, Blanc instead built an entire spa town to complement the gambling appeals of an existing casino. Updating the model of the early-modern European spa town, he conceived of Monte Carlo as a unified “playground” space wherein visitors from many different nations could imagine themselves temporarily free from their everyday concerns while still enjoying modern comforts equal to, and perhaps even greater than those found in their own cities. 69 The strategies Blanc developed in Monte Carlo during his tenure as director of the SBM between 1863 and 1877 led to the 44 67 D. Schwartz, 185. 68 Mackaman, 132. 69 In using the term “playground” to describe Monte Carlo, I draw on the work of historian Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955). Huizinga proposes that “play is distinct from "ordinary" life both as to locality and duration," and is therefore marked by "its secludedness and its limitedness." [8] Play-grounds, Huizinga argues, are “forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.” [10] In similar fashion was Monte Carlo both “secluded” because of its distance and difference from the metropolis and “limited” because visits there were meant to be only temporary respites. hyphenation of the modern gambling experience: the standalone casino gave way to the casino-hotel and the casino-resort. 70 Recent scholarship about nineteenth-century casinos, however, focuses on how these profit-driven and rationally-planned gambling spaces supposedly replaced the smaller, less formally-organized gambling spaces found in aristocratic spas. 71 The historian of gambling Gerda Reith writes that such “industrialized” casinos became “disengaged from [their] surrounding social life and organized into distinct, highly commercial spheres,” and suggests that “the casino…emerged in the second half of the century as a collection of public rooms devoted exclusively to gambling, away from its earlier formulations as a dancing saloon and summer house.” 72 The history of the Monte Carlo casino-resort reveals a more complex history, less revolutionary and more evolutionary. Blanc indeed provided the new kinds of highly-organized and profit-driven table games (pitting gamblers against a faceless ‘house’ rather than against one another) that Reith identifies as distinctly modern and “industrial.” But Monte Carlo’s founder did not “disengage” his casino from the town’s surrounding social life, nor did he intend for it to be entirely distinct from “earlier formulations.” Blanc instead adapted modern versions of traditional spa town amenities onto an extant gambling space. The 45 70 When gambling speculators (who now rarely build or promote their casinos as standalone gambling sites) physically and symbolically link their casinos with additional non-gambling amenities, surrounding themed areas, or entire resort towns, they are, whether consciously or not, building on Blanc’s foundational model. As the historian of Las Vegas, David G. Schwartz notes, speculators who have built standalone casinos in Las Vegas have failed consistently. David G. Schwartz, Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond (New York: Routledge, 2004), 8. 71 See Jan McMillen (ed.) Gambling Cultures: Studies in History and Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1996); Gerda Reith, The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999). For other works on the history of gambling and gambling spaces, see Introduction, FN 31. 72 Reith, 74. Monte Carlo casino was never “devoted exclusively to gambling,” but rather provided visitors with comfortably furnished lounges, a reading room, a restaurant and bar, and a concert hall that hosted daily performances. 73 This diversification of function extended well beyond the casino’s walls: Monte Carlo boasted exotic gardens; a Pigeon Shoot where people could test their aim against live birds; terraces for promenading; restaurants; hotels; and a train station connecting the resort to the rest of Europe, all within a few dozen yards of the gaming tables. François Blanc had already begun to develop the casino-resort model prior to his arrival in Monaco. His early biography shows evidence of the kinds of self-interested practices and disrespect for the laws of his nation that he would later attempt to glamorize as head of the SBM. 74 Escaping the bonds of his traditional agrarian background in favor of a more peripatetic existence, Blanc first attained wealth by breaking the laws of his home country, France. He then built on that wealth in German territory, before making his greatest fortune in Monaco. By harnessing the power of novel modes of communication, and by quickly adapting to changes in transportation technology and the long-distance credit economy, Blanc became an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur and, despite (or perhaps because of) being born outside of Monaco, in many ways the quintessential Monégasque. 46 73 For a detailed description of the casino on its opening day, see ‘Rapport de M. de Payan: Ouverture du Casino des Spéluges.’ February 18, 1863. SBM, Folder 1863. 74 My understanding of Blanc’s pre-Monaco biography comes largely from Egon Corti, The Wizard of Homburg and Monte Carlo (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1934). The Blanc twins, François and Louis, were born fatherless in 1806 in the village of Courthézon, lying in the Rhone valley. Reaching adulthood, they left the valley, drifting around France in the centuries-old style of the compagnons. A mathematical prodigy, François would stake whatever he and Louis earned at various jobs on games of chance, soon winning regularly enough to support them both as a professional gambler. In 1834, the brothers used these winnings to open a small ‘bank’ in Bordeaux. The term is used loosely, as the only function of this venture was to provide the twins with enough ready money to speculate on the Parisian Bourse. 75 The Blancs bribed officials to infiltrate the most efficient means of communication linking Paris and Bordeaux at that time: the government operated telegraphe aérien, a network of towers manned by state workers with telescopes who would relay official messages from tower to tower. With bribed telegraph workers providing the Blancs with market news before anyone else in Bordeaux, the brothers netted over a hundred thousand francs, until an official exposed the operation. In the spring of 1837, with the brothers on trial for corrupting government officials, François defended their actions by arguing that securing exclusive information was the only way to survive on the Bourse, which he likened to an “infamous gambling hell.” 76 As no law had yet been written to address insider trading, the twins received only a small fine to cover court costs. 47 75 Concerning the bourse in the nineteenth century, see Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur and Angelo Riva, “The Paris Financial Market in the Nineteenth Century: Complementarities and Competition in Microstructures.” Economic History Review, November, 2011. 76 The trial is recorded in the Gazette des Tribunaux on December 10, 1836; January 28, 1837; and March 13-17, 1837. Some of the richest descriptions of gambling spaces as ‘hells’ are offered by Honoré de Balzac in Le Peau de chagrin (1831). Concerning references to the underworld in gambling, see also Luc Sante, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (New York: Vintage, 1992); David Pike, Metropolis on the Styx: The Underworlds of Modern Urban Culture, 1800-2001 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007). The Blancs quit Bordeaux and headed to Paris and the Palais-Royal, lined with the enfers, or ‘gambling hells’ that they had so acrimoniously decried during their trial. There they were exposed to the inside operations of an enfer run by a Bordeaux acquaintance. Their apprenticeship would not last long, as on New Year’s Day 1838, Louis-Philippe outlawed gambling in France, in spite of the fact that the Palais-Royal’s seven legal casinos were then earning the state between six and nine million francs in tax revenues. 77 It was well-known that many prominent fortunes had been squandered in these gambling houses, and Louis-Philippe, perhaps also embarrassed that the area in front of his ancestral home had become a well-known center of vice, ultimately deemed the loss of this and future French wealth a threat to the state that outweighed the more immediate economic benefits. 78 Several of the Parisian gambling operators and their clients headed to nearby German spa towns where the practice remained legal. The Blancs followed, acquiring the gambling concession in the town of Bad Homburg, which, with a population of three thousand, formed the center of a small territory controlled by the Hessen-Homburg dynasty. In Bad Homburg in the 1840s and 1850s François Blanc (Louis died soon after the brothers acquired the concession) took the first steps towards developing the casino-resort strategy that he would fully realize with Monte Carlo. Aside from a single inn catering to a few Frankfurters who came in the summer to drink from the waters of a mineral spring, there were no amenities in Bad Homburg. Blanc anticipated that his casino would founder unless visitors to the town could find not only sufficient 48 77 David G. Schwartz, Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 192. 78 Ibid. accommodation but social and cultural opportunities equal to those they enjoyed in other popular spa destinations. He urged local grandees to spend on building modern facilities to house and entertain potential guests, and as Bad Homburg grew, with Blanc promoting its accommodations, cultural pursuits, and the curative effects of its mineral waters alongside its gambling appeals, so too did profits rise at his casino. 79 In 1855 a French-born lawyer named A. Eynaud, an advisor to Monaco’s Prince Florestan, traveled to Bad Homburg to investigate Blanc’s operation and to weigh the feasibility of launching a similar enterprise in the principality. At the time, Florestan faced bankruptcy and an unruly populace. Seven years earlier the people of Menton and Roquebrune, previously part of Monaco, had declared their towns “free cities” amid the revolutionary fervor of 1848. 80 The citrus harvest of these lost lands had provided ninety percent Monaco’s economic output; Menton and Roquebrune had also constituted eighty percent of the Grimaldi’s territory. 81 Florestan first tried to establish other local industries in response to this crisis, including the distillation of alcohol, the manufacturing of perfume, and the making of lace, but all of these ventures failed. 82 Eynaud reported that Blanc’s operation in Bad Homburg was providing yearly revenues 49 79 In Homburg Blanc gave evidence of his cosmopolitan outlook through his marriage to Marie-Charlotte Hensel, a German, at a time when Franco-Prussian relations were strained. 80 Menton and Roquebrune would be joined to France in 1860 as a result of the Treaty of Turin, which saw Nice annexed to France, and an ensuing plebiscite. Monaco’s Prince Charles (who succeeded Florestan in 1856) signed an agreement with Napoleon III, formally dropping any claims to the two towns in exchange for four million francs and continued recognition of Monaco’s independence. As a result of these negotiations Sardinian forces that had been garrisoned in Monaco were removed, further ensuring the principality’s continued sovereign status. See L.H Labande, Annales de la Principauté de Monaco (Monaco: Archives du Palais, 1939), 193. 81 A traditional local saying held that “Menton and Roquebrune paid, Monaco profited.” As quoted in Xan Fielding, The Money Spinner: Monte Carlo and Its Fabled Casino (New York: Little, Brown, 1977), 12. 82 Corti, 138. of 350,000 francs to the local Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg, and noted, with what may have been an intentional pun on the town’s nominal claim to be a thermal resort, that people “spend money there like water.” 83 Suitably convinced, Florestan legalized gambling in 1855, making Monaco the only place for hundreds of miles where one could turn a card or spin a wheel without fear of legal reprisal. 84 Louis-Philippe had not been the only leader to abolish gambling in his country; the nineteenth century witnessed what historian David G. Schwartz has called a “worldwide turn away from legal gambling,” as officials acted on their concerns about the moral and economic repercussions of the practice. 85 The same lack of competition that had made the legalization of gambling in Monaco such an appealing prospect, however, also led to the central conundrum facing those who would attempt such an enterprise. Monaco remained independent only with the approval of various protectors, whose favors the Grimaldi dynasty had curried by lending out the use of their men and harbor while playing on fears that they might at any time shift allegiance to a rival power. By rejecting the legal and economic norms of Monaco’s neighbors, Florestan risked alienating the principality’s protectors - France, most importantly. Thus while the Prince traded upon Monaco’s sovereignty to legalize gambling, by doing so he wagered the very dominion over his territory and his subjects that he was hoping to protect. 50 83 Corti, 139. 84 At the time small legal casinos could be found only in spa towns in Northern Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, and a few German territories. 85 D. Schwartz, 192. Eynaud suggested that the same plan Blanc had developed to bring more gamblers to Bad Homburg could be reworked to help them navigate the fraught political situation in Monaco. Florestan could avoid further antagonizing his neighbors, as well as provide succor to any locals ill-favored towards gambling, by promoting the new enterprise as a spa resort that happened to offer casino gambling. “The bathing establishment should in a sense act as a façade for the gambling establishment,” Eynaud wrote to Florestan; “such an enterprise would be of the greatest benefit to the general interest, as well as to that of Your Highness.” 86 The pair drew up plans to form a company to oversee the gambling concession, naming the new firm the Société des Bains de Mer et du Cercle des Etrangers à Monaco to add to the subterfuge. In the document that Florestan and Eynaud wrote outlining the SBM’s founding statutes to potential concessionaires, the right to provide games of chance was mentioned only as the fourteenth of twenty-one articles. 87 After eight years of failure by other gambling concessionaires, Blanc acquired the Monaco concession in 1863 from Prince Charles Grimaldi, who had succeeded Florestan. The two parties would work closely with one another to build Monte Carlo. Eynaud, now advisor to Charles, counseled the Prince to make it clear to the new SBM director that “he will have a free hand, with no Government restrictions or interference other than those laid down in the schedule of conditions.” 88 The document granting Blanc the right to acquire the gambling concession stipulated that the SBM would supply gas and water to the people of Monaco, build roads, ensure regular 51 86 Eynaud’s 1855 letter to Florestan is quoted in Corti, 140. 87 ‘Projet de Cahiers des charges redigé par M. Eynaud.’ September 15, 1855. SBM, Folder 1855. 88 As quoted in Corti, 179. transportation by land and sea between Monaco and Nice, complete construction on the uncompleted hotel adjacent to the casino, publish the local newspaper, and host annual benefits for the poor, all out of its own revenues. In exchange, the company was granted the right to provide “attractions of all kinds, notably Balls, Performances, Concerts and Fetes; Games of chance such as Whist, Écarté, Piquet, Boston, Reversé, and others.” 89 Blanc agreed to restrict gambling to what was then a peripheral space, as far away from the Grimaldi palace, which for centuries had been the center of Monegasque social and economic life, as could be found in Monaco. 90 He took possession of a poorly built casino that stood alone next to a half-built hotel left unfinished on a plateau at the eastern edge of the principality, known to locals as les Spéluges (loosely translatable either as ‘the grottoes’ or ‘the disreputable haunts’). Monaco at that time boasted only five streets, a dozen small alleys, and three churches. 91 Eynaud predicted that Monaco would soon be “unrecognizable… [the new] town will house the casino, while the old town will remain the traditional business center,” which would appease “a population that demands calm and tranquility.” 92 Though physically separated, the close collusion between casino and palace was not lost on visitors to Monaco. Writing in 1888, Guy de Maupassant described how Opposite to the palace, rises the rival establishment, the Roulette. There is, however, no hatred, no hostility between them; for the one supports the other, which in turn protects the first… [a] unique instance of two neighboring and powerful families living in peace in one tiny state…Here 52 89 “Granting of Gambling Privileges to Francois Blanc.” April 2, 1863. SBM, Folder 1863. 90 ‘Achat des Spéluges.’ June 7, 1856. SBM, Folder 1856. 91 Graves, 57 92 ‘Letter from Eynaud to the Prince.’ February 23, 1863. SBM Archives, Folder 1863. the house of the sovereign, there the house of play; the old and the new society fraternizing to the sound of gold. 93 Clearly understanding how heavily Monte Carlo depended on foreign business, de Maupassant suggested that “the saloons of the Casino are as readily opened to strangers, as those of the Prince are difficult to access.” 94 Prince Charles compounded the physical sequestering of gambling in Monaco to the edge of the principality with a decree that barred Monegasques from entering the casino, unless for work. In 1865, Monaco’s official palace historian, Henri de Métevier argued that the Monegasques, being poor, possessed suspect morals and needed “safeguarding” from the same building whose delights could be enjoyed by wealthy foreign clients, whose wealth would presumably inoculate them from danger. De Métevier wrote that We do not approve of gaming houses, and the governments who suppress them act wisely. Established in large centres of the population, they [stimulate] the spirit of cupidity, and bring about…demoralization and ruin….But when established far from large cities, and when the distance is such that the cost of the journey can only be met by rich foreigners, one may accord such games the benefit of extenuating circumstances, for they do bring an element of prosperity to the native population, itself severely barred from entering. 95 De Métevier’s passage identified the most pressing issue in Monaco as poverty, not vice, and suggested that the solution to this problem would come from outside of the principality’s borders. The new gambling town being built in Monaco was not intended to 53 93 As quoted in Jones, 151. 94 Ibid. 95 Henri de Métevier, Monaco et ses princes (Imprimerie E. Jourdain, 1865). pull all of Europe towards “demoralization and ruin,” but would instead be a paradise for “rich foreigners,” with the casino prohibited to those who actually dwelled in the garden. While he built and advertised Monte Carlo as a modern version of the traditional aristocratic spa town, Blanc anticipated that the quantity, rather than the “quality” of his clientele would provide the most substantial and long-term profits. 96 Whereas early modern spa proprietors ran their watering towns as relatively enclosed spaces so that they might retain the aura of privilege necessary to attract aristocratic clients, Blanc presented Monte Carlo as both exclusive and accessible, so that it might appeal to a wide range of patrons. The SBM strove to maintain an air of privilege to attract the all- important aristocratic gamblers that frequented other spa resorts, but this was done precisely so that a broader clientele of aspiring bourgeois patrons would be enticed to visit Monaco. At a shareholders’ meeting, Blanc asserted that “the success of our enterprise depends not only upon the number of foreigners who visit our establishment,” but also “upon the rich and elegant class which is chary of its presence at any places but those where it finds pleasures and amusements of a style fitted to its usual standard of living.” 97 Upon taking control of the company, Blanc announced in the Journal de Monaco that he would build a town that appealed to not only “the rich” but also to all “those with money to spend, [who] are only waiting for accommodation to come and enjoy our climate.” 98 From where exactly these gamblers hailed was unimportant; anyone with money to lose at the tables would be welcomed in Monaco. 54 96 Kavanagh, Dice, 193. 97 As quoted in Corti, 251. 98 Francois Blanc’s announcement in Le Journal de Monaco, December 6, 1863, as quoted in Corti, 187. Blanc recognized that the underfunded and inexperienced gambling concessionaires who preceded him had failed in large part because the principality had been so difficult to reach from elsewhere in Europe, and because it offered few comforts to the small number of visitors who did manage to make the voyage, usually via a slow and irregular boat service from Nice or with the aid of coachmen willing to navigate the mountainous terrain, which was then a favorite haunt of highwaymen. 99 Blanc provided a faster and more regular boat service, purchasing four steamers to ferry clients between Nice, Genoa, and Monaco. 100 He also had a wide circular space built in front of the casino’s main entrance for the parking and self-conscious display of carriages, and, eventually, automobiles. 101 Most significantly, in 1865 Blanc privately transferred SBM- owned land around the casino to the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée Rail Company (PLM), free of charge, for the laying of rail and building of stations. 102 Contemporary observers alleged that Blanc provided the PLM with additional financial incentives, tantamount to outright bribery, to speed up their work. 103 The placement of Monaco’s first two train stations indicated how highly Blanc valued establishing a travel infrastructure to bring visitors to the resort. In the early years of rail development, a town’s first train station was typically placed at the edge of 55 99 In their correspondence with Monegasque officials, concessionaires prior to Blanc made frequent mention of the ways in which Monaco’s remoteness was hampering their business. See various letters from early concessionaires, Léon Langlois, Albert Aubert, Pierre-Auguste Daval, and François Lefebvre. Various Documents, 1856-1863. SBM Archives, Folders 1856-1863. 100 ‘Letter from de Payan to the Governor General.’ February 18, 1865. SBM, Folder 1865. 101 Ibid. 102 ‘Convention privée entre la Société des bains et la Cie des Chemins de Fers P.L.M.’ March 10, 1865. SBM, Folder 1865. 103 Louis Boisset, Monaco, Monte-Carlo, Grandeur et Decadence d’une Maison de Jeu (Nice: Gauthier, 1884), 37. the urban center. 104 Blanc instead insisted that Monaco have two train stations, one servicing the residential quarter in Monaco and the other in Monte Carlo, built in 1868 mere steps from the casino, which was by that time fast becoming the principality’s social and economic core. Blanc may have wanted the Monte Carlo station itself to symbolize a new and distinctly modern era in Monaco, a more grandiose version of the mention of ‘Under New Management’ that he made sure to include in newspaper advertisements for the resort in the 1860s. 105 The casino only began yielding significant profits after Monaco was connected to the French rail network. In 1863, just under twenty-eight thousand people had visited Monaco and the SBM operated at a net loss due to heavy spending on construction. 106 By 1870, two years after the arrival of the railroad, the number of visitors rose to roughly one hundred and sixty thousand; by 1880, the SBM yielded over thirteen million francs in gross receipts, resulting in a profit of over seven million francs. 107 In 1888, just under four hundred thousand travelers purchased train tickets to the principality; by 1902 Monaco welcomed one million visitors; and by 1909 the number had grown to nearly one and a half million. 108 Visitors to Monaco traveled from many parts of the world. Police records listing every man and woman expelled from Monaco between 1886 and 1903, which note each expellee’s country of birth, show a wide variety of national 56 104 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley University of California Press, 1987), 174. 105 SBM Advertisement, Le Journal de Nice, 1 January, 1864. ADAM. 106 These numbers are quoted in Smith, 323. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid. origins. 109 We can assume that some of these people expelled from Monaco had at some point frequented its casino. The earliest detailed census information only appears in the 1920s, but is also helpful in showing Monaco’s international makeup, with Italian, French, and English residents all as individual groups outnumbering the local Monegasques. 110 The SBM’s workforce was as equally international in origin as its clientele. Despite the pressures to employ as many Monegasques as possible, the SBM hired men and women from many different countries, relying heavily on personal recommendations from trusted sources during the hiring process. 111 Through such hiring practices, the SBM advanced the cosmopolitan notion that an individual’s specific skills and reputation were more important than his or her national origin. French and Italian workers made up the bulk of the SBM workforce, far outnumbering Monegasques. 112 Several of the casino’s top managers were Germans, transplanted 57 109 ‘List of expulsions from Monaco, 1866-1903.’ ADAM, 04M 0581. 110 According to The Times of London, ‘The Land of Chance’, April 9, 1929, the results of Monaco’s official population census, January 1928 were: Total Residents: 24,927; Italian: 9,626; French: 9,126; English: 2,262; Monegasques: 1,574; Swiss: 384; Americans: 323; Germans: 193; Dutch: 177; Russians: 171; Czechoslovaks: 86; Hungarians: 55; Turks: 53; Danes: 50; Greeks: 23; Yugoslavs: 21; Persians: 13; The article does not account for 790 residents, presumably of various nationalities. Abramovici, 37, also provides census data from 1939, listing fifty-two nationalities amongst Monaco’s residents. 111 ‘Candidats Monegasques: Demande D’Emplois.’ Undated, 1895. SBM, Folder 1895. Evidence of pressure to hire Monegasques is found in a 1928 letter from an SBM manager in response to a letter from Monaco’s Prince Louis, who had pushed him to hire more Monegasques. The casino director complained that “no sooner is an employee hired then he pleads on his Monegasque status to ask for preferential treatment: a raise, a change of assignment, a promotion.” René Léon, letter to Prince Louis, April 7 1928; SBM Archives, Folder ‘1928.’ Léon assured the prince that the point of hiring any new staff, regardless of nationality, was moot because his operation already suffered from a surplus of one third too many employees. One third of his staff, not coincidentally, was of Monegasque heritage. 112 P.d St.André, Monte-Carlo et La Guerre (Monaco: Imprimerie de Monaco, 5 October, 1916) lists following breakdown of national origin for SBM workers before the outbreak of the First World War: French, 1,296; Italians 1,1236; Monegasques, 414; Belgians, 218; Germans, 8; Various, 26. from Bad Homburg. 113 Evidence of the international makeup of the casino’s staff is provided by an 1883 list of workers in the gaming rooms, which included names as diverse as Lavitonnière, Zwerner, Kohl, Chomprek, and, appropriately, Babel. 114 The eighty-four member chorus of the Opéra de Monte Carlo comprised men and women of French, Italian, Russian, Belgian, German, English, American, Spanish backgrounds, and a sole Monegasque member. 115 The Romanian Jew Raoul Gunsbourg served as the longtime director of the opera, one of the most prominent cultural positions in the principality. In the aim of promoting the casino’s smooth operation the SBM took great efforts to quash the inevitable language barriers. 116 Managing such an internationally-mixed operation no doubt required some clever politicking on the part of the SBM as well as the Grimaldi Princes. The small population of Monegasques, some members of whom could trace their roots in the principality back for centuries, had from the very beginning of legalized gambling in Monaco been wary of the influx of workers recruited from abroad to help build and operate the concession. 117 Even before François Blanc founded Monte Carlo, one of his predecessors, a French businessman named Lefébvre who was trying, unsuccessfully, to make gambling in Monaco a profitable enterprise, noted that “the resources of the country are so minimal that even for the most basic construction projects we are obliged 58 113 ‘Letter from Francois Blanc to the Governor General.’ May 16, 1863. SBM, Folder 1863. 114 The complete list reads “Fouilleroux; Gindreau; Lavitonnière; Engremy; Fillhard; Lanek; Zwerner; Babel; Yungmann; Bergeand; Kohl; Hein; Schmidt; Guédon; Chomprek; Fontenoy; Lecocq; Schlein; Jacquemain.” ‘Etât du Personnel Supérieur des Jeux.’ December, 1883. SBM, Folder 1883. 115 Smith, 429. 116 ‘Letter from Jalivot to the Governor General.’ undated (Numbered 1074), 1882. SBM, Folder 1882. 117 See Chapter One. to draw primarily upon foreign labor.” 118 Lefébvre expressed concern about the dangers of “such a gathering [of foreign workers], often less than peaceful in their natures,” who were growing unruly over low wages. 119 He had seen, over a few weeks in March 1862, the number of laborers jump from twenty-five to one hundred and fifty, and by the end of the summer the number stood at five hundred, a substantial number given that the local Monegasque population at that time numbered roughly twelve hundred. 120 Added to these worries were the concerns of the French Minister of the Interior, who feared that undocumented foreign workers would slip across Monaco’s porous border into France. In response to a letter from the Minister, Monaco’s Governor General wrote that “the Government of Monaco, seeking to align itself completely with your goals, will exercise an especially thorough surveillance on travelers coming from Italy. We ask you to please furnish us with a list of the names of Italians that you have deemed dangerous.” 121 After Blanc’s founding of Monte Carlo, the number of workers would swell exponentially, and the rush of alien bodies that had dogged Lefébvre would continue to worry Blanc and 59 118 ‘Letter from M. Lefebvre to the Prince.’ December 12, 1861. SBM, Folder 1861. “The resources of the country are so minimal” wrote Lefébvre, “that even for the most basic construction projects we are obliged to draw primarily upon foreign labor.” 119 Ibid. 120 ‘Letter from M. de Payan to the Governor General.’ March 1, 1862; ‘Letter from M. de Payan to the Governor General.’ March 8, 1862; ‘Letter from M. de Payan to the Governor General.’ March 29, 1862. SBM, Folder 1862. De Payan’s report from August 1862 speaks of a party thrown for the labor force that was attended by five hundred workers. ‘Report from M. de Payan to the Governor General.’ August 23, 1862. SBM, Folder 1862. 121 ‘Letter from the Governor General of Monaco to the Prefect of the Department of the Alpes Maritimes.’ circa November, 1862. Archives Départementales des Alpes-Maritimes (hereafter ADAM), 1M 0432, Fonds de la préfécture: Relations avec la Principauté de Monaco, 1856 – 1913. The letter is undated but is almost certainly in response to an enquiry written by the French Minister of the Interior on November 10, 1862, housed in the same folder. The tone of this and later communications with the French state were almost always deferential and Monegasque authorities evidently shared some information with the French police. his successors at the SBM. 122 The issue of foreign labor in Monaco and of the permeability of the French-Monegasque border would long remain contentious for both countries. 123 Blanc and the Grimaldi princes realized that the best way to keep the Monegasques in line was to provide them with steady year-round employment. 124 To do so, Monte Carlo needed to attract regular and repeat customers, a feat that the concessionaires who preceded Blanc had been unable to achieve. Blanc’s overall design strategy for Monte Carlo reveals that he wanted, above all, to create an emotional bond between visitors and the resort, with the hope of turning casual gamblers into long-term clients more devoted to Monte Carlo than simply to its gaming tables. Visitors to Monte Carlo would ideally feel that not only had they ‘escaped’ the banality of their everyday lives by reaching the resort, but that they had also ‘arrived’ among a homogenous community of fellow elites who, like themselves, could afford to make the trip to the coast and who could recognize and truly appreciate the deeper values of its surface comforts. 125 Already wealthy, advanced in age, and in relatively 60 122 See Chapter One concerning Monaco’s population growth in the nineteenth century; see Chapter Two concerning the measures that Blanc and later managers took to survey workers inside the casino. 123 See ADAM, 1M 0432, Fonds de la préfécture: Relations avec la Principauté de Monaco, 1856 – 1913. In 1961, Charles De Gaulle temporarily shut down France’s borders with Monaco due to a dispute about the lack of adequate taxation of French nationals in the principality. 124 I base this claim on the correspondence between Blanc, Eynaud, Prince Florestan, and Prince Charles cited throughout this chapter. 125 On “selling the city,” see Catherine Cocks, Doing the Town: The Rise of Urban Tourism in the United States, 1850-1915, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 125. Other gambling places, such as the Rhine casinos in Ems, Baden-Baden, Weisbaden, and even Blanc’s own Bad Homburg similarly offered a combination of casino gambling and resort amenities, but these had all been spa towns before they had been gambling towns, where the casinos had grown organically as extensions of spa life. None of these spa towns was transformed as quickly as, or at a scale equal to, Monte Carlo. poor health by the time he took charge of the SBM, Blanc could have trusted in the considerable advantage of having the only legal casino in Southern Europe. Instead, he took huge financial risks to build an array of resort facilities in Monaco that had nothing to do with gambling. 126 Each non-gambling facility built under his direction complemented the others, and was intended to perform a symbolic role alongside its primary function, serving as advertisements for the resort and its particular lifestyles. Blanc stated, for instance, that he wanted the Hôtel de Paris adjoining the casino “to be spoken of as a marvel, thus acting as a splendid advertisement.” 127 One of Blanc’s first key steps in transforming the casino and unfinished hotel in les Spéluges into the unified Monte Carlo casino-resort was to oversee the construction of a range of sea-bathing facilities. Doctors from all over Europe, and some from America, were at that time beginning to recommend the benefits of sea-bathing and a 61 126 In 1865, when the casino took in just over 800,000 francs and devoted nearly 750,000 francs to operating costs, Blanc spent more than 2,000,000 additional francs on infrastructure-related projects, such as the construction of additional sea-bathing facilities, renovations to the Hôtel de Paris, the building of roads, the establishment of a gasworks, and the planting of gardens. ‘Letter from de Payan to the Governor General.’ January 13, 1866. SBM, Folder 1866. 127 As quoted in Corti, 186. On hotels and their relationship to urban development, see Elaine Denby, Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion (London: Reaktion Books, 2002); Marc Katz, “The Hotel Kracauer.” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Vol. 11 no. 2 (1999); Megan McLeod Kendrick, Stay in L.A.: Hotels and the Representation of Urban Public Space in Los Angeles, 1880s-1950s (PhD Dissertation, University of Southern California, 2009); Andrew Sandoval-Strausz, Hotel: An American History. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press; Annabel Jane Wharton, Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001). coastal climate, transforming the Midi into one long sanatorium. 128 Such developments were not lost on Monte Carlo’s founder. Before acquiring the Monaco concession, Blanc had written to the Prince, describing how nearby resorts along the south coast of France were beginning to prosper; he advised Charles that “Monaco possesses all the necessary elements to become one of the most frequented winter stations in the region,” so long as its “thermal springs are properly organized.” 129 Noting that Blanc had been “greatly interested in the mineral springs” during negotiations, Eynaud surmised that “it is only a pretext, but in such a business as ours, no pretext should be neglected.” 130 Even while the majority of its sea-bathing facilities remained in the blueprint stages, the SBM took out regular newspaper and guidebook advertisements highlighting the curative benefits of a visit to Monaco, and announcing the hiring of the esteemed spa doctor Gillebert Dhercourt, author of pamphlets on hydrotherapy, to direct its spa 62 128 As Alain Corbin has chronicled, the natural gifts of France’s south coast had long remained relatively unexplored by outsiders, but by the mid-nineteenth century, seaside resorts rivaled inland spas for popularity. Europeans who had previously considered their coasts undesirable places to visit (whether because they were cowed by the story of the biblical flood or beliefs about the land’s edge as a symbolic boundary between order and chaos), now grew interested in the curative effects of seawater on the body and in the ocean as an unexplored keeper of secrets about the earth’s history. Romantic artists and writers celebrated the sea and shore as places that could elicit wonder and increase self-knowledge and the same wildness that had once made the coast undesirable now made provided its allure, as Europeans began to think of the seaside as a place to escape the industrial throb of city life. Corbin, op. cit. Another useful source concerning the south of France, though focused on the twentieth century, is Pascale Ory’s L’invention du bronzage: Essai d’une histoire culturelle (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 2008). 129 ‘Letter from Francois Blanc to the Prince.’ January 12, 1863. SBM, Folder 1863. 130 As quoted in Corti, 179. It is very likely that Eynaud was making reference to the January 12 letter that Blanc sent to the Prince, discussing the potential of Monte Carlo hydrotherapeutic facilities. facilities. 131 Even if the central aim of such advertising was to bring gamblers to the tables, they tended to mention the casino only in passing, and only after the resort’s health benefits and cultural life had been sufficiently extolled. 132 In 1864, for example, the back page of Le Journal de Nice featured a large SBM advertisement that read MONACO SEA BATHING. Under new management. Large bathing facilities – hot and cold bath – complete hydrotherapeutic services – sea bathing facilities open from 1 April to 1 December – the recently built magnificent casino, open year round, offers visitors all manners of entertainments found in German spas. 133 ! To further promote Monte Carlo as a healthful environment, Blanc hired a team of architects and landscapers to transform the rocky plot directly in front of the casino into a garden space featuring a causeway of palm-bordered gardens filled with potentially medicinal plants, such as aloe vera, and with fragrant and brightly-colored shrubs, such as mimosa. As with the vast majority of the resort’s early investors, workers, and consumers, much of Monte Carlo’s vegetation originally hailed from well beyond Monaco, reinforcing its purportedly exotic atmosphere. The palm trees dotting Monaco’s landscape were first imported to the region in the 1860s from the Canary Islands and the Americas, along with other plants such as succulents and mimosa. 134 Through these 63 131 SBM advertisement, Le Journal de Nice on January 5 1867. ADAM. SBM advertisements were a near- daily fixture on the back pages of Le Journal de Nice between 1864 and 1868, for example. See various back issues of Le Journal de Nice, 1864-1868, housed in the ADAM. 132 P. Joanne’s, Guide Diamant: Stations d’hiver de la Méditerranée (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1881), highlights Monaco’s “vast Sea-Bathing establishment, offering hydrotherapy and open year round.” 133 SBM Advertisement, Le Journal de Nice, 1 January, 1864. ADAM. 134 The cultural historian Mary Blume and the art historian Kenneth Silver have each noted the irony in the fact that non-native palm tree, Phoenix canarsis, has since become one of the most recognizable icons of the Côte d’Azur. Mary Blume, Côte d’Azur: Inventing the French Riviera, 38. Kenneth E. Silver, Making Paradise: Art, Modernity, and the Myth of the French Riviera (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 63. casino-adjacent gardens, Blanc symbolically turned Monte Carlo away from Europe and towards the Mediterranean, a space and culture that like the resort itself can only now be considered a collective and unified whole because people first imagined it as such. 135 That Monte Carlo’s varied and imported plants referenced a mix of distant lands and cultures further linked the resort to a broader Mediterranean syncretism. 136 When gamblers exited the Monte Carlo casino, which featured a ‘Moorish’ style gaming room, they encountered a heady mélange of plants pulled from three different continents grouped as a compressed whole. Blanc may have anticipated that the more ‘exotic’ Monte Carlo felt, the more free its visitors might feel to act (and spend) more extravagantly than they would at home. As Jon Sterngass has written in the case of eastern seaboard resorts, when visitors arrived in these places where “communal controls were weaker, the desire to cross norms stronger, and a fluid sense of identity allowed wider leeway in social actions,” they felt more willing to partake in games of chance. 137 64 135 Bernard Pignaud in 1959 wrote that “the Mediterranean is nothing other than the image we make of it for ourselves…if the Mediterranean didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. As quoted in Xavier Girard, Mediterranean: From Homer to Picasso (Paris: Assouline, 2001), 8. See also Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean And the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Volumes I and II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Norma Bouchard and Massimo Lollini, Reading and Writing the Mediterranean: Essays by Vincenzo Consolo (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 136 As Fernand Braudel has written, to travel the Mediterranean “is to find the Roman world in Lebanon, prehistory in Sardinia, Greek cities in Sicily, Arab influences in Spain, and Turkish-style Islam in Yugoslavia.” Fernand Braudel (ed.) La Méditerranée, l’espace et l’histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1985), 7. 137 Sterngass,152. Though Sterngass focuses his study on American resorts along the Eastern Seaboard, his argument can be convincingly applied to these resorts’ European analogues. Alain Corbin similarly notes that one of the major appeals of visiting spas, whether one was interested in gambling or not, was that such travel freed people from “the supervision of mature adults, who sometimes hesitated to make the trip, and the control of the rural clergy, often considered overly concerned with the virtue of quality members of their flocks.” Corbin, 254. For a broader consideration of travel as escape or transgression, see Louis Turner and John Ash, The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery (London: Constable, 1975). The waterfront area behind the casino also heightened the pleasant sense of escape by prompting visitors to gaze out at the Mediterranean, setting for so many myths and adventures, and towards Africa. The entrance of the casino that Blanc had inherited from his predecessor faced north-east, away from the ocean, thus not fully capitalizing on Monaco’s natural charms. Rather than knock down this structure, Blanc renovated the underused space behind the building, funneling Monte Carlo’s outdoor social life towards the area that offered the greatest exposure to the region’s mild climate. 138 He had a terrace built below the casino’s southern flank that was ideal for promenading; men and women descending the staircases leading onto the terrace could display the latest fashions, with exposure to the sun and sea breeze necessitating the carrying and display of fine hats and parasols. The relatively narrow terrace forced men and women to throng together; it was virtually a metropolitan pedestrian boulevard at the edge of the ocean. Blanc clearly wanted such outdoor public spaces to be safe environments: the SBM installed outdoor gas (and soon electric) lighting and hired guards to patrol these outdoor areas, at a substantial cost; in 1865, for example, the company spent nearly twenty thousand francs on lighting alone. 139 Figs. 1.1 and 1.2. Photographs of the front entrance of the Monte Carlo casino. Both images dated 1863. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino. Fig. 1.3. Postcard depicting the entrance to Monte Carlo casino. No credit or date provided. Author’s Collection; purchased in Parisian flea market. 65 138 The architectural historian Fred Gray has argued that it was common practice among nineteenth- century coastal resort proprietors to privilege their waterfront areas in the hopes of encouraging such feelings of escape, as visitors looked out at “the very seas and oceans that led to foreign lands.” Gray, 98. 139 ‘Letter from de Payan to the Governor General.’ January 13, 1866. SBM Archives, Folder 1866. Maurice de Seigneur’s, Le Theatre de Monte-Carlo (Paris: 1890), contains the first mention I have seen of electric lighting in Monte Carlo. Fig. 1.4. Illustration depicting the terraces below the Monte Carlo casino. No artist credit, 1872. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ Despite its ‘exotic’ flourishes, the entrance to the Monte Carlo casino was ultimately presented as a place where European civilization tamed the wildness of the Mediterranean. A lithograph [fig.1.5] of the casino’s entrance from 1865 highlighted how the casino’s tranquil and almost-Edenic exterior visually diminished the supposed dangers of the practices taking place inside. 140 A palm tree dominates the central plane, appearing far larger in scale relative to the casino than would have any actual tree. The focus on the palm is striking, as this particular plant, while evoking a world far beyond Europe, would eventually become the ultimate icon of Riviera luxury. 141 But while the image highlights the lush and green foliage imported from Africa and the Americas, Monte Carlo is depicted as a pastoral, and almost domestic space. Save for a lone youth who appears to be playing with a hoop, all of the people in the image are women, each one brightly dressed and carrying a parasol, emphasizing Monaco’s claims to endless sunny days. One finely dressed woman sits under a tree peacefully enjoying a book. Such a placid scene suggests that the resort would be a safe place for women and children, and there are no obvious signs that gambling is anywhere taking place. A viewer unfamiliar with Monte Carlo and denied any accompanying context might think that he or she was looking at a public botanical garden with an innocuous building, 66 140 Untitled 1865 lithograph. SBM Image Collection, Folder ‘Casino.’ 141 Jean-Bernard Pouy, “Des Symboles à la Dérive,” in Brigitte Ouvry-Vial, René Louis, and Jean-Bernard Pouy, (eds.), Les Vacances: Un Rêve, un Produit, un Miroir (Paris: Autrement, 1990), 109-10. In his study of the modern artists who “Made Paradise” along the Riviera, Kenneth E. Silver argues that the palm tree, “recognizable and yet unknown – estrange [holds] for every modern artist who worked on the coast…a distinct evocative value. For Bonnard…it can signal at once the modern resort and the biblical (or mythic) garden; for Matisse…it can seem like one of many fancifully dressed if odd urban character; for Dufy…a ceremonial framing element.” Silver, 61. perhaps devoted to some kind of aesthetic or scientific pursuit, lying in the background, rather than the entrance to what was fast becoming Europe’s most famous gambling site. Fig. 1.5. Lithograph of the entrance of the Monte Carlo casino and the adjacent Hôtel de Paris, circa 1865. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ On a secondary level below the casino’s southern terrace visitors encountered another amenity that mixed the wild with the urban by bringing the forest hunt to the shores of the Mediterranean. The Monte Carlo Pigeon Shoot, a circular grass-covered outdoor shooting ground overlooking the sea, allowed any marksman to test his aim (I have found no records of female participants until the 1920s) against live pigeons, free of charge. By placing this ersatz version of the preferred sport of the landed gentry in such a prominent and public area, Blanc made clear his two-pronged strategy of promoting Monte Carlo as a privileged environment to a broad audience. Walking among the international crowd of sportsmen gathered at the Pigeon Shoot one felt, as a contemporary observer noted, “as if one were walking right through l’Almanach de Gotha [a directory of European royalty and nobility].” 142 As an SBM manager would later attest, the Pigeon Shoot was a loss-leader and has “never been regarded as a rival of the Casino; on the contrary, it was started by Blanc himself to attract the right kind of people.” 143 The Shoot appealed as much to Monte Carlo’s bourgeois and American visitors as it did to members of the European aristocracy. A travelogue writer noted “rich industrialists,” including some Americans, mixed in with European Barons and Lords, 67 142 ‘Bertall’, La Vie hors de chez soi, (Paris: E. Plon, 1876), 81. 143 Pierre Polovstoff, Monte Carlo Casino (London: Hillman Curl, 1937), 35. showing off for “elegant women,” outfitted in fine dresses and neat chignons. 144 An American won the first Pigeon Shoot Grand Prix shooting contest, while British, Belgian, Hungarian, and French marksmen, only two of them holding noble rank, completed the list of winners in the first ten years of annual competition between 1872 and 1882. 145 Fig. 1.6. Photograph depicting the Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. No date or credit provided. Fig. 1.7. View (from top to bottom) of the Salle Garnier, Terrace, Trains Station, and Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. No date or credit provided. Fig. 1.8. Postcard depicting the Terrace and Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. No date or credit provided. Fig. 1.9. Postcard depicting the Terrace and Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. No date or credit provided. Fig. 1.10. Postcard depicting the Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. Postcard dated 1901, card is stamped ‘Éditeur P.S. & D. Cliché G. Delton-M.’ In addition to championing Monte Carlo’s curative appeals and sporting attractions, Blanc attempted to make the resort an international hub of a certain kind of European culture. Music, the international language, played a pivotal role in bringing patrons from around the world to the Monte Carlo casino. Though it was completed two years after Blanc’s death, Charles Garnier’s addition of a concert hall to the southwestern wing of the Monte Carlo casino marked the ultimate realization of Blanc’s foundational casino-resort model. 146 With the completion of the new structure, the SBM 68 144 ‘Bertall’, 81. 145 A list of annual Grand Prix winners at the Pigeon Shoot is provided in Stéphen Liégeard, La Côte d'Azur (Paris: Quantin, 1887), 263. 146 For contemporary and historical accounts of the Salle Garnier I have consulted Jean-Lucien Bonillo et al., Les Riviera de Charles Garnier et Gustave Eiffel: Le rêve de la raison (Marseille: Imbernon, 2004); P. Joanne, Guide Diamant: Stations d’hiver de la Méditerranée (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1881); Labande; Michel Steve, La Riviera de Charles Garnier (Nice: Demaistre, 1998); de Seigneur; Philippe Thanh, Opéra de Monte Carlo: Renaissance De La Salle Garnier (Paris: Editions le Passage, 2005). could boast of offering games of chance and high quality cultural productions not only in the same town, but under the same roof. The hall’s inauguration in January of 1879 celebrated the SBM’s ascendance as a major patron of the arts; a performance by Sarah Bernhardt, who also contributed a sculpture to the new building (as did Gustave Doré) capped the festivities. Being associated with the greatest living actress and architect of the age helped to mark Monte Carlo’s arrival as a legitimate cultural hub. The Journal de Monaco triumphantly reported that “the world of arts and letters sent its most well-known writers to Monte Carlo” for the inauguration. 147 The seeds of the project can be traced back to 1874, when Blanc put nearly five million francs at the disposal of the French Minister of Public Works to help fund the construction of Charles Garnier’s Opéra de Paris. Not coincidentally, the French government improved railway service to Monaco that same year, and the number of trains running between Paris and Monaco increased substantially. 148 In angling to someday commission the architect of one of Paris’ most visible cultural centers, Blanc was motivated by a desire to link the two cities in the minds of his clients, providing well- to-do Parisians with an extra impetus to leave their city for the coast, assured that they would find splendors there that, if not equal to those in Paris, at least aspired to the same grandeur. Garnier’s concert hall in Monte Carlo was indeed so striking that, in the words of a nineteenth-century guidebook to the Côte d’Azur, even “blasé Parisians” were reportedly moved by its great beauty. 149 Yet while appealing to Parisians, Garnier’s building also offered tourists from many countries with a taste of Paris that did not 69 147 Raoul Mille, Sarah Bernhardt et Monaco (Monaco: 2005, Éditions du Rocher), 10. 148 Corti 259 149 Maurice de Seigneur, Le Theatre de Monte-Carlo (Paris: 1890), 1. necessitate a trip to the City of Light itself. The architect repeated many of the styles and themes that he had recently used for the Opéra de Paris, including his use of oversized oculi, moldings, and color. 150 Garnier’s widow later wrote that his work in Monte Carlo was “the result of the studies he conducted for the Opéra [de Paris]” and marked “the apogee of his genius.” 151 Here, in Monaco, was a version of the building that would become the shining icon of Haussmann’s modern city, now reduced to a less daunting scale, overlooking the Mediterranean rather than city streets, its sun-facing facade framed by pleasant palms. Garnier clearly intended for his Monte Carlo building to serve as a landmark, making its most distinctive features, the two ornate towers overlooking the southern terrace and the Pigeon Shoot, tall enough (thirty-eight meters) to be seen from great distances by land and sea. 152 Soon after its completion, the venue came to be known as the Salle Garnier, permanently linking the great architect with Monaco. Fig. 1.11. Architectural drawing of the Salle Garnier as viewed from the east, 1881. (Note the inclusion of exotic vegetation on the right.) SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ Fig. 1.12. Architectural drawing of the Salle Garnier as viewed from the south. 1881. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ Fig.1.13. Illustration of the Salle Garnier’s exterior. 1897 SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino. 70 150 Garnier also modeled the foyer of the Monte Carlo concert hall directly on that of his Paris building, while commissioning mosaics by an Italian artist that evoked similar pieces in the Opéra de Paris. Steve, 36. 151 As quoted in Steve, 37 152 Joanne, 266. Fig.1.14. Interior of the Salle Garnier as seen from the stage. Image accessed December 2012 via: www.faconnable.com/en/corporate/blogs/monte-carlos- omnipresent-opera-scene. The décor of the Salle Garnier evoked the interior of a palace or finely furnished estate house. Garnier employed a decadent mixing of national and historical styles, such as Louis XIV and Italian Baroque, and had the room accented with lavish painted allegories to “dance,” “music,” “comedy,” and “song” that depicted ancient bacchanals and mythical scenes. 153 Yet for all its gilded accoutrements, the Salle Garnier’s main function was to welcome, rather than intimidate, a wide array of users. Though the SBM occasionally supported debut performances, the hall typically hosted performances of works that were already well established and would have the broadest international appeal. The 1881 season for example, featured La Traviata, Rigoletto, and The Barber of Seville. 154 The SBM hosted twice-daily concerts, free of charge, and advertised its selection of “Comedy, Vaudeville, and Operetta”, all safe bourgeois fare. 155 Seating was decided on a first come-first served basis, allowing concert-goers to choose from among six hundred and fifty seats in uniform rows that rose at a slight angle to the back wall. The hall was relatively small for an opera house and there was not as big a difference in the quality of seats as there would have been in a large venue such as the Opéra de Paris. Unlike in Paris, Garnier did not devote the theatre’s side walls to box seating, but 71 153 Steve, 37. 154 Debut performances include Robert Planquette’s Le Chevalier Gaston in 1879. In 1900 Hector Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust was first staged as an opera inside Europe’s most (in)famous gambling “hell.” 155 For SBM advertising of musical performances, see the 1881 Hachette Guidebook, op. cit. My suggestion that comedy, vaudeville, and operetta were all “safe bourgeois fare” is influenced by Peter Gay, Pleasure Wars: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 202. only to decoration; the sole private box was reserved for the Prince, with ancillary loggias reserved for top SBM managers. Such seemingly populist strategies actually made the performances into more rarefied occasions, promoting an ambivalent sense of exclusivity paired with inclusiveness. Without the financial obligation resulting from the purchase of tickets, concert-goers felt as though they were attending concerts out of a genuine love of music, and that by doing so they had been accepted as equals among fellow amateurs of culture, united, despite hailing from a variety of national backgrounds, in their appreciation of art. Visitors to Monte Carlo who felt guilty about their desires to enjoy a practice outlawed in much of Europe may have enjoyed how the resort’s world-class opera house allowed them to justify their trips to the resort as cultural excursions rather than mere gambling jaunts. 156 An 1879 feature that ran in both the London Times and the New York Times suggested that Monte Carlo offered the greatest quality and selection of musical performances in the world, and so surmised that “when decent sort of people confess to having paid a visit to Monte Carlo, it is the music which has been their inducement.” 157 In similar fashion, an 1875 guide to Monte Carlo’s musical offerings claimed that concerts in the resort were “well known among the elegant crowd made up of those not merely charmed by the sun and mild air.” 158 It was in the Salle Garnier that the music lover Friedrich Nietzsche would later hear Wagner’s Parsifal for 72 156 Douglas Mackaman has similarly argued that many bourgeois visitors to French spa towns in the nineteenth century, ever mindful of properly performing their positions within the new social hierarchy, enjoyed the regimented medical routines associated with spa life because they allowed bourgeois spa- goers to justify their vacations as hard work rather than mere frivolity. Mackaman, 9. 157 ‘Attractions Of Monte Carlo: The Music, The Show, The Gayety.’ New York Times, April 28, 1879. 158 Charles Mathieu Domergue, Les Jeudis de Monte-Carlo: impressions musicales, (Nice: F. Seguin, 1875) the first time; in a letter to a friend offering a lengthy discourse on how deeply the performance had moved him, Nietzsche could not resist acknowledging the oddity of experiencing such a meaningful aesthetic experience in the bowels of Europe’s best- known casino, writing “I recently heard for the first time the introduction to Parsifal (it was in Monte Carlo!).” 159 Concert-goers appear to have been drawn to the opportunity to see and be seen among members of high society, as much as they were drawn to the events themselves, and the ample light provided by large windows and gas lamps allowed concert-goers to regard one another as easily as they could the performances. When a Niçoise paper reported the unsubstantiated rumor that Queen Victoria was likely to attend a concert in 1882, the show quickly sold out. 160 The concert hall yielded tangible benefits for the SBM. Entrance to the venue could only be had via the casino; and since entering the casino required visitors to fill out entry cards, the SBM ensured that anyone interested in the ‘free’ performances at the Salle Garnier would not only be exposed to the sights and sounds of the gaming tables but would also be forced to complete a time-consuming step that removed the sole barrier separating would-be gamblers from the tables, while also allowing the company to collect biographical data about its clientele. An 1882 report penned by the Prince’s representative at the SBM, who kept Monaco’s Governor General abreast of all pertinent developments at the casino, reveals how highly the both the Prince and the SBM valued the Salle Garnier’s ability to attract gamblers to the casino. The report devotes two pages to recounting disputes concerning upcoming performances, 73 159 ‘Letter from Friedrich Nietzsche to Peter Gast,’ January 21, 1887. Friedrich Nietzsche and Christopher Middleton (ed.), Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1996). 160 ‘Report from Jalivot to the Governor General.’ Undated (numbered 1069), 1882. SBM, Folder 1882. including the news that “Mme. Albani was too exhausted to sing the role of Lucie twice in two days” and that “Mme. Scalchi, dissatisfied the role of queen in Hamlet, has forced the show announced for this evening to be delayed until Monday.” 161 The Grimaldi advisor also expressed concern that “many residents of Nice, Menton, and especially Cannes, are accusing the SBM of deception because of these sudden changes to performances that have already been announced.” 162 Intelligence of such backstage dramas was treated with the utmost importance, because, as the Prince’s representative no doubt understood, even the most minor blows to the SBM’s ability to maintain its high level of entertainments could hamper its ability to bring people to the theatre, and, more importantly, to the casino. Building such enticing amenities and making them relatively easy to reach from the major metropolises of Europe was not enough to ensure Monte Carlo’s profitability. As the company depended entirely on the spending of foreigners, Blanc recognized that it was vital to advertise in the international media, and he spent accordingly. 163 When Blanc acquired the Monaco concession, the Palace advisor Eynaud realized that his skills as a promoter, as much as his capital and experience, would allow him to succeed where previous concessionaires had failed; for Blanc had “put Homburg on the map with much publicity and showed himself to be a master of the art of hiding the green felt behind a veil of luxury and elegant pleasures.” 164 The timing of Monte Carlo’s founding 74 161 ‘Report from Jalivot to the Governor General.’ undated (numbered 1067), 1882. SBM, Folder 1882. 162 Ibid. 163 Folder 1901 in the SBM Archives contains a great deal of information regarding the company’s press strategies, including amounts paid to individual newspapers. 164 ‘Letter from Eynaud to the Prince.’ February 23, 1863. SBM, Folder 1863. was especially fortuitous, as Blanc set about building Europe’s grandest casino-resort just as the cost of newspapers was steadily decreasing and the audiences for the mass press was increasing substantially. 165 Le Petit Journal, for example, the inexpensive and widely circulated newspaper that would become “the greatest emblem of the popular press” of the Belle Époque, was founded in 1863, the same year Blanc arrived in Monaco. 166 Thus, with rare exception, before visitors experienced Monte Carlo as reality they experienced the resort as an idea. 167 By reading about and encountering images of the resort, audiences might feel as though they were connected to it, that they too might one day feel as though they belonged among its supposedly glamorous visitors, who lived more extravagantly, if only temporarily, than did people elsewhere. 168 Prince Charles and Blanc worked in close unison to curry favorable representations of Monte Carlo. The single most dramatic act of publicity - and of collusion between corporate and state interests in Monaco - occurred in 1866, when Prince Charles, with prompting from Blanc, rechristened the area as Monte Carlo, named for himself. 169 At the surface level, this renaming served a practical purpose: Blanc had complained that the words les Spéluges had negative connotations, 75 165 Kavanagh, Dice,193. 166 Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 28. Concerning the French popular press in the nineteenth century, see Introduction, FN 24. 167 Kavanagh makes a similar argument in, Dice, 193. 168 Concerning the history of advertising, see Michele H. Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Stephen L. Harp, Marketing Michelin: Advertising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth Century France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 169 Labande, 206. especially in its Italian and German variants, and a Grimaldi advisor reporting on Blanc’s request concurred that “such associations are not good for a casino.” 170 But the linguistic reinvention of an area that for centuries had been known by its local moniker also served a deeper symbolic function. The new name further reinforced a general sense that the town was to be thought of as something new and removed from both Monaco’s everyday life and its own past. Monte Carlo’s workers and visitors might in turn feel that by building and patronizing the resort they were taking part in the creation of something privileged and unprecedented, and thus unfettered by the bounds of traditional thinking and rooted identity. Tellingly, when Blanc first announced his acquisition of the gambling concession to the people of Monaco in the pages of the Journal de Monaco in 1863, he had issued a bold call to arms that called on Monegasques to disavow the principality’s recent past in the aim of creating something completely novel. “From an existence of dreaming inaction Monaco must rouse itself to one of courage and activity,” he proclaimed. “A whole town remains to be built! To work, then!” 171 A second rechristening would further reinforce the notion that the collection of coastal resorts, of which Monte Carlo formed such a key part, constituted an invented space for transnational leisure. 172 In 1887, the poet Stéphen Liégeard penned a travelogue extolling the two hundred kilometer stretch from Bandol to Menton that provided the region with a name that boosters all along the coast have since used in 76 170 ‘Letter from de Payan to Prince Charles, July 22 1865.’ SBM, Folder 1865. 171 Blanc’s announcement in Le Journal de Monaco, December 6, 1863, as quoted in Corti, 187. 172 Blume, 38. countless promotional materials: la Côte d’Azur. 173 Liégeard’s term, highlighting the area’s aesthetic charms, offered a less restrictive descriptor than the more nationally- bounded “French Riviera” preferred by English speakers. The SBM, with help from Monegasque officials, rewarded cooperative publishers, journalists, and guidebook authors who wrote favorably about Monte Carlo’s resort life, while punishing those who would focus only on the gambling or try in any way to paint Monaco in a negative light. Blanc likely anticipated that if information about Monte Carlo’s gambling attractions was conveyed primarily through ‘objective’ editorial content produced by outsiders, readers would respond more enthusiastically than if the SBM itself had more boldly promoted the casino through paid advertising. 174 Often, the reward for favorable press was simply the promise of repeat advertising, either for newspapers or for guidebook publishers who met Blanc’s stipulations. The SBM advertised regularly on the back page of the Journal de Nice in the 1860s, for instance, while specifying in their contract that there be “no direct or indirect attacks against the Prince of Monaco or its government.” 175 Such rewards could be very lucrative. In 1880, for instance, the SBM spent more than half a million francs on newspaper advertising, 77 173 Liégeard, op.cit. 174 In truth, few editorial sources in that era operated in a manner that we might now call objective or unbiased; parties interested in promoting their goods or services would often pay newspapers to present the advertisements within the guise of a regular article, with varying levels of covertness. Such editorial advertising was especially common in the French press, where the practice of insidious publicity was known as réclame. Hazel Hahn, Scenes of Parisian Modernity: Culture and Consumption in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009). For a consideration of French advertising practices in the twentieth century, see Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel, La publicité. Naissance d'une profession (1900-1940) (Paris, CNRS Editions, 1998). 175 ‘Letter from Wagatha to Administrators of the Journal de Nice.’ December 19, 1863. SBM, Folder 1863. or roughly one franc on advertising for every two francs spent on wages. 176 As the SBM was such a substantial patron of newspaper advertising, many publishers likely already felt under pressure to produce favorable content about Monte Carlo. Guidebooks that appear to have been heavily, if not solely, subsidized by the SBM foregrounded the resort’s artistic offerings and its vibrant and cosmopolitan social life, while making scant mention of its gambling. An 1874 guidebook featuring an advertisement for the SBM on its inside cover, for example, proclaimed that “few towns offer as many opportunities to those who love society and the arts as does Monte Carlo. The elite of the principal nations of Europe gather here each year, especially during the winter season.” 177 In addition to the promise of future advertising contracts, the SBM offered more direct forms of financial reward. In correspondence to Eynaud, Blanc mentioned paying an author of Riviera guidebooks a “thank you fee” of three hundred and twenty-five francs for rewriting his article about Monaco to incorporate revisions suggested by Prince Charles. 178 One of Blanc’s most audacious bribes involved selling Hippolyte de Villemessant, founder and editor of Le Figaro, a plot of land in Monaco in 1865 for well- below market value. 179 Villemessant returned the favor by publishing a series of glowing stories about Monaco, dedicating the first four pages of the February 23, 1865 issue of his newspaper to a travelogue about the principality, penned by himself. “There is no 78 176 ‘SBM Earnings Report up to 1880-81.’ SBM, Folder 1881. Note that this heavy spending on publicity also took place in a year where much of that year’s operating capital was devoted to major construction projects. Mention of the SBM’s publicity budget is also made in ‘Letter from M. de Payan to the Governor General.’ April 24, 1880. SBM, Folder 1880. 177 Jules Bessi, Monaco et Monte-Carlo Causerie, (Nice: S.C Cauvin, 1874), 8. 178 ‘Letter from Francois Blanc to Eynaud.’ December 5, 1863. SBM, Folder 1863. 179 Corti, 194. doubt about it, Monaco is an earthly paradise, a fairytale land,” Villemessant opined, advising “young intelligent men, who wished to better themselves” to set off in haste to Monaco while the resort was still being built and opportunities abounded. 180 Later, when the railway came to Monaco, Le Figaro would describe the arrival of visitors as a “veritable Californian Gold Rush.” 181 The practice of paying fees to journalists continued for decades. An SBM budget report from 1884 listed 28,521 francs spent on “les traités avec les journaux” and 18, 380 francs spent on “les allocations à quelques journalistes.” 182 Blanc made sure that the latest society news from the principality was promptly relayed to the large European newspapers, and he often paid to have journalists visit the resort, housing them at the Hôtel de Paris and arranging fetes in their honor. 183 By the 1890s the company’s practice of paying journalists had become so well known that French writers penning exposés about press bribery used the SBM as a model example to illustrate these practices. 184 The management of the SBM coupled largesse with threats against uncooperative journalists and potential bans of a newspaper’s distribution in the principality and occasionally relied on the Monegasque authorities to apply pressure on uncooperative journalists. The company closely monitored the international press for 79 180 ‘Figaro en Voyage.’ Le Figaro. February 23 1865, No. 1046. 181 As quoted in Elaine Denby, Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 92. 182 ‘1884 Budget.’ Undated, 1884. SBM, Folder 1884. 183 Corti, 257. 184 See Émile de Saint-Auban. L'Histoire sociale au palais de justice. Tome II. Le Silence et le secret (Paris: A. Pedone, 1898); André Lajeune-Vilar, Les coulisses de la presse : moeurs et chantages du journalisme (Paris: A. Charles, 1895). negative stories and responded accordingly. 185 In 1880 the editor of Le Petit Niçois, Alziary De Roquefort, complained to an SBM manager about being intimidated by Monaco’s Chief of Police, because he had refused to reveal the source of an inflammatory piece. “Mr. Agneli [the Chief of Police] has only made good on one of his threats,” wrote de Roquefort, “that is, banning the paper from appearing in the Principality.” 186 The SBM on several occasions barred editors of newspapers deemed overly hostile from entering the casino, which could cripple a newspaper’s ability to feed its readers’ hunger for stories about Monte Carlo. 187 In 1884 SBM security denied entrance to the editor of L’Eclaireur de Nice, who regularly attacked Nice’s competitor in print. 188 Blanc’s successors at the SBM, first his widow Marie Blanc, and then their son Camille Blanc, continued his publicity efforts, piquing the interest of a new generation of travelers. 189 As an 1899 guidebook would assess, by the turn of the twentieth century it had become “the height of “bon ton” to go to Monte Carlo, first, to escape the cold, and second, for the care of one’s health; but, above all, one goes because one is attracted by fashion and by pleasure.” 190 Theodore Dreiser, for instance, wrote in 1913, that “all 80 185 The SBM archives contain a litany of clippings from years of negative news reports. Among numerous possible examples, see ‘Clippings from L’Univers’ June 10, 1886.’; and ‘Clipping “Révolte à Monaco – le Casino est fermé, on ne joue plus.’ October 21, 1886. SBM, Folder 1886. 186 ‘Letter from M. Alziary de Roquefort to M. Wagatha.’ November 1, 1880. SBM, Folder 1880. 187 I discuss the intense demand for Monte Carlo related stories during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in a subsequent chapter. 188 ‘Letter from Jalivot to the Governor General.’ September 27, 1884. SBM, Folder 1884. 189 Folder 1901 in the SBM Archives contains a great deal of information regarding the company’s press strategies, including amounts paid to individual newspapers. 190 Nice-Monte Carlo Guide: Souvenir de l’hôtel, 1899. BNF Richelieu, Ge-FF 9677. my life before going abroad I had been filled with a curiosity as to the character of the Riviera and Monte Carlo.” 191 The resort continued to spark the curiosity of Americans such as Dreiser, as well as people from around the globe, because of the SBM’s effectiveness and continual desire to remain effective at appealing to a wide range of clients and tastes. As a character in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth would note, “Monte Carlo had, more than any other place…the gift of accommodating itself to each man's humour.” 192 Just how deeply the SBM managers cared about accommodating Monte Carlo “to each man’s humour” is evident in the regular reports produced by the Prince’s representative at the casino during the late 1870s and throughout the 1880s. 193 These reports made sure to list the arrivals of notable foreigners, placing emphasis on those clients who had traveled from far abroad. In 1879, for example, the Palace representative remarked seeing among the dozens of luminaries visiting the casino that week “the Chinese Minister from Paris, accompanied by an interpreter in national garb, who regarded the roulette with great curiosity.” 194 Relaying news of foreign arrivals was most often the first item of business in these reports. One such report from 1880 offers some indication of how Monte Carlo bred a truly international mixing of upwardly-mobile 81 191 Theodore Dreiser, A Traveler at Forty (New York: The Century Company, 1913), 255. 192 Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (accessed online via Google Books / DigiReads), 110. 193 The SBM archives from the nineteenth century feature near weekly reports about the casino, addressed to the Prince’s Governor General, produced by palace representatives who worked closely alongside SBM management. I focus here on those reports produced in the late 1870s and throughout the 1880s, as these documents are the earliest regular reports in good enough condition to be easily legible. The dozens of detailed reports from 1878 and 1879 were particularly useful to my research. See various reports from M. Martin, M. Payan, and M. Jalivot, respectively, to the Governor General. SBM Archives, Folders 1878-1879. 194 ‘Letter from Jalivot to the Governor General.’ September 6, 1879. SBM, Folder 1879. individuals (from diverse political, judicial, military, and cultural backgrounds) and aristocrats. The report lists the following “notable arrivals:” M. D’ubexi, Judge from Epinal; M. de la Chavanne, Magistrate from Briançon; M. Castremont, Naval Officer; M. le Comte de Cournemine; M. Malafert, Regional Councilor; M. Halanzier, former Director of the Paris Opera; M. Malachie, Judge from Tarascon; M. Fleutet, Deputy; M. le Comte Carrado, Major General; the Marquis Birago, Italian; Prince Gregoire, [illegible] ; the Baron Nolcken, General Major, Russian; M. de Moreau, Chamberlain to the King of Bavaria; and M. Paz, Foreign Minister of the Dominican Republic in Holland. 195 Such a mixed list of names would no doubt have pleased Monte Carlo’s founder, who died in 1877 having overseen the construction of nineteen different amenities, while other private speculators had introduced an additional thirty-five hotels to the principality. 196 Prince Charles and the people of Monaco were also amply rewarded for turning their territory into a pleasure center for foreign visitors looking to break with the laws against gambling imposed in their home countries. No neighboring power moved to annex Monaco; the leaders of European nations were forced to respect the legality of the principality’s affairs, even as some of their constituents pressed them to take action against the Grimaldi. In 1866 the citizens of Nice, which itself had been annexed to France six years earlier, petitioned the French government to intervene and shut down the Monte Carlo casino, even if this meant annexing the principality into France. But 82 195 ‘Letter from M. de Payan to the Governor General.’ April 24, 1880. SBM, Folder 1880.! 196 Denby, 92. François Blanc’s descendants would hold major ownership in the SBM until 1923. French officials knew well that they could not enforce any changes in Monaco. 197 “Whatever the situation,” wrote the French Minister of the Interior to the Prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes in response to the Niçoise petition, “I don’t think it wise to approach the Minister of Foreign Affairs with the aim of having him intervene. The Prince of Monaco is the sovereign ruler of his territory, and we cannot take any action to suppress an establishment that provides such a substantial base for his personal revenues.” 198 With Monaco’s long-term independence relatively assured, and its economy growing, Monegasques, many of whom were initially hostile the influx of foreigners in the principality, became increasingly loyal to their Prince, aided no doubt by Charles’ abolishment of income taxes in 1868. 199 Eynaud wrote to the Prince shortly after his decree was announced: I am convinced that personal interest will now draw closer the bonds uniting the people of Monaco with Your Highness, and that fear of the financial régime of France or Italy will put an end to all agitation for annexation to either of them…it is as though a fairy wand had called forth all these improvements, these buildings and the incredible prosperity and 83 197 There are various documents pertaining to the Nice petition housed in ADAM Folder 33J 423, ‘Spectacles et Jeux’, Subfolder, ‘Petition contre la maison de jeu de Monaco 1866-1869.’ Of particular value to my research was ‘Monaco; A Letter On The Moral and Material Injury caused by the Gambling Establishment of Monte Carlo Addressed to the French Senators and Deputies,’ credited to ‘A Few Inhabitants of Nice, Cannes, and Mentone’ (Nice: 1866). A later version of the petition appears as ‘La Suppression des Jeux de Monte-Carlo-Monaco. Memoire à l’appui de la petition presentée aux chambres francaises’ (Nice: 1881), BNF, 8-V Piece-3355 L.3.34-A. 198 ‘Letter from the French Minister of the Interior to the Prefect of the Department of Alpes-Maritimes.’ April 20, 1866. ADAM, 1M0432, Subfolder ‘Monaco, Maison de Jeu (Affaires Diverses) 1866-1867.’ A compromise was reached in 1867, when, at the request of the Prefect of the department of the Alpes- Maritimes, the SBM agreed in theory to prohibit entry to the casino to any French citizen residing in Nice or elsewhere in the Alpes-Maritimes. See ‘Letter from the Governor General of Monaco to the Prefect of the Department of Alpes-Maritimes.’ 20 January, 1867. ADAM, 1M0432, Subfolder ‘Monaco, Maison de Jeu (Affaires Diverses) 1866-1867. 199 Pierre Abramovici, Un rocher bien occupé: Monaco pendant la guerre, 1939-1945 (Paris: Seuil, 2001), 26. animation of this little paradise, which for so long was sad and deserted. 200 Eynaud also noted that the former Spéluges, as with other previously uninhabited regions of the principality, such as la Condamine, where Monegasques had once been too fearful to live lest their distance from the Grimaldi fortress expose them to the dangers of pirates and brigands, were now teeming with villas, hotels, and shops. 201 Monaco’s 1873 census showed a population of 3,443 full time residents, which though still a small number, marked a substantial increase when compared to the population before the arrival of the casino. 202 By 1878 Monaco’s population had doubled in size, and by 1912 that number had grown to roughly twenty thousand. 203 Those few Monegasques who could remember the upheaval that had seen their former fellow subjects secede in 1848 were outnumbered by myriad more recent arrivals to the principality. They had come from far beyond Monaco’s borders in search of personal advancement, and their futures now depended almost entirely on the actions of two families, and on the continued prosperity of the cosmopolitan company town that these two families controlled, built in response to the disintegration of Monaco’s territory and the threat to its continued sovereignty. 84 200 Pierre Polovstoff, Monte Carlo Casino (London: Hillman Curl, 1937), 111. 201 Labande, 206. 202 For census data in Monaco, see Labande, 206; and Smith, 394. 203 Ibid. Chapter Two “Cosmopolitan Pandemonium:” Performances and Critiques of Social Mobility in Belle Époque Monte Carlo Paul Bourget’s 1896 novel about high society intrigue along the Côte d’Azur, Tragic Idyl, opens with a scene set inside the Monte Carlo casino. Bourget’s narrator describes how …when the countless representatives of the various classes, scattered ordinarily along the coast, rush together into the gaming-house, their fantastic variety of character appears in all its startling incongruities, with the aspect of a cosmopolitan pandemonium…strewn with all the wrecks of luxury and vice of every country and of every class. 204 The narrator continues by chronicling the different social groups represented at the casino, proceeding from top to bottom, as if describing a procession of notables. 205 A “Balkan King,” more concerned with the dueling “pasteboard monarchs” on the card tables than with the fate of his own soldiers, mingles with descendants of the houses of Bourbon and of Bonaparte, who are “recognizable by their profiles, which were reproduced on hundreds of the gold and silver coins rolling before them on the green tables.” 206 These royals, in turn 85 204 Paul Bourget, Une idylle tragique: Moeurs cosmopolites (Paris: A Lemerre, 1896). The quotations are taken from the first English translation, Tragic Idyl (New York: Scribner, 1896), 3. 205 Bourget’s description brings to mind that of the town procession that Robert Darnton analyzed in “A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order: The City as Text,” from The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 2009). 206 Bourget, 3. …elbowed noblemen whose ancestors had served or betrayed their own; and these lords elbowed the sons of tradesmen, dressed like them, nourished like them, amused like them; and these bourgeois brushed against celebrated artistes – here the most famous of our portrait painters, there a well-known singer, there an illustrious writer – while fashionable women mingled with the crowd in toilets which rivaled in splendor those of the demi-monde. And other men poured in continually, and other women, and especially others of the demi- monde. 207 In Bourget’s representation of the Monte Carlo casino, men and women from disparate social classes and national origins are united only by their shared interest in gaining wealth and pursuing selfish pleasures. None of the people described possesses a sense of responsibility or allegiance to any entity greater than him or herself. The representatives of monarchy, having lost their traditional senses of worth because they no longer serve their publics, are reduced to performing pantomimes of honor through quasi-militaristic gambling. The “Balkan King” sees a distorted version of his royal identity reflected in a playing card, while the descendants of two of the most powerful French dynasties see themselves transformed into mere tokens of financial exchange. In Bourget’s Monte Carlo, money and celebrity appear to be more important than title and lineage. The narrator places a “celebrated” painter, singer, and writer on nearly equal footing with kings and princes, while praising these “artistes” only for being the “most famous,” “well-known,” and “illustrious” figures in their fields, rather than for possessing any artistic skill. Bourget’s critique of self-interest and venality in Monte Carlo intersects with his critique of fluidity. The novel’s narrator is dismayed by how people “rush together” into the casino, elbowing their ways through the crowded rooms, while the promiscuous 86 207 Ibid. mingling of more and more men and women “pouring” into the building makes traditional markers of identity and honor difficult to discern. Bourget’s narrator wonders how individuals can coalesce to promote any kind of common good in such an atomized, venal, and morally ambivalent environment, and so regards Monte Carlo as a “cosmopolitan pandemonium;” an abode of devils whose individual desires, actions, and worldviews do not reconcile with those of their home nations. Nearly two decades after Bourget’s biting representation of disintegration at the Monte Carlo casino, a similarly nightmarish vision of social and physical fluidity in Monaco was used to illustrate an issue of the Niçoise periodical Méphisto, whose sole purpose appears to have been to warn tourists along the Riviera of the dangers that awaited them should they visit Nice’s competing resort. 208 An edition of Méphisto from March 1914 featured a front-page editorial calling on the citizens of Nice to vote for representatives who had vowed to shut down the Monte Carlo casino. In the accompanying illustration, rendered in devilish red, Satan lures a frenzied horde arriving by train, plane, dirigible, boat, motorcar, carriage, steamship, sailboat, rowboat, and on foot. The mob is made up of men and women, whose different kinds of headwear, from cowboy hats to tam o’shanters, evince a wild mixture of background and national origin. Fig. 2.1. Cover Image from Méphisto, March 23, 1914. While scholars have productively analyzed how department stores, exposition sites, art galleries, and museums served as discursive objects in the Belle Époque, less work has been done to analyze casinos in similar terms, despite the clear popularity of 87 208 Méphisto, March 23, 1914. See various issues of the newspaper from 1914-1915, at BNF. JO-35361. casino gambling during this period. 209 When Belle Époque observers such as Bourget and the editors of Méphisto critiqued the Monte Carlo casino for fostering unchecked individualism, gender upheaval, degeneration, and anomie, they also voiced their anxieties about how increased opportunities for personal mobility, both physical and social, appeared to weaken the traditional ties that bound families, communities, and nations. 210 Whether presented as factual or fictional, popular stories about Monte Carlo 88 209 See Leora Auslander, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995); Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz, eds., Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Richard Wightman Fox and Jackson Lears, The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History 1880-1980 (New York: Pantheon, 1983); Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience, 5 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press and Norton, 1984-1998); Robert Jensen, Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1996); Michael B. Miller, The Bon Marché (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Philip R. Nord, Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Erika Diane Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Tiersten, Marianne; Whitney Walton, France at the Crystal Palace: Bourgeois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992). Mary Louise Roberts’ essay “Gender, Consumption, and Commodity Culture,” The American Historical Review , Vol. 103, No. 3 (June, 1998) provides a valuable overview. For historical studies concerning gambling and gambling spaces, see Introduction, FN 31. 210 Concerning nineteenth-century individualism, see Introduction, FN 4. Concerning fin-de-siècle bourgeois anxieties relating to gender roles see, Elinor Accampo, Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit: Nelly Roussel and the Politics of Female Pain in Third Republic France (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Christopher E. Forth and Elinor Accampo (eds.) Confronting Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle France: Bodies, Minds and Gender (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (New York: Viking, 1990); Judith Surkis, Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in Modern France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). My thoughts on “anomie” have been influenced by Emile Durkheim’s theories about mechanical and organic solidarity and the potentially pathological effects on individuals who consider themselves as being disintegrated from the norms of their communities, as outlined in Suicide (New York: Free Press, 2007) and The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1997). Concerning broader nineteenth-century discussions about “degeneration,” see Daniel Pick Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, 1848-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). suggested that men and women who lost their money, respectability, or even their lives at the Monte Carlo casino were being punished for their self-centeredness, their greed, and their rejection of familial and civic duties. 211 French observers were particularly vociferous in their critiques of the Monte Carlo casino-resort. 212 As the only European state, apart from Switzerland, to fully abandon a monarchical system between 1870 and 1914, France had an especially charged relationship with Monaco, politically separated from France, yet completely surrounded by French territory and predominantly French-speaking. Monaco’s most prominent figures had ties to the country, from François Blanc, born in Courthézon, to the Grimaldi princes themselves, who held significant estates outside Paris. Monaco appeared to prosper only because of a political and jurisdictional fiction that allowed the Grimaldi and the SBM to flaunt French law on what many people felt was French soil in all but name. A century after the revolution, and only a few decades after Louis-Philippe had outlawed gambling in France, here was a principality, surrounded on all sides by French territory, offering legal gambling to anyone capable of boarding a train or steamer and crossing its uncontrolled borders. “Why,” asked an anonymous Parisian pamphleteer in 1884, “are we letting a monarch dictate the morality of our republic?” 213 89 211 I explain my approach to understanding “popular culture,” and provide a list of studies that have fruitfully explored how popular representations have reflected and influenced everyday life in particular localities in Introduction, FN 26. 212 This chapter also includes British and American representations of Monte Carlo. Although I do not make reference to how these representations influenced and reflected British and American discourse, many of the issues that troubled French observers would have similarly troubled people in these two relatively young market democracies. 213 “Un homme politique,” Monte Carlo Devant L’Europe (Paris, Alacan-Lezy. 1884), 21. As the leaders of various French social movements worked to forge a tenuous alignment of liberal and monarchist political elites united against the threat of revolutionary socialism, Monaco’s infamous casino provided a site upon which to project fears about the uneasy relationship between market-driven individualism and a republican sense of duty and solidarity. 214 The success enjoyed by the SBM and the Grimaldi dynasty appeared to reject ideas about the merits of the modern nation-state built on shared history and culture and sense of purpose. 215 For supporters of democracy and the value of modern nationhood, Monaco, with a single family claiming dynastic power while working in collusion with a single family of entrepreneurs (the descendants of François Blanc), bore too striking a resemblance to the outdated model of the early modern city-state. The resort’s cosmopolitan crowd of émigrés seemed to mark a return to the hated enemies of 1789 who hoped to safely wait out the revolution abroad, and casino gambling appeared to stir up lust for luxury, another vestige of ancien régime opulence that threatened the fostering of civic bonds. As Europe’s best- known example of a new kind of industrialized and commercialized gambling space, Monte Carlo also provided a means through which French observers could voice their fears about how rapid industrialization threatened to destabilize the nuclear family. 216 The free mixing of men and women in the casino, coupled with rumors of uncontrolled prostitution in the resort, struck a nerve with French observers fearful of a declining 90 214 Deborah L. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siecle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 215 Ernest Renan, “Lecture delivered at the Sorbonne, 11 March 1882. ‘Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?',” Oeuvres Completes (Paris, 1947-61), vol. I, 887-907. 216 See Accampo; Surkis. Concerning general anxieties concerning industrialization and enterprise, see Nord. population in the face of the growing German power and of a general weakening in belief in France as a Grande Nation. 217 Anxious rhetoric suggesting that the SBM’s managers thrived by pandering to the egotism and self-interest of their clients was in many ways founded in reality. François Blanc conceived of the Monte Carlo resort as a privileged playground setting, wherein people could temporarily escape their everyday lives and free themselves from the restrictive bonds of their traditional identities and responsibilities. Inside the casino itself, Blanc’s successors at the SBM prompted their Belle Époque clients to regard gambling as a highly subjective experience, encouraging gamblers to think that an individual’s specific personality, skills, and actions inside the Monte Carlo casino would be more important markers of privilege and distinction than his or her membership within any larger social or national community. 218 The SBM’s managers designed and operated their casino as a temple devoted to the celebration of upward mobility, where the skill and discipline of an astute individual might outdo the seemingly all-powerful whims of fortune. Just as Blanc had adopted the model of the aristocratic spa for a largely bourgeois clientele when he founded the Monte Carlo resort, so too did his successors, through their design and operation of the casino itself update a centuries-old aristocratic 91 217 Concerning France’s “national anxiety crisis,” see Robert A. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Model of National Decline (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 132-140. On whether we should consider this epoch as “Belle” or “beleaguered,” see Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981) 2. 218 My thoughts concerning attempts to achieve distinction have been influenced by Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987). social practice for a modern and socially-mixed audience. 219 Between the sixteenth century and the early nineteenth century, members of the nobility, gambling in small spa casinos, had regarded high-stakes wagering as a way to display honor and noble rank by giving evidence of their disdain for earned wealth. 220 Aristocratic spa-goers gambled often and extravagantly at these spa casinos, reflecting this declining order’s need to reassert its elite status at a time when, as the literary scholar Thomas Kavanagh has noted, “the sway of money was already irresistible.” 221 Finding fewer opportunities to display honor on the battlefield, the nobility turned to proxy battles. Through high-stakes wagering on games that pitted individual gamblers against one another in quasi- militaristic competition, such as whist and hasard, aristocratic gamblers mimicked the ancients, who employed games of chance and sporting competitions to display what the Greeks called arête and the Romans virtus – the ability to bear unforeseen events with a stoicism that offered evidence of one’s internal strength and noble character, an important asset for the battlefield. 222 Aristocratic spa gambling served as an elaborate ritual, a form of Maussian potlatch in which economic activity was conducted not to increase wealth but to gain prestige. 223 The debts that accrued through such combat 92 219 Concerning the persistence of aristocratic modes into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Introduction, FN 40. 220 Thomas M. Kavanagh has made this argument, both in Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993) and Dice, Cards, Wheels: A Different History of French Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). For gambling as an aristocratic and gentlemanly pastime in the American context, see Jackson Lears, Something for Nothing: Luck in America (New York: Penguin, 2004), 46-47 and 69-70. 221 Kavanagh, Shadows, 51. 222 Kavanagh, Dice, 18. 223 Marcel Mauss and I. Cunnison, trans., The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Cohen and West, 1954). Kavanagh highlights the link between aristocratic gambling and potlatch in Shadows, 53. also provided opportunities for displaying honor, as an aristocratic gambler could demonstrate his strength of character by making good on a gambling debt or by dueling to collect unpaid debts. 224 Skill as a gambler became a condition for entering elite society and some parents hired ‘gaming masters’ to teach their children various games. 225 “Being a gambler gives a man position in society,” wrote Montesquieu; “It is a title which takes the place of birth, wealth and probity. It promotes anyone who bears it into the best society without further examination.” 226 By the second-half of the nineteenth century, as rail travel increased accessibility to European spa towns, casino proprietors adapted their formerly small-scale operations to cater to a more socially-mixed clientele. 227 Embracing industrial capitalism’s drive towards profitability, economies of scale, and specialization, owners of spa casinos learned more about the science of odds and probability, hired highly-trained croupiers and managers, set stricter table limits, and brought in security workers to root out professionals and cheats. 228 Once casinos became more commercialized, the practice of gambling itself became more democratized. Rather than playing against one another, gamblers were pitted against the faceless “house” in communal table games, such as trente et quarante and roulette. As the historian of gambling Gerda Reith has written, “In 93 224 William Makepeace Thackeray made sure to include a dramatic scene involving the settling of a gambling debt by duel when recounting the rituals of spa life in The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon. William Makepeace Thackeray, The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, (London: Harper, 1898). 225 Gerda Reith, The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 65. 226 Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu, Persian Letters, trans. C.J. Betts (London: Penguin, 1977), 119. 227 Harvey Levenstein, Seductive Journey: American Tourists in France from Jefferson to the Jazz Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 130. 228 Reith, 74. the place of huge sums wagered by the individuals of the seventeenth-century aristocracy, came more democratic games for many players organized around modest stakes which allowed for prolonged rather than excessive play.” 229 Reith suggests that as opportunities for head-to-head combat dwindled and the gambling environment became more regulated, high-stakes gambling lost some of its appeal for the nobility, who continued to play, but did so somewhat less excessively and heroically than they had before. 230 In Monte Carlo, however, the transition from highly-individualized aristocratic gambling to faceless bourgeois gambling did not occur as smoothly or as abruptly as Reith proposes. Even as the Monte Carlo casino progressed from a small standalone gambling space at the time of its founding in 1863 into an “industrialized” and large- scale operation, surrounded by a bustling resort town and catering to a mass bourgeois audience by the 1870s, the SBM continued to value the business of their aristocratic clients. Weekly SBM reports on the casino’s operations tended to begin with a list of notable visitors, many of whom hailed from aristocratic backgrounds. 231 The SBM continued to provide aristocratic gamblers with ample opportunity to display their disdain for money by allowing the highest betting limits in Europe. 232 As a former croupier reminisced, no one could lose 94 229 Ibid. 230 Ibid, 72. 231 “Notables guests,” read an SBM report from September 27, 1884, “include the Cte. de Fitz-James et de Broca, - French; and the Marquis San Lucio – Italian.” ‘Untitled Report,’ September 27, 1884. Archives of the Société des bains de mer (hereafter, SBM), Folder 1884. 232 Egon Corti, The Wizard of Homburg and Monte Carlo (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1934), 199. so gracefully as the old noblesse – who shrugged their shoulders and ordered another bottle of champagne when they lost a mere fifty thousand francs, and at once took solace in the arms of one of the beautiful demimondaines who lined the walls of all the salles at Monte Carlo. 233 Two marriages in Monaco added to Monte Carlo’s popularity among members of the European aristocracy. In 1876, Louise Blanc, daughter of François Blanc and his wife Marie, wed Prince Constantin Radziwill, and in 1880 the Blancs’ other daughter married Prince Roland Bonaparte, grandson of Louis-Napoléon’s brother. 234 The Radziwills and the Bonapartes, listed in SBM reports as two of the company’s top four shareholders, had much to gain by inviting their fellow nobles to join them at Monte Carlo’s tables. 235 Yet the SBM’s aristocratic clientele represented only a small, if lucrative segment of its profit base. Blanc was proven correct in his prediction that the quantity rather than the purported “quality” of its clients would ultimately provide the company’s steadiest and most profitable long-term profits: by 1880 the casino issued roughly eighty-seven thousand entry cards; three years later that number had grown by more than fifty thousand. 236 While Blanc’s successors continued to seek aristocratic clients, and provided an arena for aristocratic-style displays, such gambling performances would not be limited 95 233 Paul De Ketchiva, Confessions of a Croupier (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1928), 17. 234 The Blanc-Radziwill wedding was reported in ‘A travers Paris,’ Le Figaro, 31, March 1876. 235 An SBM report lists the top four shareholders in the SBM as Prince Charles Grimaldi, Mme. la Princesse Radziwill, Mme. la Princesse R. Bonaparte, and Edmond Blanc. ‘Letter from Jalivot to the Governor General,’ undated (Numbered 1074), 1882. SBM, Folder 1882. Concerning the Radziwills and Bonapartes as shareholders of the SBM, see also “Monte Carlo: Reorganized,” Time Magazine, June 27, 1927. 236 ‘Untitled Report,’ undated, 1884. SBM, Folder 1884. The reports lists the number of entry cards issued per year, rounded to the nearest thousand: 87,000 in 1880-81; 108,000 in 1881-82; 122,000 in 1882-83; and 127,000 in 1883-84 exclusively to members of the nobility. As Robert A Nye has shown, one did not need to be of noble blood to be attracted to aristocratic modes and styles in the nineteenth century. “Because the nobility retained much of its social, political, and economic power well into the nineteenth century,” Nye writes, “the prestige of the old aristocratic code continued to work its magic on successive generations of ambitious bourgeois, for whom noble savoir faire remained the ideal of fashion.” 237 The SBM’s managers recognized the value of having the old aristocratic code work its magic on its mostly bourgeois clientele, and attempted to provide opportunities for individual displays of honor, skill, and distinction to a large and socially-mixed audience in Monte Carlo, while still maintaining a sense of exclusivity and refinement. Monte Carlo would become a place in which bourgeois gamblers could mimic aristocratic performances of privilege through wagering, but in a manner more fitting to their interests and ambitions. As the nobleman prized a militaristic honor, the bourgeois prized skills that would lead to financial gain. Bourgeois gamblers in Monte Carlo were not encouraged to seek to achieve distinction by displaying their disdain for money, but rather the opposite. The SBM used various strategies to encourage their clients to think of themselves as engaging in public battles for honor and prestige not unlike those proxy battles waged in the spa casinos in the previous century. Yet while encouraging the idea that any man or woman, regardless of social class or background, could distinguish him or herself as a skilled, bold, and fortunate, the casino’s managers simultaneously heightened the sense that such performative gambling always held the real potential for financial gain. For status-conscious and financially ambitious bourgeois 96 237 Nye, Masculinity, 8. clients, who aspired to mimic aristocratic displays of privilege but were uninterested in their wasteful displays, gambling in Monte Carlo provided a form of public display that was doubly appealing: it allowed them to believe that their conspicuous consumption at the gaming tables also held the potential for the conspicuous acquisition of wealth. 238 The Monte Carlo casino was more than a place to lay bets on games of chance; it was the central site of social interaction in the entire principality. 239 If Monte Carlo was to be an environment that mimicked the exclusive aristocratic spa casinos, then the SBM had first to cultivate a similar sense of exclusivity both inside and outside the gaming rooms. The company’s attempts to present the casino as a rarefied environment began at the building’s front door. In 1873 the SBM began charging admission to the gambling rooms to discourage poorer gamblers from entering; patrons also had to pass an inspection from uniformed guards and to fill out entry cards providing biographical data. 240 Not everyone was admitted. Bowing to a request from the Prefect of the département of the Alpes-Maritimes, the SBM could in theory prohibit entry to the casino to any French citizen residing in Nice or elsewhere in the département. 241 Priests, officers in uniform, and convicted criminals could also be denied entry, as could any clients identified as représentants de commerce, commercial travelers or agents, who 97 238 Concerning conspicuous consumption, see Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 239 The Grimaldi palace was of course a central social space as well, but it was available to a far more select audience than was the Monte Carlo casino. 240 Léon Honoré Labande, Guide Pratique de Monte Carlo (Nice: 1908) 42. For an example of individuals denied entry to the casino, see ‘Untitled Report,’ September 27, 1884. SBM, Folder 1884. 241 ‘Letter from the Governor General of Monaco to the Prefect of the Department of Alpes-Maritimes,’ January 20, 1867. Archives Départementales des Alpes-Maritimes (hereafter, ADAM), 1M0432, Subfolder ‘Monaco, Maison de Jeu (Affaires Diverses) 1866-1867. I have not been able to deduce precisely when this policy was overturned, nor how strictly it was enforced. might be tempted to gamble with their firms’ money. 242 Would-be gamblers were subjected to even closer inspection after someone set off a small explosion in the casino in 1880 as part of an unsuccessful robbery attempt. The Prince’s representative at the SBM reported that the company would be “more closely scrutinizing the social positions of people who have requested entry cards.” 243 As it was impossible to be admitted into the casino without having one’s credentials sufficiently investigated, some patrons likened entry into the gaming rooms with admission into a privileged group; one gambler remarked that since the introduction of the new policy the casino had begun to feel like a private club; entering the building was akin to being received by “society” upon reaching a fashionable spa in previous centuries. 244 Because all Monegasque subjects were barred from the casino, except for work, anyone entering the casino who was not in uniform would automatically have been regarded as a foreigner and therefore as someone with the means to afford the costly voyage to the coast. Once granted entrance into the sanctum sanctorum, gamblers remained under constant surveillance. Casino security forbade the wearing of hats so that undesirables could be easily identified in the crowd. 245 Patrons who became too irate over their losses were quickly shuffled offstage, for fear that they would upset other gamblers. A report from 1883 is illustrative: 98 242 Xan Fielding, The Money Spinner: Monte Carlo and Its Fabled Casino (New York: Little, Brown, 1977) 105. 243 ‘Untitled Report,’ March 1, 1880. SBM, Folder 1880. 244 Marcel Silvy, A la colonie étrangère. Casse-Cou, considérations sur les cartes d'entrée de la maison Blanc et Compagnie (Nice: Imprimerie de Caisson, 1874) 245 ‘Untitled Report,’ March 1, 1880. SBM, Folder 1880. A Mlle. Pichon …caused a terrible scene in the gaming rooms, screaming that she had lost her fortune [and] that she had no other choice but to kill herself, and to make good on this threat, quickly produced a revolver out of a pocket in her dress, and was about to turn it against herself, but the guards…managed to disarm her easily. I took her to my office without her resisting, and she soon calmed down. 246 In his report, the casino official noted that he had paid Mlle. Pichon a small sum to leave the premises. 247 This was common practice for the SBM, known as paying the viatique (loosely translatable as “pocket money for the trip,” but also carrying a darker connotation, as the “viaticum” also refers to the Catholic practice of administrating a final Eucharist to the dying). Gamblers who had lost all of their money, known as décavés, would apply to the casino to cover the costs of their trip home under the condition that they not return to the casino. 248 The practice indicates how strenuously the SBM’s management worked to maintain an atmosphere of exclusivity and safety in the casino; viaticum payments reportedly cost the company an average of fifteen hundred francs a day in the 1870s. 249 As a former croupier recalled, although “all countries and races were well and honorably represented” among the casino’s clientele, 99 246 ‘Letter from Vidal to the Commissioner,’ February 14, 1883. SBM, Folder 1883. 247 “With M. Reis’ authority, I gave her the sum that she had requested and she left. This woman has lost more than one hundred thousand francs at the Casino since 1881.” ‘Letter from Vidal to the Commissioner,’ February 14, 1883. SBM, Folder 1883. 248 An 1891 security report, for instance, mentioned that a Mme. Draubin and her son, who had lost all their money at the tables had “received 400 francs to leave the Principality.” ‘Untitled Report,’ September 18, 1891. SBM, Folder 1891. There is record of another woman, claiming to be “completely deaf, and elderly,” and having lost “all of her fortune” requesting three hundred francs and a ticket back to Paris, and of the SBM paying two hundred francs to another ruined gambler upon condition that he return to St. Petersburg. ‘Letter from Camille Pance to M. Wicht,’ November 9, 1908. SBM, Folder 1908; ‘Letter from M. Guerechoff de Salismon,’ June 20, 1907. SBM, Folder 1907. 249 Fielding, 73. “low-life” customers would be banned (often on trumped up-charges, such as “suspicion of theft”) if they became bothersome to other clients. 250 Clients were made to appreciate how many resources the SBM had devoted to ensuring their safety and the fairness of their gambling. Whereas some people may have taken pleasure in “slumming” at early nineteenth-century gambling spaces, such as the raucous and often dangerous “hells” that lined the arcades of Paris’ Palais-Royal, the Monte Carlo casino was, save for the 1880 bombing, an extremely secure gambling environment by comparison. 251 The SBM watched its staff as closely as it monitored its clientele, creating a culture of surveillance that depended on a strict managerial hierarchy. The operation of a single roulette table, for instance, involved a chain of eleven workers, all of whom watched one another. Four croupiers, seated in pairs on either side of the table, took turns in fifteen-minute intervals spinning the wheel. An apprentice croupier handled the chips. This team of five was then watched by a sous- chef who oversaw several tables, and these sous-chefs were surveyed by a chef de partie regarding the action from his high chair; the chefs de partie reported to a superior inspecteur who answered to the top casino manager, the directeur des jeux. To discourage croupiers from theft, the company required them to wear suit jackets without pockets and to keep their hands resting on the table in full view at all times when not actively engaged in handling the gaming materials; croupiers rotated from table to table to prevent collusion. 252 100 250 A. Villy, Au Pays de la Roulette (Paris: Radot, 1927), 56, 89. 251 Concerning the appeals of nineteenth-century ‘slumming’ see Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 252 These casino operations are discussed in Fielding, 71 and Polovstoff, 128-129. The SBM designed and ran the Monte Carlo casino as a space in which any patron could feel as though he or she might become the center of attention; Monte Carlo’s gaming rooms were offered as public stages upon which individuals could distinguish themselves from the crowd through their play. 253 While high-stakes gambling in aristocratic spa casinos had been conducted and understood as a form of performance, it was primarily an intimate practice that took place in sequestered environments and among people who were somewhat familiar with one another. Gambling in Monte Carlo was understood as an intensely public affair, where one wagered in front of an audience of strangers, known as “the gallery,” who would crowd around the tables and discuss the ways that people placed their bets and judging how they reacted to their wins and losses. Patrons learned to become what was known as beaux joueurs, gamblers who bet boldly and played to the gallery. To further perpetuate the idea that the Monte Carlo casino catered to only the most privileged and sophisticated individuals, the SBM’s managers tried to curry the favor of notable artists, society figures, and royalty. 254 In addition to adding to the casino’s sense of glamour, celebrities reminded gamblers of the potential rewards for 101 253 My approach to understanding the symbolic and social functions of the interior of the Monte Carlo casino has been inspired by Jean Baudrillard and James Benedict, trans., The System of Objects (London: Verso, 2005) and by Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941). My general understanding of the interior of the Monte Carlo casino comes from mentions of casino operations, in dozens of reports from the SBM archives between 1870 and 1914, as well as from photographs and illustrations contained the company’s archive of images, especially the folder marked ‘Casino.’ Contemporary newspaper accounts, guidebooks, as well as histories of Monte Carlo, cited throughout this chapter, have also been useful sources. 254 As discussed in the previous chapter, the SBM directly patronized celebrated figures, such as Charles Garnier, hired to build an annex to the casino, and Sarah Bernhardt hired to inaugurate Garnier’s building with a performance. The SBM often forgave Bernhardt’s considerable losses at the tables. See, Raoul Mille, Sarah Bernhardt et Monaco (Monaco: 2005, Éditions du Rocher). the fortunate and skilled individual liberated from the restraints of the crowd and anonymity, while, as with celebrity culture in general, helping to fuel individual ambitions for upward mobility. 255 Patrons of the casino were thrilled by the possibility of proximity to nobility and high society that the casino provided. A young British woman wrote to her parents in the 1890s, “At Monte Carlo I saw Lady Randolph Churchill in the height of her dark Southern beauty, [and] lovely Miss Muriel Wilson, Mrs. Langtry.” 256 Even people who were not necessarily inclined to gamble still felt compelled to see Europe’s most famous casino and its celebrity clients. In 1879, a British preacher worried that “young men of respectable and even godly families go to Monte Carlo just to see the place.” 257 Three years later The Times reported that “the mass of the three hundred thousand visits” to the casino that year were “merely visits of curiosity.” 258 The minor celebrity enjoyed by the Grimaldi princes and princesses also helped to cultivate a sense of storybook mystique in Monaco, while tourists and expatriate residents were also excited 102 255 My thoughts on celebrity and fame have been informed by Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1961); Eva Giloi and Edward Berenson, eds., Constructing Charisma: Celebrity Fame and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe (New York: Berghan Books, 2010); Ryan Linkof, “The Public Eye: Celebrity and Photojournalism in the Making of the British Tabloids, 1904-1938” (Dissertation: University of Southern California, 2011); as well as Max Weber’s foundational theories concerning “charismatic authority” as outlined in The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Free Press, 1997). 256 Dorothy Peel, Life’s Enchanted Cup (London: John Lane, 1933), 121. 257 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Serpent In Paradise: or, Gambling at Monte Carlo (1879),” The Sword and the Trowel: Volume 5: 1877-1879 (London: Pilgrim Publications, 1983). Italics his. 258 As quoted in Polovstoff, 122. about the possibility of spotting visiting royalty from their own countries. 259 SBM director Camille Blanc, who failed in his repeated attempts to arrange a meeting between Queen Victoria and the Prince of Monaco, clearly appreciated the potential value of such encounters, telling another manager that such a visit “would have been worth at least two million francs in publicity to the casino.” 260 Victoria’s son Edward VII, however, was a frequent visitor to Monte Carlo, as were Gustav V of Sweden, Leopold II of Belgium, and several Grand Dukes of Russia were Monte Carlo. 261 Monte Carlo’s gaming rooms were consciously designed to be crowd-pleasing. Blanc had the gaming tables placed in the center of large and wide open spaces, focusing the entire room’s attention on the bettors. A table would operate so long as a single gambler was interested in laying a bet, and so a lone individual could engage the attention of the several employees needed to operate and oversee a typical table, while also commanding the attention of the gallery. Unlike in poorly-lit gambling ‘hells,’ victories and defeats were shared by gambler and spectators alike, fostering an informal temporary community united by shared experience. The ample natural and artificial light provided by overhead oculi of iron and glass and by bronze chandeliers and 103 259 As recounted in the previous chapter, Monaco’s British expatriate community bought tickets to a concert in 1882 after a newspaper reported incorrectly that Queen Victoria would be attending. An SBM report noted “after H.M the Queen departed for Menton, H.M the King and his entourage went presently to the casino, where a crowd gathered outside the doors awaiting his exit.” ‘Report from Jalivot to the Governor General,’ undated (numbered 1069), 1882. SBM, Folder 1882. 260 As quoted in Stanley Jackson, Inside Monte Carlo (New York: Stein and Day, 1975) 53. Royals who snubbed the Grimaldis may have been fearful that being associated with a rather insignificant dynasty whose fortune and power seemed to have been so dishonorably gained might play into the hands of their anti-monarchist critics. 261 Polovstoff’s history of Monte Carlo includes an entire chapter dedicated to “Royalty at the Casino.” Polovstoff, 44-53. candelabras made gamblers highly visible, heightening the sense of theatricality. 262 Gas and eventually electrical lighting also allowed for continual play from morning to night in a secure environment. This round-the-clock lighting, as well as a state-of-the-art air ventilation system, further reinforced the sense that the casino was a luxurious, self- enclosed space unaffected by the vagaries of nature’s rhythms. Monte Carlo’s architecture and décor put gamblers on display in similar fashion to the ways in which nineteenth-century department stores and exhibition halls were designed to “build up” the consumer as much as they glorified objects to be consumed. 263 The casino’s first architects, Ludwig Jacobi and M. Dutrou, used iron and glass technology, dramatic lighting, grandiose architecture, and a wild mixing of styles and materials to create a theatrical space intended to overwhelm and impress gamblers and spectators as much as they pleased them. 264 As they circulated freely between rooms that evoked different historical periods and cultures, each new environment created for their special benefit, gamblers could regard themselves as the privileged masters of both time and space. One gaming room, the Salon Renaissance, featured gilded Italian oil paintings, while another room, the Salle Garnier, featured French 104 262 On lighting and theatricality see Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted night: the industrialization of light in the nineteenth century, trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), esp.191-221. 263 Concerning the ways that exhibition halls “built up” and glorified consumer goods, see Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, Peter Demetz, ed., Edmund Jephcott, trans. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978) 152. 264 Here I intentionally paraphrase the specific language that Rappaport has used to describe nineteenth- century department stores and exhibition halls to show how closely Monte Carlo’s architecture and design allied with those found in these two public spaces. See Rappaport, 28. Concerning the commissioning of architects in Monte Carlo see ‘Letter from François Blanc to the Governor General,’ May 16, 1863. SBM, Folder 1863. paintings, and a third gambling room, the Salle Mauresque was decorated in Moorish Revival style and featured a panel depicting orientalist fantasy of an opium den. Fig. 2.2. Salle Mauresque, circa 1880. Photographer Unknown. SBM Image Archives, Image Folder ‘Casino.’ Figs. 2.3 and 2.4. Illustrations of Monte Carlo’s crowd-pleasing layout. Untitled Images, circa 1878 and 1890, respectively. Artists Unknown. SBM Image Archives, Image Folder ‘Casino.’ The casino’s decadent mixing of styles encouraged patrons to feel as though they were in an environment suitably outfitted to reflect their elevated (whether actual or hoped for) status, while also symbolically hinting at the riches that might be attained through gambling success. The building’s main atrium boasted-eight ionic columns of marble, while the gambling rooms had columns of onyx. Gamblers were struck by the opulence of their surroundings, and its heady mélange of style and materials. Theodore Dreiser, upon visiting the casino in 1912, noted how “the mingled architecture of France and Italy, with its bastard complement of Byzantine and rococo, was delightfully visible.” 265 No surface was left unadorned. Mirrors, which as Jean Baudrillard has written “[afford] the self-indulgent bourgeois individual the opportunity to exercise his privilege – to reproduce his own image and revel in his possessions,” were plentiful. 266 A description of a fictionalized Palais-Royal casino as it looked in 1829, penned by Honoré de Balzac, evinces how markedly the luxe Monte Carlo gambling environment stood apart from previous gambling spaces: 105 265 Theodore Dreiser, A Traveler at Forty (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 382. 266 Baudrillard, 21. How bare it looks! The paper on the walls is greasy to the height of your head, there is nothing to bring one reviving thought. There is not so much as a nail for the convenience of suicides. The floor is worn and dirty. An oblong table stands in the middle of the room, the tablecloth is worn by the friction of gold, but the straw-bottomed chairs about it indicate an odd indifference to luxury in the men who will lose their lives here in the quest of the fortune that is to put luxury within their reach. 267 The SBM further pandered to the gambler’s sense of power as a consuming individual by offering many tables providing the same game, just as department stores offered several varieties of the same product. 268 Whereas a typical early nineteenth century spa casino offered one or the most two roulette tables, these being expensive to build and maintain, the Monte Carlo casino usually had eight tables running concurrently. Gamblers were given the illusion of choice, as though one table or croupier might have been bestowed with a special amount of luck. Each table could provide gamblers with their own individual stages upon which to perform, encouraging patrons to compete with gamblers at other tables for the attention of the gallery. Nowhere were gamblers more actively on display than at the roulette tables. Roulette was far and away the casino’s most profitable attraction between the 1880s and the 1930s, when Monte Carlo enjoyed a monopoly on providing roulette in a public and legal setting. 269 The game was widely prohibited in Europe, as anti-gambling reformers deemed the game especially addictive and dangerous. 270 Roulette, the 106 267 Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin (Le Peau de Chagrin) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 7. 268 Concerning the nineteenth-century department stores, see Bennett; Friedberg; Miller; Rappaport; Tiersten; Williams. 269 In SBM financial reports, too numerous to list individually, profits are broken down by game offered, with roulette far exceeding all others. 270 Concerning the prohibition of gambling in the nineteenth century, see D. Schwartz, 185. ultimate “long odds” table game upon which casinos profit by offering a large payout while asking for only a small minimum bet, is a game where individual fortunes can turn very quickly. While the law of large numbers dictates that the house will always eventually come out on top from its small advantage, roulette in Monte Carlo contained the very real potential for any one gambler to reap a tremendous win. The possibility for large swings of fortune, and accordingly for crowd-pleasing gambling performances, was greater in Belle Époque Monte Carlo than in any previous legalized gambling setting, as the casino offered higher betting maximums than had ever been available in Europe. When founding Monte Carlo, Blanc had abolished the roulette table’s traditional double-zero, increasing the odds in the gambler’s favor. 271 Gamblers from disparate national origins could command respect through their power as consumers, as they could exchange any international legal tender accepted in Monaco for chips, rather easily and seamlessly, without being subjected to the kinds of scrutiny that they might endure in a banking establishment elsewhere. 272 A Russian nobleman might place one thousand francs worth of chips on the number seven and then have those chips covered up by those of a middle-class Parisian woman placing her own thousand-franc bet on top of his. The two bets might have held different values for each party outside of the casino walls, but inside the two were equal. Putting all gamblers on equal footing against the casino only served to heighten the sense that any one individual might escape anonymity by mastering the wheel. In other words, to publicly distinguish oneself from the crowd, one first needed a crowd in which to do so. 107 271 Corti,199. 272 ‘Untitled Report,’ March 1, 1880. SBM, Folder 1880.! Casino gambling called the entire concept of social hierarchy into question, by placing all bettors on equal footing regardless of social rank and, by turning economic activity into a game, by upending the idea that people should be divided into separate categories according to their relation to economic system. 273 While extravagant aristocratic gambling at spa casinos had been a primarily masculine practice, at the Monte Carlo women were granted equal opportunity as men to partake in performative and potentially profitable gambling. The casino was a mixed- sex environment. Though difficult to ascertain with precision, available data suggests that women and men visited the casino in relatively equal numbers. 274 There is no evidence indicating that female gamblers, were treated any differently than were male clients. Women at the casino were not relegated to any specific sections of the casino, nor prompted to play any specific games, nor limited in how they placed their bets. Many notable women could be seen in Belle Époque Monte Carlo. François Blanc’s widow Marie helmed the SBM after her husband’s death in 1877, until her own death in 108 273 Walter Benjamin proposed that gambling’s ability to make a game out of money was one of its main appeals, writing that “the peculiar feeling of happiness in the one who wins is marked by the fact that money and riches, otherwise the most massive and burdensome things in the world, come to him from fates like a joyous embrace returned to the full.” Benjamin, 513. Edward Chancellor, invoking the theories of Mikhail Bahktin, has noted that gambling’s ability to parody traditional hierarchies part of the reason why the practice was so prevalent at carnivals and fairs. Gambling, as with the carnivals, embodied a Bahktinian “grotesque realism,” mocking traditional values and reducing what was normally sacred into the profane and material realm. Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999) 28. Clifford Geertz, advancing his theory of ‘deep’ or socially significant play, detected a similar drive in a different gambling context, suggesting that Balinese gamblers bet on cockfights as a means through which to understand and question the social hierarchies of their society. Clifford Geertz’s “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” from The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 274 I base this claim on the hundreds of pages of SBM archival materials describing casino operations, as well as an equally large collection of press reports and other popular representations of Monte Carlo, that I have encountered in the course of my research for this dissertation. For an example of an SBM report listing notable female patrons, see “SBM Report,” August 31, 1882. SBM Archives, Folder 1882. 1881. Other celebrated Monte Carlo regulars included Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough; La Belle Otero; Sarah Bernhardt; Mata Hari, Edith Wharton, and Colette. 275 The SBM regularly hired female employees, though they tended to work outside of the main gaming rooms, primarily as coatroom and bathroom attendants 276 If any otherwise obscure man or women might, in theory, momentarily attract the attention of the gallery at Monte Carlo, on some occasions gamblers won so much and in such thrilling fashion that news of their feats traveled beyond the confines of the casino and into the press, carrying gamblers from the realm of the temporarily famous to that of the celebrity. 277 The SBM played along in the charade of promoting gambling celebrities in the popular press. There was great value in encouraging people to think that the casino could be beaten. In Monte Carlo’s first decades, Blanc orchestrated publicity stunts that involved ‘retiring’ roulette wheels that had supposedly been ‘broken,’ meaning that they had paid out enough in a single round to exhaust the day’s reserves. A croupier would drape a shroud of black crepe over the wheel as coworkers were sent to the head office to collect more gold coins, a sort of mock mourning to demonstrate that the casino, too, was vulnerable to the whims of fortune. Rather than undermining public confidence in the casino’s solvency, this public admission of defeat only served to tempt gamblers further. 278 Stories of people “breaking the bank” in Monte 109 275 Concerning notable women in Monte Carlo see, in addition to the popular histories of Monaco already cited, see Mille, Sarah Bernhardt; and Jean des Cars, Colette et Monaco (Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1998). 276 ‘Candidats Monegasques: Demande D’Emplois,’ Undated, 1895. SBM Archives, Folder ‘1895’. 277 Ryan Linkof provides a useful overview of the etymological and cultural differences between fame and celebrity. See, Linkof, 24. 278 Charles Graves, Monte Carlo: The Big Gamble (London: Hutchison and Co., 1951) 90. Carlo promoted magical thinking about modern capitalism, by hinting that the dream of transcending one’s social station could be realized if only one was shrewd enough to exploit a weakness in the capitalist system, while adhering with discipline to a mathematically rigorous system, and being brave enough to risk everything in the pursuit of profit. The French version of the expression, ‘faire sauter la banque,’ literally to make the bank jump, makes clear the David and Goliath appeals of such tales: they held the same appeal as did stories about bank robberies, by seeming to expose chinks in the capitalist armor. One author combined the appeal of both of these two revenge- on-capitalism tropes by telling the story (presented as factual, though the events never took place) of an anonymous thief who had successfully robbed the casino at gunpoint, in The Sack of Monte Carlo. 279 To fully understand why stories about gamblers “breaking the bank” in Monte Carlo gained such popularity as they circulated in the press in the 1870s, we must first understand the prevalence of “system gamblers,” who used detailed gambling guides professing to hold the keys to besting the Monte Carlo casino. System gamblers at the Monte Carlo casino offer further evidence of the ways in which people understood the casino as a place in which one’s individual personality and conduct would trump all other identifying factors. Such players did not regard themselves as anonymous, passive consumers of gambling but rather as active producers who through their specialized knowledge, skill, and discipline could undo even fundamental economic truths. Approaching gambling as if it were a profession, they consulted guides such as Insurance Against all Losses at Monte Carlo and Mathematical Observances Relating to 110 279 Vincent Blacker, The Sack of Monte Carlo: An Adventure of Today (New York: Harper, 1897). The Game of Roulette, which usually outlined some variation of a progressive betting strategy known as a ‘martingale,’ wherein a gambler bets greater and greater amounts until they win their desired initial wager. 280 A gambler wanting to win fifty francs, for example, might stake fifty on red and then, if they lost, would stake one hundred, then if they lost that as well, would bet two hundred. The problems with such schemes were twofold: first, they created the very real potential for a gambler experiencing a bad run of luck to be betting thousands of francs simply to win back their initial fifty franc wager; second, gamblers were rarely satisfied with winning their initial stake, which might occur on the first spin of the wheel, and would stay on at the tables until the odds eventually caught up with them. Furthermore, there was simply no way to undo the obvious mathematical advantage of the roulette table. The fundamental law of casino gambling is that the results of previous play have no bearing on the results of future play. The disadvantageous odds of a table that pays out thirty-five to one, while offering thirty- 111 280 For examples of gambling guides, see A.N Nancy, Le Pointeur, Jeu de la Roulette; Instructions Relatives à la progression no.1, dressée specialement pour Monte Carlo (Nice, 1873); Paul Blancin, La Roulette et le trente-et-quarante; Guide théorique et pratique à l'usage des visiteurs de Monte-Carlo (Nice, 1880); Maurice Jacob, Étude des appareils du jeu de roulette de Monaco (Paris: S. Pitrat, 1883); ‘Félix P.’, Assurance contre toutes les pertes que l'on fera dans l'établissement de Monte-Carlo (Paris: J. Couchout, 1884); Anonymous, Monte-Carlo, Roulette et Trente et Quarante; Moyen le plus sur, avec un capital minime de gagner par jour depuis 25 francs jusqu'à 1600 francs soit 576000 francs par an, sans calculs (Paris: Valéry, 1887); ‘Jacques,’ Aux personnes se rendant à Monte-Carlo; La seule méthode pour ponter, soit à la roulette, soit au trente-et-quarante, assurant infailliblement le gain, après chaque séance de jeu (Paris, 1890); ‘Americanus,’ Monte-Carlo; Rules of Trente et Quarante and of Roulette (Nice: Degand, 1890); V. Pouliquen, La plus grande découverte du siècle; Plus de ruine aux jeux de Monaco (Nice: J. Ventre, 1891); ‘Un ennemi du Hasard’, Souvenir de Monte-Carlo; Observations mathématiques relatives au jeu de la roulette, conseils aux joueurs (Paris: L. de Soye, 1895); ‘A.L.’, Monaco; Trucs et ruses dévoilés de la roulette à Monte-Carlo (Dijon, 1896); E. Buteux, Ne jouez pas à Monte-Carlo sans connaître le seul moyen sérieux qui existe pour gagner à la roulette et au trente-et-quarante (Clichy: Lallement, 1897); Victor Bethell, Ten Days at Monaco at the Bank’s Expense (London: William Heinemann, 1898); Hiram S. Maxim, Monte Carlo Facts and Fallacies (London: Grant Richards, 1904). seven to one odds should have been clear to any gambler; yet the popularity of such guides reveals the opposite. 281 Why were such guides so popular, given that any rational person should have been able to realize that if Monte Carlo could be defeated by anyone with fifty centimes to spend on a guide it would not long have remained in business? Karl Marx, convalescing in Monaco in 1882, was struck by how “the great majority of gamblers, male and female, believe in the science of this pure game of hazard. Gentleman and ladies…hold little tablets (printed) in their hands, head bent, scratching and calculating, or one explains importantly to the other ‘which system’ he prefers, whether one is to play in ‘series’ etc., etc.” 282 Daily and weekly periodicals, such as Le Monaco, which was distributed in London, New York, and St. Petersburg in the late 1880s, published charts detailing every single result from the day or week’s play at Monte Carlo’s tables. 283 While it is possible that some people used the published results from roulette at Monte Carlo to operate remote betting schemes, in a manner similar to running ‘numbers’ (unsanctioned lotteries based on any series of randomly generated numbers), bound books collecting several weeks’ worth of results were also available for sale, and 112 281 The back page of my copy of Maxim’s gambling guide, Monte Carlo Facts and Fallacies, is filled with numbers added to and subtracted from one another in increments of five under column headers ‘WIN’ and ‘LOSE’, offering evidence that at least one reader was persuaded to experiment with such systems. 282 Quoted in Ted Jones, The French Riviera: A Literary Guide for Travelers (New York: Tauris Parke, 2007), 154. 283 Le Monaco, Journal Hebdomadaire, Special aux Salons de Monte-Carlo (Paris: Weekly Periodical, 1887- 1888). these would have served little purpose to those interested in an ongoing numbers racket. 284 The popularity of gambling guides and charts hints at an ambivalent mode of thinking, a desire to approach modern capitalism both as a rational system that could be bested through similarly rational thought, and as an irrational system that could be approached with a sense of wonder and enchantment. 285 Gambling guides professed that the roulette tables could be beaten by any man or woman bold enough to potentially risk great sums to reap small but steady profits and disciplined enough to follow their mathematically rigorous strategies - skills that were useful to succeeding in the modern capitalist economy. These guides simultaneously allowed their readers to believe that capitalism contained an occult code that could be divined by any one person clever and aware enough to uncover its inner workings. 286 By turning chance into science, the consumer of gambling guides tried to find his or her place within capitalist society while believing that he or she could bend the seemingly illogical and irrational economic system to his or her individual whim. 287 113 284 “Numbers”, or “Policy”, was an unsanctioned form of lottery wherein bettors wagered on a series of randomly, or, in the case of oft-crooked policy providers, not-so-randomly, selected numbers. For examples of Monte Carlo results charts see, Anonymous, Trois cents tailles authentiques de trente et quarante au Casino de Monte-Carlo avec les point des cartes de chaque coup (Beausoleil: La Revue de Monte-Carlo, undated); and L’Observateur de Nice et Monaco (Nice: Daily Periodical, 1881-1882); 285 See Michael Saler, “Modernity and Enchantment: A Historiographic Review,” American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 3 (June 2006) and “'Clap If You Believe in Sherlock Holmes': Mass Culture and the Re-Enchantment of Modernity, c. 1890-c. 1940,” The Historical Journal , Vol. 46, No. 3 (September 2003). 286 Ann Fabian has offered a rich case study of this kind of magical thinking at work, in the American context, in her analysis of nineteenth-century dream books used to divine lucky numbers. Fabian, 132-138. 287 Gerda Reith has proposed that one of the principal appeals of gambling in the nineteenth century was that it allowed gamblers to confront their ‘ontological insecurity’ within a seemingly disordered world. Reith, 35. Such modes of thinking about the adversarial relationship between individual gambler and corporate casino found popular expression in an 1892 song, The Man who Broke the Bank in Monte Carlo, which became a hit for the music-hall performer Charles Coborn. 288 The song was so popular that, in the hyperbolic account of one journalist, it could be “heard wherever the English language was spoken in the early 90’s.” 289 The song tells of a middle-class everyman who went to Monte Carlo “just to raise me winter’s rent” and “patronized the tables at the Monte Carlo hell ‘til they hadn't got a sou for a Christian or a Jew.” This average man is lifted into the pantheon of gambling celebrities because “Dame fortune” smiles on him, “as she’d never smiled before.” He wins so much that he ascends to the rank of gentleman (“I’ve now such loads of money, I’m a gent”), and promenades around Paris in “a mass of money, linen, silk, and starch,” attracting the admiration of women who, one assumes, were previously unattainable. 290 The composer Fred Gilbert based the song on the widely reported exploits of two famous gamblers in Monte Carlo, Joseph Jaggers and Charles Deville Wells, whose stories of success at the casino, in 1873 and 1891, respectively, captured the public’s imagination. Their respective tales illustrate the kinds of roles these modern folk heroes played for the audiences that consumed such stories. If, as Edward Berenson has suggested, the charismatic appeal of the popular hero lies in his or her ability to 114 288 Everett John Carter has similarly discussed adversarial relationships between gamblers and casinos, and attempts to “break the bank” in the context of his study of the German Rhine casinos, esp.120-131. 289 ‘Hero of Once Widely Famous Song Dies in Abject Poverty.’ The Washington Post . July 30, 1922. The song was later featured in Booth Tarkington’s satire of class and aristocratic manners, The Magnificent Ambersons (and in Orson Welles film adaptation) and was also sung by one of history’s most famous cosmopolitan individualists, T.E Lawrence, in the film Lawrence of Arabia. 290 Lyrics transcribed from a Charles Coborn performance, circa 1924. Accessed January 2013 via www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BxQT_du-Cg. broaden the horizons of possibility by “seeking” more out of life than did his or her contemporaries, then Jaggers and Wells became heroes because they sought to transcend the boundaries of the social stations that had been assigned to them by birth, and they were willing to risk their money in order to accomplish this feat. 291 In the process, they broadened the horizons of possibility for what an individual could accomplish in the face of corporate might. 292 Joseph Jaggers’ success in Monte Carlo allowed the public to believe that the Monte Carlo casino, and hence perhaps even the entire modern economic system, could be mastered by a skillful and disciplined individual. Jaggers’ tale spoke of the triumph of bourgeois expertise and ingenuity. He was a British engineer who manufactured spindles for cotton mills, an experience that had taught him that machines were susceptible to faults and irregularities. His theory was that certain roulette tables, possessing even the tiniest imbalances, would favor the ball landing on certain regions of the wheel, and he employed a few confederates to test this theory. This team played Monte Carlo’s roulette tables for a week while recording the winning numbers; Jaggers then examined the data and discovered that one table indeed possessed the imbalance he had theorized. He bet heavily on that table and eventually won roughly two million francs over the space of a few days, until the SBM recognized the fault and replaced all of its wheels. He promptly stopped playing. Having done nothing illegal he was permitted to keep his winnings. Jaggers’ tale struck a nerve with bourgeois audiences because it reinforced the core values of capitalism and the promise of reward to those 115 291 Berenson, Heroes, 17-18. 292 Berenson has argued that "in a democratic age, exceptional individuals paradoxically owed a measure of their standing to being like everyone else." Berenson, Heroes, 5. who would master its workings: Jaggers had used his professional acumen to profit, and had done so legally and rationally within the existing economic system, employing a small firm of workers to help him best a rival company, the SBM; and he had not gloated over his business success nor been carried away with irresponsible play once sufficient profit had been reaped. In the figure of Jaggers, gambling was transformed from a wasteful and idle practice into a tightly controlled and productive professional pursuit. 293 If Jaggers represented the power of bourgeois ingenuity, then another gambling celebrity, Charles Deville Wells, represented the lingering appeals of aristocratic virtus, transplanted onto the figure of the everyman. Though Wells, who also trained as an engineer, boasted to journalists that he had devised a complex and infallible mathematical betting system while working on mechanical inventions, his winnings in Monte Carlo had simply been the result of extremely good luck and a certain amount of derring-do. The only system Wells employed, known as the coup de trois - in which a gambler allows a bet to ride for three successive wins and then withdraws the entire stake and starts again – was a well-known progressive betting strategy that offered no real mathematical advantage and had ruined countless other gamblers. 294 By enjoying an incredible streak of wins while boldly leaving his winnings on the table as they got progressively bigger and bigger Wells won more than half a million francs in Monte Carlo over a three day stretch in July 1891. 295 Wells claimed that there was something 116 293 Concerning Joseph Jaggers in Monte Carlo, See “Is It Possible To Break The Bank At Monte Carlo?” The Baltimore Sun, June 27, 1909. 294 Fielding, 94. 295 ‘The Bankruptcy of Charles Deville Wells.’ The Manchester Guardian. July 12, 1893; ‘The Frauds By "Monte Carlo Wells." The Manchester Guardian.. March 15, 1893; ‘The Man Who Broke The Bank.’ The Baltimore Sun. January 18, 1893. ‘Wells and his Dupes,’ The Times of India. April 4, 1893. unique in his personality that had allowed him to win, saying that “anyone is free to watch me play and follow my example,” but warning that “average gamblers lack the courage to risk large stakes and they haven’t the stamina to play eleven hours a day.” 296 A columnist for the Hartford Courant wrote about Wells: “There is in the spectacle of this man’s career something that sends a fascinating thrill of envy to our veins…we cannot refrain from wondering what would have happened if we had had his luck and our wisdom.” 297 Such thinking reinforced the risk-taking values of the capitalist economy: to be “lucky” in the way that Wells had been lucky, one first had to take a risk; then one needed “wisdom” to know what do when presented with such good fortune. People consuming Wells’ story could imagine that if they too were blessed with an equally favorable run of numbers at the tables they would also greet the moment with similar courage and willpower. Any gambler, by refusing, as Wells had refused, to withdraw his or her stake until he or she was completely satisfied, might be able to bring an entire corporate apparatus to its knees. According to Wells, gambling victories were only the outward monetary expression of already existing inner strength - in his case, his unusually high levels of “courage” and “stamina.” 298 While gambling celebrities such as Jaggers and Wells embodied the subjective pleasures and potential for individual gain that could be found in Monte Carlo’s fluid casino environment, contemporary observers worried that this same celebration of upward mobility threatened to pull people away from their professional callings, family 117 296 As quoted in Fielding, 94. 297 The End of a Gambler.’ The Hartford Courant. July 31, 1922. 298 As Walter Benjamin asked “Isn’t there a certain structure of money that can be recognized only in fate, and a certain structure of fate that can be recognized only in money?” Benjamin, Arcades, 496. duties, and communal responsibilities. Instead of understanding Monte Carlo as place of glamorous individualism, many fin-de-siècle observers saw the casino only as a pathological environment that fostered atomization and anomie. In the spring of 1901, Enrico Testa, a grieving father from the Italian town of Avellino, penned what would be yet another unanswered letter to the party he held most responsible for the death of his son: the SBM. “It has been two months since I had the great misfortune to learn of the death of my beloved son Eugenio,” Testa wrote to Camille Blanc, then head of the casino. “As my poor son died there [in Monte Carlo] due to the profound emotions brought about by the large losses he suffered gambling in your establishment…I once again simply voice my wish that you come to my aid with any sum that will allow me to pay the costs brought about by this tragedy and to collect his effects.” 299 While there is no record that Camille Blanc, son of Monte Carlo’s founder and then head of the SBM, ever acknowledged Testa’s letters, he was certainly aware of the events in question. In a 1902 report, the Casino’s head of security confirmed that “Eugenio Testa, an Italian officer, committed suicide in March 1901 at The Hôtel Bristol,” but that “Dr. Collignon, called in to file the report, attributed the cause of death to a cerebral congestion.” 300 The Director of the Monegasque Public Safety force, whose officers, not coincidentally, were accused of stealing jewels from the young man’s dead body, backed the SBM’s story, stating that “Testa’s suicide exists only in the minds of 118 299 Enrico Testa Letter to Camille Blanc. May 10, 1901. SBM Archives, Folder 1901. Testa mentions having written three previous letters to the SBM. 300 Surveillance of the Gaming Rooms, Inspector’s Report of 7 October 1902: The Testa Affair. SBM Archives, Folder 1902. those involved in this defamatory campaign waged against the Principality.” 301 Those orchestrating the cover-up were concerned that the truth would eventually out. Eugenio’s brother, a police commissioner based near Florence, knew an Italian diplomat in Nice who, as the SBM report states, “told him various things relating to the suicide of his brother. So Commissioner Testa has filed a complaint with the Minister of War, and one with the Minister of Foreign Affairs.” 302 Camille Blanc, the SBM, and the Monegasque authorities, however, were never made to waver from their official story of accidental death caused by illness. Yet Enrico Testa remained convinced that his son had been driven to suicide by gambling losses in Monte Carlo, though he appears to have heard this version of the events only via the Niçoise diplomat, a third-hand source. 303 Why would he believe the sensational story of a relative stranger over the more comforting doctor’s report? Perhaps Testa had simply read, seen, and heard enough about what happened to wayward sons and daughters in Monte Carlo that when he learned that his own son had died there, he found the rumor to be far more believable than the official truth. Monte Carlo was, after all, a place that lent itself well to sensational stories. While the SBM trumpeted Monte Carlo as the height of glamorous individualism, journalists, reformers, writers of fiction, and others painted the resort as a dangerous and decadent place overrun by confidence men, fallen women, and ruined gamblers. By the time Enrico 119 301 Letter from M. Delalonde, Director of Public Safety. 20 October 1902. SBM Archives, Folder 1902. The October 7 SBM report noted that Testa “had in his possession jewels of some value that disappeared and which were later seen worn by members of the Monegasque Public Safety force.” 302 Ibid. 303 The archival evidence suggests that Enrico Testa heard that Eugène’s death had been a suicide from his son the police commissioner, who had heard it from Poli, the political attaché in Nice. Testa began sending his sad letters to the SBM in 1901, stories of gamblers driven to suicide in Monte Carlo had been circulating in metropolitan newspapers for more than three decades. 304 Eugenio Testa’s death in Monte Carlo brings to mind the biblical parable of the prodigal son, who in “a distant country…squandered his wealth in wild living.” 305 Like the original prodigal, Testa apparently ruined himself in a foreign land while his brother stayed closer to home, bound, as was the brother in the parable, by work and responsibility. Anti-gambling reformers and journalists in fact often referenced this specific biblical parable to drive home their critiques of Monte Carlo. An anti-Monte Carlo pamphlet that circulated in Paris in the late nineteenth century, for example, 120 304 The following by-no-means-exhaustive list of news items about suicide in Monte Carlo should serve as some indication of the frequency of such stories: L’Ami des arts (Nice): 27 June, 1885; The Guardian: May 23, 1881; August 1, 1888; March 22, 1889; June 27, 1893; April 4, 1896; February 6, 1905; January 21, 1908; April 16, 1925; March 15, 1926; November 24, 1928; New York Times: “Attractions of Monte Carlo,” April 28, 1879; “At Monte Carlo,” June 26, 1881; “Monaco’s Nine Centuries,” June 19, 1882; “Monte Carlo’s Den of Evil,” July 20, 1884; “A Story from Monte Carlo,” December 12, 1884; “A Bride’s Suicide at Monte Carlo,” March 27, 1885; “Gamblers No Suicides,” June 1, 1885; “Current Foreign Topics,” June 23, 1885; “Current Foreign Topics,” August 23, 1886; “The Monte Carlo Record,” June 6, 1887; “The Decline of Monte Carlo,” November 27, 1888; “Tragedies of Monte Carlo,” March 25, 1889; “Monte Carlo,” May 12, 1889; “Is Monte Carlo Doomed?,” September 14, 1889;Article 39, “A Desperate Female Gambler,” April 28, 1891; “An American’s Suicide,” April 23, 1892; “Superb Genoa and Nice,” March 24, 1895; “Behind the Scenes at Monte Carlo,” November 24, 1895; “Monte Carlo As a Business,” July 25, 1897; “Casino a Boon to Monaco,” December 26, 1897; “Monte Carlo and Monaco,” March 13, 1898; “Monaco, A Venerable City,” April 3, 1898; “Lost, Then Killed Himself,” May 10, 1904; “American Suicides Abroad,” August 7, 1907; “Woman Suicide An American,” August 9, 1907; “Probably No One Covets the Little Kingdom, But It Is Said to be in Need of Discipline,” September 1, 1907; “Suicide at Banquet’s Close,” March 14, 1909; “Riviera Cold Spell Nips Americans,” April 12, 1925; “Sues Monaco Over Emetic,” April 26, 1925; “American Baroness Says she was Tricked,” January 24, 1926; The Observer: October 30, 1892; 23 February, 1908; Le Petit Journal: 11 March, 1869; 8 April, 1869; 24 February, 1870; 18 May, 1870; 3 November, 1871; 18 March, 1873; 14 April 1875; 24 February, 1876; 21 May, 1876; La Saison Estivale (Nice): “Crimes et Mystères du temps present,” 1 July, 1931; ; La Stampa: 22 June, 1884; 29 December, 1887; 16 August, 1888; 25 March, 1888; 1 December, 1895; 7 April, 1889; 28 May, 1892; 17 September, 1899; 2 December, 1902; 21 October, 1902; 17 March, 1903; Washington Post: “Dividends Dripping With Blood and Tears,” R.S. Fendrick. June 3, 1928 305 “The younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.” Luke 15:13, ‘The Parable of the Lost Son.’ King James Bible. declared that “honest families…no longer wish to be exposed to losing their fortune and sometimes their honor due to the acts of prodigal sons.” 306 Fiction writers picked up on the narrative possibilities of setting updated versions of the prodigal son parable in Monte Carlo: in 1904 the British writer Hall Caine titled his novel, set partially in Monte Carlo The Prodigal Son, and E. Phillips Oppenheim later titled his thriller, Prodigals of Monte Carlo. 307 Just as the parable of the prodigal son can be interpreted as a cautionary tale warning against the dangers of straying far from one’s home, elders, and traditions, so too can various accounts of wasted youth and rampant criminality in Monte Carlo be read as updated versions of this ‘travel-and-change-is-dangerous’ narrative. People who produced popular representations of the Monte Carlo casino- resort implicitly and explicitly argued that those who lost their money, their respectability, or their lives there did so because they had strayed too far from home, lived life at too quick a pace, had forgotten their rightful places on the social ladder, or lacked a sense of duty to any force greater than themselves. If the gambling celebrity represented the potential for individual triumph within the capitalist system, its darker analogue could be found in the figure of the gambling suicide, who similarly gained public distinction through gambling in Monte Carlo, but 121 306 Edmond Lému, La Semaine Sanglante de Monte-Carlo. BNF. Gr-Fol-K, Undated, circa 1890s. 307 Hall Caine, The Prodigal Son, (London: William Heinemann, 1904); E. Phillips Oppenheim, Prodigals of Monte Carlo, (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1926); It is worth noting that George Balanchine’s ballet The Prodigal Son, was produced in the resort for the Ballet Russes in 1929. whose same self-interest in this case led to his or her downfall. 308 The reach of Monte Carlo suicide stories was truly international. French readers learned in the pages of Le Petit Journal about a Russian who shot himself at the roulette table, while Italians were confronted in La Stampa by the report of two young women, one British and the other German, driven to self-murder by their passion for gambling; The Guardian’s readers encountered a “Spaniard, recently arrived from New York” who committed suicide after having been undone by “the seductive tables of M. Blanc,” while across the Atlantic those perusing the New York Times could read about the young Frenchman who hung himself after losing all. 309 Journalists alleged that the local authorities covered up most crimes committed in Monaco, dumping the bodies of suicides into the ocean, with bills stuffed into their pockets to discredit any theories about deaths caused by gambling losses. 310 When anti-gambling reformers and preachers called for the closing of Monte Carlo, they often included sufficiently grisly lists of suicides presumably caused by 122 308 Émile de Saint-Auban, in L'Histoire sociale au palais de justice. Tome II. Le Silence et le secret (Paris: A. Pedone, 1898) counted one hundred and twenty eight suicides in Monte Carlo in 1891; Ethel Coburn Mayne, in The Romance of Monaco and its Rulers (New York: John Lane, 1910), suggested that there had been two thousand suicides in Monaco since 1860. Louis Boisset’s Monaco, Monte-Carlo, Grandeur et Decadence d’une Maison de Jeu (Nice: Gauthier, 1884) contains an entire chapter dedicated to suicide in Monaco, contending that the police and press were paid to cover up the frequent suicides; “Un homme politique,” in Monte Carlo Devant L’Europe (Paris, Alacan-Lezy. 1884), claims to have found twenty reports of suicide in Monte Carlo between January and March of 1884, though he or she suggested that the SBM covered up most of the suicides. La Stampa counted forty nine over a two and a half month period in 1888. “One suicide a month,” a London paper estimated in 1879. A decade later La Stampa counted forty nine suicides in a ten week period. And by 1902, a Niçoise paper was providing a detailed list of over one hundred recent Monte Carlo suicides. The London report is referenced in “Attractions of Monte Carlo.” New York Times. April 28, 1879; “La cronaca nera di Montecarlo.” La Stampa. 25 March 1888; “Untitled Article.” Littoral Mondain, 4 May, 1902. 309 See “Untitled.” Le Petit Journal, 21 May, 1876; “La cronaca Nera di Montecarlo.” La Stampa. 25 March, 1888. “Riviera Notes.” The Guardian. February 6, 1905. “At Monte Carlo.” New York Times. June 26, 1881. 310 See, for example, “Riviera Notes.” The Guardian. February 6, 1905 and William Le Queux, Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo (New York: The Macauly Company, 1921). losses at the casino. 311 Though they fabricated and exaggerated many of their accounts, reformers often pulled their source material directly from newspapers. 312 The association of Monte Carlo and suicide quickly became self-perpetuating; characters in novels asked to be shown the “suicide’s chair” in the casino, or the “suicide section” of the cemetery, though these two sites were pure fiction. 313 Stories about suicide in the resort reached such a fevered pitch that in 1884 Pope Leo XIII issued a statement concerning Monte Carlo, pronouncing that “in presence of so many calamitous events we cannot but deplore this perilous gambling, the cause of frequent suicides, of ruin to families, and of the perdition of souls.” 314 By the close of the nineteenth century, it 123 311 ‘A Few Inhabitants of Nice, Cannes, and Mentone,’ Monaco; A Letter On The Moral and Material Injury caused by the Gambling Establishment of Monte Carlo Addressed to the French Senators and Deputies (Nice: 1876). The petition includes an ‘Appendix: Facts cited in support of the foregoing assertions’ listing thirty six recent cases of suicide. See also La Suppression des Jeux de Monte-Carlo-Monaco. Memoire à l’appui de la petition presentée aux chambres francaises (Nice: 1881). BNF: 8-V Piece-3355 L.3.34-A; Circulaire a Mm. les cures, Evêché de Nice, 28 Mars, 1866 and Letter from Deputy L.Lubonitz to M. Eugêne Abbo, President de la Chambre de Commerce, Nice, 28 Mai, 1866; Les Archives Départementales des Alpes-Maritimes (ADAM), Folder 33J 423, ‘Spectacles et Jeux’, Subfolder, ‘Petition contre la maison de jeu de Monaco 1866-1869.’ A London reporter noted that “the International Association for the Suppression of Gaming Tables…records that 60 suicides, the consequences of unsuccessful gambling, have taken place during the last few years in or near to Monte Carlo.” “From our London Correspondent.” The Manchester Guardian; May 23, 1881; see also La Fin de Monte-Carlo, Bi- Monthly Periodical, 1906-1907. BNF, 8-K-4036; and Méphisto, Periodical, 1914-1915, BNF- JO-35361. 312 See, for example, Spurgeon, “The Serpent.” 313 Le Queux’s Mademoiselle… begins with the chapter titled, “The Suicide’s Chair,” and makes reference to the supposed suicide section of the cemetery. Mairie Adelaide Belloc Lowdnes, in The Lonely House (Serialized in The Daily Mail. November 4 - December 17, 1919), struck upon the idea of having her murderers target victims in Monte Carlo because the supposed frequency of suicides there would make their crimes difficult to detect. 314 “The Pope and Monte Carlo.” New York Times. Feb 29, 1884. became newsworthy simply to note that the number of suicides in Monte Carlo appeared to be decreasing. 315 Statistical evidence, however, suggests that claims of nearly daily suicide in Monte Carlo may have been overblown. The SBM certainly dealt with suicides, both attempted and successful. 316 But in the official death register in Monaco for 1911, only thirteen out of three-hundred-and-nineteen total deaths in the principality were attributed to suicide, and the majority of these suicides were listed as having been committed not by the nearly two hundred thousand people admitted to the gaming rooms that year, but by local Monegasques, who were forbidden to enter the casino. 317 Statistics provided by the French state indicate that Monaco’s neighboring French département of the Alpes- Maritimes had a very low suicide rate relative to the rest of France; and that very few of 124 315 “The Gambling at Monte Carlo,” The Manchester Guardian, April 4, 1896, noted “a falling off in the number of suicides;” while “Foreign and Colonial Affairs,” The Observer, October 30, 1892, counted “only five suicides this year.” 316 An 1880 SBM report detailed how “the body of a suicide was found in the casino gardens during the night.” ‘Report from Javilot to the Governor General.’ August 28, 1880, SBM, Folder 1880. See also the threatened suicide of Mme. Pichon, detailed in ‘Letter from Vidal to the Commissioner,’ February 14, 1883. SBM, Folder 1883. 317 These statistics are listed in Smith, 400-401. these suicides were attributed to “misery or reversal of fortune.” 318 Because so many of the suicides that were allegedly committed by gamblers ruined by Monte Carlo took place in nearby Riviera towns, especially in Nice, this data, while inconclusive, does suggest that there was hardly an epidemic of gambling suicides along the Riviera. 319 Given the indication that the frequency of fin-de-siècle Monte Carlo suicide stories did not correlate with the number of actual self-inflicted deaths in Monaco, we must ask why such stories circulated so widely and appear to have resonated so deeply with audiences. Stories about Monte Carlo, a place that appeared to scorn established ideas about a common sense of service or national allegiance, fixated upon suicide 125 318 Between 1881 and 1900, for instance, the department of the Alpes-Maritimes averaged roughly twenty five suicides per one hundred thousand population per year. The department of Seine-et-Marne was highest, with roughly fifty suicides per one hundred thousand population per year. Compte général de l'administration de la justice criminelle en France, 1827- 1934 (Paris: Ministère de la justice, Imprimerie royale, 1900), XC and LXXXVII. I thank Dominique Kalifa for directing me to this valuable source. Emile Durkheim found that between 1887 and 1891 the areas surrounding Monaco had an annual rate of twenty to thirty suicides per one hundred thousand residents, while Paris and its surrounding region had a rate of fifty. The department of the Alpes-Maritimes had only the twentieth-highest suicide rate in France. in, Le Suicide: etude de sociologie (Paris: Quadridge / Presses Universitaires de France, 2007), 124-125. Durkheim’s graph is unclear about whether or not his study included Monaco, but likely did not, as the principality falls outside of the French state. Durkheim attributed roughly twelve per cent of suicides committed by men and five percent committed by women between 1856 and 1878 to “misery and reversal of fortune.” (146). 319 We must approach this data with much caution, however, the Monegasque authorities obscured the cause of death of at least one case of suicide. In 1901, an Italian soldier named Eugenio Testa wrote to his father about being despondent over his gambling losses before shooting himself. In a report from the following year, the Casino’s head of security confirmed that “Eugenio Testa, an Italian officer, committed suicide in March 1901 at The Hôtel Bristol,” but that “Dr. Collignon, called in to file the report, attributed the cause of death to a cerebral congestion.” As recounted in a letter that the late Testa’s father wrote to Camille Blanc, director of the SBM. ‘Enrico Testa Letter to Camille Blanc.’ May 10, 1901. SBM, Folder 1901. In a report from the following year, the Casino’s head of security confirmed that “Eugenio Testa, an Italian officer, committed suicide in March 1901 at The Hôtel Bristol,” but that “Dr. Collignon, called in to file the report, attributed the cause of death to a cerebral congestion.” ‘Surveillance of the Gaming Rooms, Inspector’s Report of 7 October 1902: The Testa Affair.’ SBM, Folder 1902. The Monegasque Public Safety force, whose officers were privately accused of stealing jewels from the young man’s dead body, backed the SBM’s story. The Director of Public Safety, Monaco’s top security official, wrote that “Testa’s suicide exists only in the minds of those involved in this defamatory campaign waged against the Principality.” ‘Letter from M. Delalonde, Director of Public Safety.’ October 20, 1902. SBM, Folder 1902. because the act of self-annihilation marked the ultimate rejection of society and of the idea that one owes duty to one’s family, community, or nation. As Emile Durkheim posited in his study of suicide, the act can be the result of what he termed “anomie,” the horrible sense of moral groundlessness one feels when one considers oneself at odds with social norms or outside of the system of interdependence that binds individuals to their greater communities. 320 Durkheim’s theories did not discount the merits of individualism and self-centeredness; his ideas about “organic solidarity” centered on the argument that increased specialization would, in fact, yield greater social cohesion in industrialized societies by encouraging economic interdependence. According to Durkheim, as each individual provided services to his or her society, and reaped the benefits of other people’s services, his or her allegiance to that society would be strengthened. 321 In Monte Carlo, however, each individual’s “specialized” financial activity – gambling at the tables - seemed to serve only the individual directly involved and the small coterie of investors in the SBM who profited from his or her losses. This form of economic practice did not promote any kind of social solidarity or seek to enforce any positive social norms. It is unsurprising, then, that anxious observers would associate the figure of the gambling suicide, disintegrated from society because his or her economic activity in the casino rendered no greater service to the community, with Monte Carlo’s seemingly atomized and morally pointless environment. A sensational 1883 broadsheet printed in Paris, which purported to recount the French politician Louis Andrieux’s suicide in Monte Carlo, clearly equated suicide in the 126 320 Durkheim, Suicide. 321 Durkheim, Division. cosmopolitan resort with the rejection of duty to one’s community. 322 The broadsheet featured a vivid engraving of a young and well-heeled man’s blood spilling onto the casino floor, a pistol at his side. The story claimed that Andrieux, deputy from the Rhone department, had been frequenting the casino for eight days, enrapturing the crowds with his play. Having run out of funds, he had visited the Café de Paris next to the casino to pawn his jewelry for fifteen louis to a man known as the ‘Shah of Persia’. Losing this last money, the politician “blew his brains out” in front of a crowd of onlookers. But the report ultimately turns out to be a canard. In the final paragraph, the reader learns that Monaco’s Prince had contacted Jules Grévy about Andrieux’s death, to which the French President replied that the Prince had been duped, as he had dined with Andrieux that morning at the Elysée Palace. Behind this farce concerning a high-ranking official in Monte Carlo, however, lay a deadly serious message. By spinning a fanciful tale about a very public suicide involving a highly-visible public servant, the canard suggested that Monte Carlo, and the lifestyle it promoted, threatened the French republic because it pulled those who served the nation away from their duties. Suicide is among the most personal and private of acts, but the broadsheet’s illustration highlights the very real public ramifications of this selfish crime. The artist incorporates the crowd of onlookers into Andrieux’s tale; they look on, shocked and scandalized. This small informal community of gamblers, whether its members believed themselves to constitute a cohesive whole or not, could not avoid being directly integrated into the act of the socially-disintegrated individual. 323 127 322 G. Jeanne and ‘Girard,’ Tragique Suicide de M. Andrieux à Monaco. (Paris: Imprimerie Duval, 1883). BNF Richelieu, Canards. 1830-1912, LI- 300 (A) -FT 5. 323 Concerning crowds of onlookers as media subjects, see Shaya, “The Flâneur.” Fig. 2.5 “Tragique Suicide de M. Andrieux à Monaco.” G. Jeanne and ‘Girard,’ Paris, 1883. Tales of gambling suicides in Monte Carlo also touched on themes of generational tension and family conflict. A fictional story that ran in the British illustrated weekly The Graphic in 1886 featured an “intelligent and well-educated” young man from a solid English family, who, having lost all of his money gambling, contemplates suicide in the gardens next to the Monte Carlo casino. Clutching a small cross, he recalls the voice of his father telling him to look upon the keepsake should he ever find himself wandering from the “path of honour and duty.” As in the tale of Andrieux, this young man pawns his last possession to a shadowy foreigner at the Café de Paris, though in this case the pawnbroker is referred to as “Shylock” rather than the “Shah of Persia.” The young man receives five francs for his cross, plays this money on the number nineteen (in memory of the day on which his father died in battle) and loses. The story closes with the body of the young man washing up on the shores of Monaco, an apparent suicide. His identity is revealed as “Captain William Burter, commander of the Montretout.” 324 The revelation that the doomed protagonist was an elite member of the military makes clear the implied message of this morality tale: while Burter’s father died honorably in battle, the death of his son, also an officer, but one who does not serve his nation, is shown as disgraceful. The story suggested that the younger generation, despite having been educated and well-provided for, lacked the means through which to authentically display honor and so turned to gambling as a proxy display, resulting in 128 324 Louis Paulian, “A Visit to Monte Carlo,” The Graphic, February 6, 1886. degradation and ruin. Far from the watchful eyes his community, an otherwise respectable and devoted son brought shame to his family and to the rank of officer. Anti-gambling reformers similarly framed their attacks on Monte Carlo as attempts to defend the sanctity of the nuclear family. When a group of Niçoise citizens presented the French government with a petition calling for the closure of the casino in 1876, they couched their arguments in the rhetoric of the family. “How many honest men, carried away by the love of gain, have found at Monaco nothing but dishonor, shame and ruin for themselves and their families?” the petition read. “This state of things is dangerous in all its aspects; and fathers especially, as many of your Honourable house are, will readily understand our fears.” 325 One of Britain best-known preachers, C.F. Spurgeon, warned parents that mere exposure to the Monte Carlo casino was enough to pull their children towards ruin. “Watching the wheel of fortune, young gentlemen become aware of other charms which are placed around them, as a snare is set for a bird,” warned Spurgeon, “and connections are formed polluting to character and fatal to virtue.” 326 Much of the most anxious rhetoric about Monte Carlo’s perceived threat to the family focused on women. Following Mary Louise Roberts’ proposal that “in the “specularized” urban culture of arcades, boulevards, and department store, woman was inscribed as both consumer and commodity, purchaser and purchased, buyer and bought,” we can add the nineteenth-century casino as a site in which people projected their anxieties about consumerism onto the figure of the consumed and consuming 129 325 ‘A few Inhabitants…’, Monaco; A Letter. 326 Spurgeon, “The Serpent.” woman. 327 Women in the Monte Carlo casino were doubly inscribed as threatening figures: female gamblers represented women as consuming subjects, while the prostitutes who were rumored to ply their trade at the casino represented women as objects to be consumed, with the lines between these two identities often blurred. Much of the popular discussion about women in Monte Carlo played on fears that female visitors to the casino would degenerate simply by being exposed to such a blatantly commercialized public space. Otherwise innocent wives, mothers, and daughters, offered as representatives of the tranquility of the domestic sphere, were shown being degraded by their experience at the casino, representative of the harshness of the public sphere. Writers produced stories about young women in Monte Carlo, typically unmarried or else married but away from their husbands, who sought only brief adventure at the casino but eventually lost all of their money and in some cases slipped towards prostitution to support their unquenchable thirst for luxury. In William Le Queux’s Mademoiselle de Monte Carlo (1921), for instance, a young Parisian shopkeeper, hoping only for a bit of respite in Monte Carlo, is duped into losing her money and eventually her moral reserve by an older and wealthier man. 328 With its apparently endless supply of female innocents, Monte Carlo also provided ample opportunities for storytellers to reassert the importance of traditional gender roles by having dashing young males, typically from the same social class as their paramours, swoop in to rescue distressed damsels from the clutches of corrupt men. 130 327 Roberts, 818. Roberts acknowledges the work of Rita Felski who writes “But if women could be seen as objects of consumption, some women were also becoming consuming subjects.” Rita Felski, The Gender Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 64. 328 Le Queux, op. cit. Journalists blamed men for exposing their wives and daughters to such an insalubrious environment. A New York Times report lamented how “husbands thoughtlessly encourage their wives or daughters to risk a few five-franc pieces, or napoleons, on the table, and thus inoculate them with the gambling frenzy.” 329 Journalists who spoke of being disgusted by seeing women fighting over money at the casino suggested that these disputes arose because the casino prompted an unhealthy mixing of nominally “respectable” and “disrespectable” women. In 1881, an American reporter wrote that It is not a very seemly sight to see a lady forced to defend herself against an attack made on her fair dealing and honesty by an unscrupulous and impudent prostitute in a public gaming house. But Monte Carlo is hardly the place for ladies to be in, much less to play in. 330 Contemporary observers were clearly upset by the presence of consumption-minded women they saw at the tables. “I don’t know that I liked very much better the looks of a lady…cramming into a Russian leather and silver-coronetted pocket book quite a bulky parcel of bank notes,” noted one British reporter. “Her exultation made her look quite ugly.” 331 Reformers worried that any woman who entered the casino placed herself in dubious company. “A woman of the world who goes to Monte Carlo, who crosses the threshold of the gambling rooms, who plays, exposes herself, necessarily, to be regarded as a woman of the demimonde,” wrote one nineteenth-century British polemicist. “By dint of seeing, hearing, and assisting at the enormities that are to be there seen and heard, the woman of the true world, the respectable world, begins to 131 329 Dr. J.H. Barnett, “Monte Carlo’s Den of Evil,” New York Times, July 20, 1884. 330 “Scenes at Monte Carlo,” The New York Times, July 8, 1881. 331 “Notes by a Globe Trotter,” The Graphic, April 1, 1893. accustom herself to this state of things; she takes, frequently without knowing it, the manners and tone of the place.” 332 Though reformers, journalists, and novelists often depicted Monte Carlo as a place in which women out of their depths “lost control” amidst the swirl of noise and gold, they also regarded the casino as a site in which women exuded an “unhealthy” amount of power over males. During a period in which many Europeans were concerned about declining national honor, “sexual anarchy,” and a “crisis of masculinity,” stories about strong women (whether courtesans, mistresses, wives, or none of the above) who managed to separate men from their money gave voice to concerns about how places such as Monte Carlo appeared to be unseating traditional gender roles by offering women from all classes increased exposure to the public sphere, more participation in the marketplace, and the potential for outright economic and sexual independence. 333 Evidence suggests that Monaco’s officials were, at the very least, not overly concerned with policing prostitution in Monte Carlo. In the French police register listing the hundreds of foreigners expelled from Monaco between 1886 and 1903, the number of women expelled for prostitution, suspected or otherwise, makes up only a tiny fraction of the total number of expellees; men charged with stealing, committing fraud, and breach of trust constitute the vast majority of this list. 334 Monegasque authorities were apparently more interested in eradicating petty theft than they were in controlling prostitution, at least amongst its foreign population. While it is difficult to ascertain with 132 332 Edward Legge, The Truth About Monte Carlo (London: Circa 1900). 333 See FN 11. 334 List of expulsions from Monaco, 1866-1903. ADAM, 04M 0581. precision how frequently the Monte Carlo casino actually served as a place to buy and sell sex, contemporary observers were clearly made anxious by the figure of the unaccompanied women in Monte Carlo. Journalists often automatically assumed that any unmarried women in Monte Carlo had arranged some form of sexual/financial exchange. One French polemicist asserted that all women who entered the Monte Carlo casino were automatically to be considered “femmes publiques.” 335 Even the resort itself was depicted as possessing “the fatal beauty of a glorious courtesan.” 336 In a markedly late-nineteenth-century attempt to group potentially threatening female figures into easily discernible social “types,” one French writer, grasping desperately for some way to make order out of such a chaotic sexual environment, tried to catalogue the different kinds of women for hire in Monte Carlo into different groups, with some women more explicitly available for purchase by men than others. 337 There were grande cocottes, “former mistresses of prominent men,” who clung to their fading beauty as they searched for fortune; cocottes elegantes, who preyed on young libertines; cocottes ordinaires, who were carefree and available for anyone who would take them; and cocottes serieuses, who were strictly business, systems players with male friends who provided her with money to gamble with; yet there were also grande dames, who “laughed at their good fortune” and needed no men. 338 The account does not make clear how one was supposed to distinguish one kind of cocotte from another, nor indeed 133 335 Louis Boisset, Monaco, Monte-Carlo, Grandeur et Decadence d’une Maison de Jeu (Nice: Gauthier, 1884). 336 Robert Service, The Poisoned Paradise (New York: Mead, 1922), 320. 337 Concerning nineteenth-century “typing, see Pick op.cit. 338 “Une philosophe,” Monte-Carlo, Physiologie du joueur et du jeu (Nice, 1881), 42. BNF. Fol- 8-V-4256 from any other woman. A British reporter meanwhile contended that “the elder men [in Monte Carlo] as a rule have recourse to the ‘Muse’…a young lady whose mission in society is to bring fortunate inspiration to the gamester. She stands behind him and indicates the numbers upon which he should place his money, in such a way that the player becomes a mere machine which advances or withdraws 100-franc notes.” 339 Fig 2.6. The “Muse,” from The Graphic, February 6, 1886. The figure of the woman for hire – supposedly wasteful, idle, transitory, and decadent - represented so much of what upset contemporary observers about Monte Carlo. As Alain Corbin has argued, the figure of the prostitute represented “the woman who rejects work in favor of pleasure…[and thus] avoids the need to settle down and therefore to work; she represents movement, instability, “turbulence,” “agitation…[she] symbolizes disorder, excess, and improvidence – in other words, a rejection of order and economy.” 340 Prostitutes were regarded as the ultimate arrivistes, and as callous social climbers. 341 Perhaps it was the fear that both gambling and prostitution could potentially allow women to navigate their own lives outside of the realm of the domestic home that so tightly bound these two practices together in the minds of so many observers of Monte Carlo. Prostitution transforms pleasure into a financial transaction, while the SBM promised that gambling in Monte Carlo would transform a financial transaction into an act of pleasure. The gambling experience laid bare the occult 134 339 Paulian, “A Visit…” 340 Alain Corbin, Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 7. Concerning representations of prostitution in the fin-de-siècle, see TJ Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (Princeton: Princeton University Press: 1999), 100-121. See also, Walkowitz, Prostitution . 341 See Leon Daudet’s depiction of the courtesan Rose in Sappho (Paris, 1884). practices of economic exchange; the gold was there on the table to be seen by all. So too did associating Monte Carlo with venal sex reflect a broader nineteenth-century use of the figure of the prostitute as the most blatant example of modern capitalism’s complete domination of all facets of life. As TJ Clark has suggested, nineteenth-century critics treated prostitution as “the site of absolute degradation and dominance, the place where the body became at last an exchange value, a perfect and complete commodity, and thus took on the power of such things in a world where they were all powerful.” 342 That prostitution in Monte Carlo seemed to take place in such an apparently unregulated environment also likely troubled people who told fearful tales about women in Monte Carlo. 343 French reformers such as Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet worried that prostitutes “come back into the world...they surround us.…They penetrate our houses, our interiors.” 344 He argued that the practice should ideally be restricted to enclosed, supervised, and structured settings, which would keep it out of the sight of honest women and diminish the opportunity for sexual mixing among disparate age groups and social classes. 345 Women in Monte Carlo appeared to reject such a system, practicing openly at the casino and at the Café de Paris, crowded places where women who were presumably not for hire frequented, and where it was increasingly difficult to discern class differences among both prostitutes and their clients, since not every man leaving 135 342 Clark, 102. 343 See Susanna Barrows’ discussion of cafes as sites of clandestine prostitution, in “Nineteenth-Century Cafes: Arenas of Everyday Life,” in Pleasures of Paris: Daumier to Picasso, ed. Barbara Stern Shapiro (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1991). 344 As quoted in Clark, 105. 345 See Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, Prostitution dans la ville 2 vols. (Paris, 1857); and Corbin, Women, for further analysis of Parent-Duchâtelet’s theories. the casino with a bundle of notes in his pocket was necessarily from the wealthy classes. The association of Monte Carlo with sexual trade was so strong that simply being seen in the resort with an unmarried woman was enough to damage the reputation of at least one fictional married man. Sacha Guitry’s Le Scandale de Monte-Carlo, staged in Paris in 1908, concerns a case of mistaken identity that incites a media frenzy and nearly undoes a respectable aristocrat, precisely because the error occurred in a place so heavily associated with all types of vice and falsity. Paul, a cardsharp fleeing the authorities, abandons his lover, Rosette, in a hotel room in Monte Carlo. A detective in pursuit of Paul finds the Count Davegna in Rosette’s room comforting the crying stranger, and mistakes him for the departed cheat. The Parisian papers get wind of the scandal, ruining the marriage prospects of the Count’s daughter and enraging Madame Davegna. Ostracized by his family and society, Davegna considers running off with Rosette, but eventually returns to his wife and sees his daughter well married. Guitry capitalizes on pre-existing notions about Monte Carlo to heighten the drama in what is ultimately a morality tale about a man out of place. The Parisian public – both the unseen newspaper readers learning of the scandal within the play, as well as those watching the play being staged - could easily imagine that if, in fact, a dashing Count wished to keep a working-class mistress and live a double-life as a cardsharp, then Monte Carlo would provide a fitting place in which to do so. The whole ordeal is set into motion because the Count wanders physically and socially; only because Davegna leaves Paris and the comforts of home does he find himself entangled with these two travelers in Monte Carlo flirting with the possibility of transgression. The Count, 136 representative of the decadent aristocracy, is punished, momentarily, for his grasping ways. The fleeing aristocrat, shameful reminder of 1789, can only be redeemed by his return home, to Paris; tamed by bourgeois domesticity and the bonds of duty to one’s family and local community. While the SBM’s managers suggested that the Monte Carlo casino was a glamorous place, where any individual might become wealthy and renowned by adopting skills necessary to prosper in a capitalist economy, writers, reformers, and artists countered that the casino promoted self-centeredness, venality, and unchecked consumption: all of which threatened republican ideals. Popular discussion about Monte Carlo raised the question of how, within an economic system dependent on rewarding self-interest, ambition, and competition, modern democracies were supposed to keep physically and socially mobile individuals loyal and responsible to their larger communities, both at the level of the family and at the level of the state. How, in other, words, could states fuel consumer capitalism while cultivating the cooperative bonds necessary to foster a functioning civic public? 346 Cosmopolitan Monaco welcomed all individuals who were able to reach the resort, so long as they had capital to invest, skills to offer, or money to spend; and the principality’s boosters profited by promising to reward those individuals who showed themselves to be most skilled and willing to embrace the values of consumer capitalism. Yet, in the eyes of many observes, it seemed that for all the economic activity conducted by the itinerant population that temporarily rushed into the casino, no greater good was produced nor service provided. Thus, while scholars have suggested that Belle Époque crowds could be united through 137 346 Lisa Tiersten has summarized this paradox as the “conflict between civic and commercial culture.” Tiersten, 16. their collective pleasure-seeking, mass consumption of a spectacular distraction in Monte Carlo, at least in the eyes of anxious contemporary observers, did not foster mass cohesion, but rather the opposite. 347 138 347 Dominique Kalifa, L'encre et le sang: Récits de crimes et société à la Belle Époque (Paris: Fayard, 1995) 283-284; Gregory Shaya, “The Flâneur, the Badaud, and the Making of a Mass Public in France, circa 1860–1910,” American Historical Review, Vol. 109. No.1, February 2004; V. Schwartz, Spectacular. Chapter Three One-Way Street: Mobility as Privilege and Power in Monaco It struck me here [in Monaco] as it has in so many other places where great pleasure-loving throngs congregate, that the difference between the person who has something and the person who has nothing is one of intense desire and of what, for want of a better phrase, I will call a capacity to live. Some people can live more, better, faster, more enthusiastically in less time than others. - Theodore Dreiser, reflecting on a visit to Monaco, 1911. 348 Motors in all directions, going at all speeds. I was overwhelmed, an enthusiastic rapture filled me. Not the rapture of the shining coachwork under the gleaming lights, but the rapture of power. The simple and ingenuous pleasure of being in the centre of so much power, so much speed. - Le Corbusier, 1924. 349 Already they are calling me a reformer. I am going slowly for I do not wish to start a revolution in the principality of Monaco. You probably know Prince Louis has an army of only one hundred soldiers, and the employees of the casino number more than three thousand. - René Léon, Director of the SBM, 1925. 350 139 348 Theodore Dreiser, A Traveler at Forty (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 386. 349 Le Corbusier, City of Tomorrow (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), 2. 350 ‘Along the Riviera.’ Berkeley Daily Gazette. January 12, 1925. On April 14, 1929, sixteen drivers waited at the edge of the Bay of Monaco, the starting line of the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix. 351 Sitting high up in their boxy machines, the competitors reminded observers of medieval riders, eager, as were countless jousters and ancient charioteers before them, to display their mastery of horsepower. 352 Some drivers hailed from the European aristocracy, including the Italian Count Goffredo Zehender and the French Baron Georges Philippe de Rothschild. Other competitors represented the shifting of landed fortunes into merchant capitalism: Marcel Lehoux, born in a castle in Vendée, ran a large trading company in Algeria, while the Marquis Raoul de Rovin had used his family’s fortune to found a motorcycle company. Prosperous bourgeois, including Phillipe Étancelin, a wool merchant, and Rudolf Caracciola, scion of German hoteliers, mixed in among the gentry in the starting grid. They were joined by professional drivers, among them Alfred Dreyfus, a Niçoise Jew whose repeated defeats of German racers would soon become a sore spot for Hitler. The event began with a ceremonial first lap by Prince Pierre de Polignac - son-in-law of Monaco’s reining Prince Louis Grimaldi - who was chauffeured around the circuit in a glistening Bugatti. Four hours later, William Grover-Williams, himself a former chauffeur and of mixed French and English parentage, won the day. 140 351 For histories of the Monaco Grand Prix, see Jeffrey Ashford, Grand Prix Monaco (New York: Berkley Books, 1969); Arnaud Chambert-Protat, Grand Prix de Monaco: les coulisses (Boulogne-Billancourt: E-T- A-I, 2003); Robert Daley, Cars at Speed: Classic Stories from Grand Prix's Golden Age (London: Motorbooks, 2007); David Hodges, The Monaco Grand Prix (Philadelphia: Temple Press Books, 1964); Michael Hewett, Monaco Grand Prix: A Photographic Portrait of the world's Most Prestigious Motor Race (Bristol: Haynes Publishing, 2007); Yves Naquin, Le Grand Prix Automobile de Monaco Histoire d'Une Legende 1929-1960 (Monaco: Editions Automobilia Monaco, 1992); Alex Rollo, Monaco Grand Prix (Birmingham: Ian Allan Publishing, 1987); Rainier Schlegelmilch, Grand Prix De Monaco: Profile of a Legend (London: Motorbooks, 1998); Philippe De Rothschild, Milady Vine: Autobiography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), was also instructive. 352 For drivers in the 1929 Monaco Grand Prix evoking riders on horseback, see Daley, 53.! That a collection of men from different national and social backgrounds competed in a motorcar race in Europe in 1929 was not exceptional. Motorsport had by then long been an international affair, with rallies, including Monaco’s own Monte Carlo Rally, first run in 1911, taking drivers across wide swaths of territory. 353 Professional drivers were already beginning to dominate a sport that had once been the near- exclusive purview of wealthy amateurs. 354 The 1929 Monaco Grand Prix stands apart from all previous motorsport events because it was the first race run directly through city roads rather than on an enclosed track. Many people involved with the event assumed that a race through the principality’s narrow and winding streets would cause injuries, if not fatalities. 355 Even Anthony Noghés, the wealthy Monegasque tobacco wholesaler who conceived of the race, admitted that “the idea of letting loose speeding cars in a city challenged good sense.” 356 Prince Louis agreed to hand over Monaco’s roads to racing, and the managers of the SBM helped to underwrite the event in spite its significant costs, because they recognized the value of associating the principality with modern travel technology and quasi-aristocratic competition. The idea found favor because it served to legitimize, glamorize, and advertise the “freewheeling” lifestyles that, according to Monaco’s 141 353 In 1903, for instance, the newspaper La France Automobile organized a race from Versailles to Madrid, with roughly three million people lining up to see it across France. 354 For general histories of motorsport see, Alan Henry, Formula 1: Creating the Spectacle (Center City: Hazelton Publishing, 1998; Anthony Pritchard, A Century of Grand Prix Motor Racing (London: Motor Racing Publications, 1999); Ivan Rendall, The Chequered Flag: 100 Years of Motor Racing (Surrey: Ted Smart, 1995). 355 As a journalist in La Vie Automobile, 25, April 1929, put it, in an article full of enthusiasm for the race he had just seen in Monaco, “any respectable traffic system would have covered the track with <Danger> sign posts left, right and centre.” 356 Hodges, viii. boosters, could be enjoyed by people privileged enough to reach the resort via the latest means of transportation. The four-hour procession through the streets of the principality also served to codify the particularly fluid approach to social and political relations that Monaco’s alliance of aristocratic and bourgeois boosters had long deployed to consolidate their power in their principality. The Monaco Grand Prix was more than a race; it was a parade. 357 The Grand Prix’s racing circuit, taking drivers from 142 357 Mary Ryan defines parades as public and highly ritualized “cultural performances” that “conjured up an emotional power and aesthetic expression that the simple literary formulations of ideas or values lacked.” Mary Ryan, “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” in Lynn Hunt (ed.) The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) 131-153. Concerning parades, processions, and other public rituals, see Avner Ben-Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France; 1789-1996 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 2009); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991); Charles Rearick, Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment and Festivity in Turn of the Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Steven J. Ross and Michael Kazin, "America’s Labor Day: The Dilemma of a Workers’ Celebration,” Journal of American History, 78 (March 1992), 1294-1323; Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); William H. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). In reading the Monaco Grand Prix as a meaningful “cultural performance,” I have also been inspired by Clifford Geertz’s foundational study of Balinese cockfighting, in which he considers how this public competition provides a story the Balinese “tell themselves about themselves;” an example of “deep,” symbolically significant, play that the Balinese value because of the ways it helps them to understand and reflect upon their social structures. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation Of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1977). I am also indebted to Guy Debord’s understanding of “the spectacle” as “the ruling order’s nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life” and by Antonio Gramsci’s framing of “cultural hegemony” as “the 'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group…'historically' caused by the prestige which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.” Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, (Paris, 1967), 24; Antonio Gramsci, Selection From the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York, 1971), 12. harbor to casino and back, passing by several key tourist sites in Monaco, heralded the importance, while increasing the visibility of, the principality’s cosmopolitan social circuit. While the previous chapter traced how the SBM’s managers, with Grimaldi consent, championed the appeals of risk-taking, conspicuous consumption, and rapid financial gain inside the Monte Carlo casino, this chapter shows how they paired that celebration of upward social mobility with a long embrace of various forms of physical mobility in the surrounding resort. 358 From the very founding of Monte Carlo in 1863, Monaco’s boosters sought to profit by associating their resort with the appeals of 143 358 Concerning the social, political, economic, and cultural effects of new technologies of transportation that emerged in the modern era – much of which traces how people greeted the tremendous acceleration in the pace of life and the increased mobility of individual bodies with trepidation – see, Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (London: Polity, 2000); Stephen Bertman, Hyperculture: The Human Cost of Speed (New York: Praeger, 1998); James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Tim Cresswell, The Tramp in America (London: Reaktion Books 2001) and On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World (London: Routledge, 2006); Hardt and Negri; David Harvey, The Condition Of Postmodernity (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991); Kern; Rosa and Scheuerman; Scott, Seeing Like a State; John Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy (London: Sage Publications, 2007); Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 1986). For studies more specifically focused on automobiles and automotive speed, see Mikita Brottman, Car Crash Culture (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Imes Chiu, The Evolution from Horse to Automobile: A Comparative International Study (Amherst: Cambria Press, 2008); Matthieu Flonneau and Jean-Pierre Orfeuil, L’autorefoulement et ses limites (Paris: Descartes et Cie, 2010); Mathieu Flonneau, Les cultures du volant: Essai sur les mondes de l'automobilisme XXe-XXIe siècles (Paris: Editions Autrement, 2009); John Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life (Jefferson: McFarland, 2009); Tom McCarthy, Auto Mania: Cars, Consumers, and the Environment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996); Wolfgang Sachs, For Love of the Automobile: Looking Back into the History of Our Desires (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); P.M. Townroe, Social and Political Consequences of the Motor Car (Devon: David & Charles, 1974); Peter Wollen and Joe Kerr, Autopia: Cars and Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 2003). Foundational theoretical works concerning acceleration and modernity have also been instructive, including those of Walter Benjamin, from whose work this chapter derives its title, Lewis Mumford and Georg Simmel. Walter Benjamin, Edmund Jephcott (trans.), Kingsley Shorter (trans.), One-Way Street and Other Writings (New York: Penguin Books, 2009); Walter Benjamin, Rolf Tiedemann (ed.), Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (trans.), The Arcades Project (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1934); Georg Simmel, David Frisby (ed.), Mike Featherstone (ed.), Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings (London: Sage Publications, 1998). modern machine speed, and by suggesting that highly-mobile individuals should be the object of envy rather than fear. Several generations of management at the SBM encouraged visitors to Monaco to regard freedom of movement as the highest reward of the financial gains that might be attained in the Monte Carlo casino, advancing the notion that, from roulette tables to automobile races, spinning wheels would provide the means through which individuals could achieve and display financial and social distinction. Three SBM-funded projects - the 1924 Ballet Russes production of Le Train Bleu; the 1926 hiring of American society figure Elsa Maxwell as a publicity agent; and the 1929 founding of the Monaco Grand Prix – reveal how the SBM-Grimaldi alliance updated the long celebration of mobility in Monaco to suit the particular social and cultural milieu of the Côte d’Azur in the 1920s. The mixing of bourgeois and dynastic interests that led to the founding of these projects, as well as the prevalence of aristocrats among what I dub the “Riviera crowd” that congregated along the coast, suggests that the European aristocracy did not disappear quickly or completely from positions of influence after the First World War. 359 Rather, these last noble lions 144 359 Scholars continue to debate whether or not the end of the First World War constituted a decisive historical moment after which the European aristocracy largely disappeared from positions of power and influence. For studies that consider the First World War as a decisive break, see David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London: Vintage, 1999); Dominic Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). For studies that suggest that members of the aristocracy persisted in positions of influence after the First World War, see Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981); Eric Mension-Rigau, Aristocrates et grands bourgeois (Paris: Editions Perrin, 2007). An issue of Vingtieme Siècle (No. 99, July - September, 2008), devoted to the fate of the European aristocracy after the First World War sheds a great deal of light on this history. See especially, Isabelle Dasque, “La diplomatie française au lendemain de la Grande Guerre: Bastion d'une aristocratie au service de l'État?,” 33-49; Clarisse Berthezène, “Le déclin politique de l'aristocratie britannique.” 65-75; and Alice Bernard, “Le grand monde parisien à l'épreuve de la Guerre,” 13-32. retrenched, licking their wounds in places where they still felt welcomed, and in which, feeling themselves safely removed from the world’s main diplomatic stages, they devoted ever more of their energies towards cultural, social, and economic, rather than more blatantly political, pursuits. While casino proprietors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries traded, as they continue to trade, on the allure of upward social mobility, quickly and easily attained through gambling, in no gambling environment were the appeals of social mobility more closely and blatantly paired with the championing of physical mobility than in the Monte Carlo casino-resort. “True to [the principality’s] Phoenician origin, everything that is connected with locomotion, be it on land or sea…finds favour at Monaco,” wrote a British journalist in 1912. “The moment a new means of locomotion is discovered it meets with encouragement.” 360 In fact, locomotion found favor in Monaco less because of any ancient “Phoenician” past than because of how vital such technologies were to the Monte Carlo casino-resort’s emergence as a tourist destination in the nineteenth century and, the resort’s owners hoped, to its continued success in the twentieth century. The Monte Carlo casino only began to yield regular profits after François Blanc ensured that the principality was connected to the French rail network in 1868. 361 Visitors to Monaco noted how heavily the SBM’s business depended on rail access. In 1884, a British travel writer, upon seeing dejected gamblers heading from the casino to 145 360 Adolphe Smith, Monaco and Monte Carlo (London: Grant Richards, 1912), 443. 361 See Chapter One. the Monte Carlo train station with their heads hung low, had “the sad reflection that a fresh batch would soon arrive in time for the evening concert, [as] it is not desirable that the half-frenzied losers should remain in these peaceful elysiums; a fresh and continuous stream of victims is much preferred.” 362 Blanc’s successors at the SBM were equally quick to adopt any new technology that would help increase the pace at which people could reach, and circulate within, the casino. By the turn of the twentieth century an elevator conveyed gamblers from the Monte Carlo train station directly to the casino, while inside an electric-powered escalator conducted gamblers from the tables on the ground floor to the reading rooms on the second story. 363 The SBM promoted the thrills of these relatively-novel means of personal movement as part of the overall Monte Carlo experience. At a time when Coney Island operators charged admission for rides on elevators and moving sidewalks, SBM promotional materials made sure to announce that such bodily excitements were provided free of charge. 364 The casino’s managers also dedicated a wide circular space in front of the casino’s entrance for the parking and display of carriages and, eventually, automobiles. By the end of the 1920s Monaco 146 362 Cope Devereux, Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, and Company, 1884). 363 Visitors could also reach the casino directly from the train station via underground tunnel in the case of rain. The first mention of the elevator and escalator I have found are in Léon Honoré Labande, Guide Pratique de Monte Carlo (Nice: 1908), 1, 42. But this 1908 account, though highlighting that these amenities were offered free of charge (implying their relative novelty) does not make any special reference to these amenities as being especially new in that year, which leads me to think that they appeared at least a few years earlier, hence my use of the term “turn of the century.” 364 Ibid. Concerning elevators and escalators in Coney Island, see Rem Koolhaus Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: Monacelli Press, 1997), 29-80. ranked second only to the United States in automobiles per capita, with one car for every eighteen people in the principality. 365 Fig.3.1. Parking in Front of the Monte Carlo Casino, circa 1913. SBM Image Archives, Folder ‘Casino.’ While working to ensure that patrons could reach the resort via the latest means of personal and mass transportation, the SBM’s managers also harnessed the power of new forms of mass visual advertising to disseminate images of people enjoying travel technologies in Monaco. 366 Color posters offered the SBM and the artists they hired with an especially fitting means through which to promote Monaco as a place where the appeals of physical mobility intertwined with the appeals of self-indulgent pleasure- seeking. 367 The color poster, which emerged as a popular form of advertising alongside Monte Carlo’s own spectacular growth in 1870s and 1880s, was itself a speed-oriented medium. 368 To grab the attention of hurried passersby in busy public spaces, poster artists depended on making a strong visual impact in a short amount of time; and posters, produced relatively quickly in comparison to other visual media, were 147 365 According to the United States Commerce Department in “Autos Crowding World, Federal Figures Show. “The Washington Post, Jun 29, 1928. 366 Files related to SBM press strategies, including a particularly useful document titled ‘Historique du Services Publicité,’ can be found in the Archives of the Société des bains de mer (hereafter SBM), Folder 1901. Concerning the connections between modern glamour and image-making, see Liz Willis-Tropea, “Hollywood Glamour: Sex, Power, and Photography, 1925-1939” (PhD Dissertation, University of Southern California, 2008). 367 See Marcus Verhagen’s discussion of the technological advances in color lithography and changes in laws concerning state control over public advertising in the 1870s and 1880s in ‘The Poster in Fin-de- Siècle Paris: That Mobile and Degenerate Art,” from Leo Charney and Vanessa Schwartz (eds.), Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 107. See also Sarah E. Hamilton, “From publicity to intimacy: The poster in fin-de-siècle Paris” (PhD Dissertation: Texas Christian University, 2008) and Ruth E. Iskin, ‘Father Time, Speed, and the Temporality of Posters Around 1900.’ KronoScope, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2003, 27-50. 368 Ibid. commonly understood as being ephemeral pieces of commercial, rather than high and more permanent, art. 369 The SBM’s managers may have felt a certain affinity for the poster medium because it was so deeply linked in the popular consciousness with frivolity and the carnivalesque impulse. 370 Poster artists were charged, as was the Monte Carlo resort itself, with favoring the superficial, the garish, and the spectacular; with pandering to people’s “vanity,” “lust,” and “egoism;” and with putting artistry explicitly into the service of commerce in the brazen pursuit of a mass audience. 371 In keeping with the championing of cosmopolitan practices in Monaco, the SBM commissioned an international collection of artists to produce their poster advertisements, including the Czech Alphonse Mucha, the German Adolpho Hohenstein, and the Italian Ettore Ximenes. 372 A series of posters produced by the French painter and illustrator Jules-Alexandre Grün’s offer the strongest examples of how the company’s advertising sought to promote Monte Carlo as a public arena for the display of social distinction achieved through the mastery of machine speed. Two Grün posters from 1904 announced that year’s motorboat regattas and races to be held in Monaco. The first poster is charged with frivolity and flirtatiousness: a woman in a bright yellow dress, with flowers in her hair and by her legs, sits on top of a hill above the Bay of Monaco, her handkerchief held aloft, perhaps as a signal to a beau on one of the 148 369 Verhagen, 103. Verhagen highlights that some forward-thinking collectors began to regard posters as fine art as early as the 1880s. 370 Ibid, 117. 371 For contemporary critiques of fin-de-siècle posters, see Ibid, 116. For fin-de-siècle posters as both commercial and high art, see Schwartz, It's so French!, 34-35. For critiques of the SBM, see Chapter Two of this dissertation. 372 There is no record of any Monegasque being hired to produce a poster for the SBM. See Chapter One concerning the championing of cosmopolitan practices. boats or in the crowd below. While the viewer consumes the image of the woman, she in turn surveys the boat race, as does another woman lower down the hill sporting binoculars. The use of flags of different countries (presumably of nations being represented at the event) as framing elements implied that Monaco was a destination with truly international appeal. Fig. 3.2. Jules Alexander Grün, “Monte Carlo Motorboat Poster A,” 1904. SBM Image Collection. In a second poster advertising the same event, the woman (assumedly the same one from the previous poster, given her similar appearance) has moved from watcher to participant. The viewer is also brought into the action, placed aboard a sailboat where, again, he or she watches the woman who is herself watching the sleek powerboats in front of her, as well as the casino with its iconic Garnier-designed campaniles in the distance. The woman stands, her ribbon blowing in the air to evoke the speed of the vessel, while her companion, who could be a romantic partner or a hired sailor, steers the ship. It is unclear which of them is in control of the day’s activities. Grün appears to have been instructed to aim these posters at as broad a clientele as possible, and to appeal to both men and women. The female figure, who dominates the visual plane in both images, is shown as an active subject, surveying and perhaps actively directing the action, implying that in Monte Carlo women might conduct themselves more independently than they might in their home communities. Yet, this implied independence and the accompanying suggestion of a loosening of sexual restraint also offers the woman up as an object to be consumed by viewers who might imagine 149 themselves expertly captaining boats to victory in Monaco, thereby gaining her affections. 373 Fig. 3.3. Jules Alexander Grün, “Monte Carlo Motorboat Poster B,” 1904. SBM Image Collection. A final Grün poster, produced in 1910, made the links between the mastery of machine speed, social distinction, and sexual pleasure, implied in the previous posters, resoundingly clear. Grün’s illustration shows a man and woman in a biplane, looking down, god-like, on the crowded Monte Carlo resort below. By mastering the era’s latest and least readily-available means of personal transportation, they have raised themselves above the mire, released from the banality of everyday responsibilities and from judgments concerning their un-chaperoned outing. Here the machine is presented not only as the means through which to attract a romantic partner, but also as a potential site for sexual trysts away from prying eyes; even the plane itself, so sleekly depicted, has been eroticized. Grün again places viewers at eye-level with his subjects, so that they could vicariously enjoy the thrills of flight and other implied pleasures while imagining their own temporary escapes from rooted identity. Along with fueling fantasies of freedom, the poster achieved a more prosaic goal by announcing yet another sporting competition to be hosted in Monaco. In the bottom right corner of the poster the viewer learns that the SBM would award one hundred thousand francs to the winner of the aviation contest, making explicit the connection between financial gain and freedom of movement upon which the company’s promotional materials so often traded. 150 373 Concerning women in Monaco as consuming subjects and objects to be consumed, see Chapter Two, which draws on Mary Louise Roberts’ essay “Gender, Consumption, and Commodity Culture,” The American Historical Review , Vol. 103, No. 3 (June, 1998). Fig. 3.4. Jules Alexander Grün, “Monte Carlo Aviation Poster,” 1910. SBM Image Collection. Such poster advertisements were no doubt effective. As a former Monte Carlo croupier recalled, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries “the walls of the big cities, in every country, were… covered with blinding posters, and the world, stupefied, but charmed and conquered, dreamed of Monaco, of its eternal smile and perpetual springtime; and of its homicidal roulette.” 374 But if posters that advertised races and regattas in Monaco helped to associate the principality with the latest travel technologies, then so too did these actual events allow people in Monaco - as well audiences outside the principality, reading and watching reports of such spectacles - to experience the thrills of speed. In 1911, the SBM funded the inaugural Monte Carlo Rally, which made a sport out of the very act of traveling to the principality, as twenty three competitors converged on Monaco from eleven starting points in different European cities. The event was the brainchild of the Monegasque tobacco magnate Alexandre Noghés, father of Anthony Noghés, who would found the Monaco Grand Prix in 1929. The elder Noghés approached the SBM with the idea that the Rally would help in the resort’s ongoing rivalry against Nice, which had recently launched its soon-to-be-renowned Carnaval. In this battle against Monte Carlo’s western rival, Noghés looked to the principality’s eastern neighbor for inspiration, basing the event on the immensely popular Convegni Ciclisti, the Italian Cycle Rally, where competitors departed from various points to reach 151 374 A. Villy, Au Pays de la Roulette (Paris: Radot, 1927). a particular destination in Italy. 375 The 1911 Monte Carlo Rally’s judges named the famed French cyclist and aviator Henri Rougier – who had also been the star attraction in the aviation displays and contest advertised in Grün’s poster the previous year - as the winner of the competition, based on the hotly-debated criterion of having brought his car to Monaco in the finest condition. Such seemingly spurious logic in deciding the winner actually underscored the point of the event, which was not only to see how fast one could get to Monaco but to encourage gentlemanly displays of endurance and what the historian John Higham has called sporting “strenuosity.” 376 Arrival in Monaco and the esteem of one’s peers and the larger resort crowd were the competition’s greatest rewards. The Rally, which became an annual event, was as much a social as it was a sporting event, held not simply for the enjoyment of its participants, but for the viewing pleasures of people inside and outside of the principality. 377 Almost the entirety of the event took place beyond Monaco’s borders, likely prompting more than a few of the people, gathered along town and country roads to watch the drivers speed past, to think that they too, should they be fortunate enough to acquire an automobile, would head to that dreamlike destination at the edge of the Mediterranean. Fig. 3.5. Elio Ximenes. Poster for the 1911 Monte Carlo Rally. SBM Image Collection. Fig. 3.6. Frankel Egon von Gräf und Stift arriving in Monaco from Vienna. January 23, 1911. Agence Rol. BNF. IFN- 6920205. 152 375 See FN 4. 376 John Higham, “The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890s,” in Writing American History, Essays on Modern History (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1970). I thank Richard Fox for pointing me to this valuable source. 377 SBM advertisements often mentioned the Rally as one of the highlights of resort’s the social calendar, alongside mentions of its “Motor-Cycle Hill Climbs” and “Sailing and Rowing Regattas.” See, for instance, “SBM Advertisement.” Continental Life, February 6, 1926. ! In the same year of the inaugural Monte Carlo Rally, the American writer Theodore Dreiser wrote of being struck by the “intense desire” and “capacity to live” exhibited in Monaco. 378 While struggling to describe the resort without comparing it to places beyond its borders, Dreiser discerned that was most exciting, and modern, about Monaco was its accelerated pace of life, which could only be truly enjoyed, he suggested, by those privileged enough to live at such a pace. Dreiser wrote The flavor of the whole place was Parisian –or, better yet, American- very active. The one thing that was evident was that all here were healthy, vigorous people with the lust of life in their veins, eager to be entertained and having the means in the large majority of cases to accomplish this end. 379 ! The “lust for life” that Dreiser detected in Monaco was as prevalent inside the casino as it was in the surrounding resort. 380 Whether in Monte Carlo or elsewhere, gamblers enjoyed thinking that by wagering they were living more intensely than people who did not participate in the action, believing, as the nineteenth-century French author Edouard Gourdon attested, that “a series of lucky rolls give me more pleasure than a man who does not gamble can have over a period of several years…I live a hundred 153 378 Dreiser, 386. 379 Ibid, 435. 380 Concerning the temporal aspects of gambling, see Edmund Bergler, The Psychology of Gambling (New York: International Universities Press, 1985); James F. Cosgrave, The Sociology of Risk and Gambling Reader (London: Routledge, 2006); Fabian; Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Lears; Reith. For broader considerations of “lived” time, see Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will; An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (London: Macmillan, 1913); Harvey; Kern. lives in one.” 381 Through wagering, gamblers experienced a heightened sense of time, not only because of the measure of drama, performance, and risk involved, but because the practice denied the importance of historical precedent and future causality. Every wager produced an isolated result that was completely unrelated to any preceding occurrence; the roulette wheel, as the saying goes, has no memory. Further contributing to the heightened sense of time, intertwined with a heightened sense of mobility, was the possibility that a single win or loss might quickly move an individual up or down the social ladder, rejecting the fixity of social hierarchies as well as the values of long-term planning and hard work. The French philosopher ‘Alain’ (Émile-Auguste Chartier) noted in 1927 that because gambling was based on the fundamental principle that “each round is independent of the one preceding,” the practice thus “strenuously denies all acquired conditions, all antecedents . . . pointing to previous actions; and that is what distinguishes it from work. Gambling rejects . . . this weighty past which is the mainstay of work ” 382 Gamblers in the Monte Carlo casino could imagine themselves free from the bonds of their own fixed identities by imaging themselves participating in an ever- repeating present. ! Nowhere did the wheels seem to spin as quickly as they did in the Monte Carlo casino. Writing about gambling, Walter Benjamin noted that a game passes the time more quickly as chance comes to light more absolutely in it, as the number of combinations encountered in the course 154 381 Edouard Gourdon, Les Facheurs de Nuit (Paris, 1860). Walter Benjamin, who includes this quote in the Arcades Project, echoed Gourdon by positing that gamblers practiced “the art of collecting into a single instant the emotions dispersed throughout the slot-moving existence of ordinary men.” Benjamin, 499. 382 ‘Alain’ (Émile-August Chartier), Les Idées et les Ages, Paris, 1927, vol. 1, pp. 183-184 (‘Le Jeu), as quoted in Benjamin, 512. of play…is smaller and their sequence shorter. In other words, the greater the component of chance in a game, the more speedily it elapses. 383 If, as Benjamin proposed, small sequences of numbers increased the component of chance and so accelerated the pace of the game, then Monte Carlo’s roulette wheels, with their single-zero tables offering the most favorable odds in Europe, spun more ‘speedily’ than they did anywhere else. 384 Fig. 3.7. Two photographs from 1936 depicting a table game in Monte Carlo that appears to be a modified version of roulette, using model airplanes, rather than slots and a ball, to represent numbers. SBM Image Collection. I have been unable to discover any other data pertaining to this “jet-roulette.” ! As the Monte Carlo casino, being off-limits to Monegasque subjects, could only be enjoyed by people hailing from outside the principality, anyone who entered would have first taken some journey to the resort, further linking the gambling site with movement. 385 In 1929, the French writer François Félicien Durand, writing under the pseudonym ‘Francis de Miomandre,’ penned a guide to casinos in which he frequently jumped back and forth between describing the pleasures of driving and the pleasures of gambling, as if the two pursuits were inseparable. Miomandre proposed that Whether it be smoking a good cigar, selecting a fine wine, driving a car in a gentlemanly fashion, profiting at the Casino, or permitting oneself the pleasure of a pretty woman, it is the art of doing all these things with ease and grace that defines the sophisticated man.…The domestic sphere is destroyed, aided by the advent of the automobile…and so modern man must be constantly on the move. But where to? The casino is open all day and night and responds to a basic need of modern man: to escape. 386 155 383 Benjamin, 512. 384 Concerning Monte Carlo’s offering of single-zero roulette, see Chapter Two. 385 For statistics concerning the Monte Carlo-bound rail travel, see Chapters One and Two. 386 Francis de Miomandre, Le Casino (Paris: 1928), 16. The mastery of both driving and gambling, Miomandre proposed, were necessary for displaying cultural savvy and masculine prowess, and were both of value in allowing men to escape the stifling bonds of the bourgeois household. In similar fashion did Dreiser, when writing about the “lust for life” in Monaco, contend that the desires associated with such a pace of life might “seem truly sinful” because they “ignore the care of the home, the well-being of children, the conventions and delights of the monogamous state.” 387 Yet, Dreiser argued, such places and the lifestyles they fostered were of great value because only through their excessiveness did they and the people who gathered there bring newness into the world. Dreiser wrote that The exceptional restaurant; the progress of styles; the existence of the exceptional dressmaker, of the ultra-equipage, of the gambling resort such as Monte Carlo, of the watering place such as Ostend, of the perfect hotel or palace such as Versailles – all ultimately depend on these infractions. For Versailles was not built for home-loving, conventional women, nor Monte Carlo created nor maintained by either men or women opposed to social infractions – on the contrary. 388 Undoubtedly, one of the key excitements of both gambling and operating machines at high speed is that both pursuits allow the participant to flirt with destruction. Just as gamblers at the Monte Carlo casino, experiencing spin after spin of the roulette wheel, enjoyed a heightened sense of time, so too did drivers repeating lap after lap of a racing circuit, enjoy the thrills of embracing risk and tempting fortune. Sigmund Freud, in an essay on the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, suggested that the author of The Gambler’s own compulsive gambling was a manifestation of his parricidal urges; while 156 387 Dreiser, 434. 388 Dreiser, 434. Freud’s disciple Edmund Bergler similarly suggested that many of the appeals of gambling stemmed from the “death drive.” 389 In similar fashion, Benjamin wrote that, “the fascination of danger is at the bottom of all great passions. There is no fullness of pleasure unless the precipice is near. It is the mingling of terror with delight that intoxicates. And what more terrifying than gambling?” 390 Race car drivers may have offered an answer to Benjamin’s rhetorical question. While modern travel technologies had been integral to Monaco’s emergence as a popular resort destination in the nineteenth century, these same technologies also threatened its continued success in the twentieth century. As the price of train travel and of automobile ownership fell, a restless new breed of resort-hopping tourist with Baedeker guides in tow was increasingly eager to explore nearby towns along the south of France such as Cannes, Menton, and Saint-Raphael. 391 Nor would Monte Carlo continue to be the only place in southern Europe where gamblers could “live a hundred lives in one.” Since the closing of the German spa casinos in 1872, Monte Carlo had enjoyed virtual monopoly on providing legalized gambling on the Continent. But in 1907, French officials – responding to decades of complaints about Monaco’s monopoly by competing resort speculators along the Côte d’Azur - overturned its prohibition on gambling, so long as the practice was restricted to “private clubs and in casinos housed 157 389 Sigmund Freud, "Dostoevsky and Parricide," in Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Renй Wellek (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962); Bergler, op.cit. 390 Benjamin, 499. 391 Pascal Ory, L’Invention du bronzage: Essai d’une histoire culturelle (Paris: Editions Complexe, 2008) in sea bathing resorts.” 392 Entrepreneurs set about building new casinos along the coast and by the 1920s resort speculators such as Edouard Baudoin and Frank Jay Gould were busy trying to transform Juan-les-Pins into the Riviera’s next great gambling resort. 393 Gould also had plans to build a casino in Nice, Monaco’s long-time rival. His Palais de la Mediteranée casino, ten times larger than the Monte Carlo casino would be completed by 1929. 394 To Monaco’s east, the nearby San Remo resort began to flourish as the Fascist government overturned Italy’s own laws restricting games of chance. 395 The First World War had also hampered the SBM’s growth, though the casino had continued to operate, after briefly closing in the winter of 1914, for the duration of hostilities. While in 1914, casino profits had totaled thirty-six million francs, by the War’s end profits were down to twelve million. 396 In 1922, passengers descending the Cunard liner Cameronia that had sailed from New York Harbor found Monte Carlo nearly deserted – Monaco, as with the rest of the Cote d’Azur, at that time still lacked a significant summertime season. 397 158 392 The text of the ‘Loi du 15 juin 1907 relative aux casinos’ and its subsequent addenda can be accessed at www.legifrance.gouv.fr. Further legislation in 1909 restricted casinos from being closer than one hundred kilometers from Paris. Arman Fallières, President of the Republic at the time of law’s drafting, was no stranger to Monte Carlo, as evidenced by Radiguet’s comedic report on Falliéres’ visit to Monaco in L’Assiette au Beurre, number 421, 24 April, 1909. 393 Blume, 90. 394 ibid. 395 ‘French, Italian Casinos Open ‘Sucker War.” Chicago Tribune, January 24, 1929. 396 The casino had closed briefly with the outbreak of hostilities, but reopened in 1915. These figures are cited in Xan Fielding, The Money Spinner: Monte Carlo and Its Fabled Casino (New York: Little, Brown, 1977), 118. 397 Fielding, 124. Interest in the two hundred kilometer stretch of coastline from Bandol to Menton– the French Riviera to English speakers, the Côte d’Azur to the French – as a resort destination had grown slowly. As late as the eighteenth century, Europeans largely considered the sea and its shores wild and fearful places. 398 Most encountered the south of France through the stories told by those who had passed through on their way to the prized Grand Tour destination of Italy. 399 But by the nineteenth century, the same wildness that had once made the coast undesirable now provided its allure. The seaside became a place to escape the rigors of city life and what Alain Corbin has called “the misdeeds of civilization.” 400 James H. Bennett’s 1866 bestseller, Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean, highlighted the potential health benefits of the region’s climate and helped transform the coastline into one long sanatorium. 401 Coastal spa resorts, while initially expensive to reach, provided the nineteenth-century ruling classes with opportunities to participate in ‘society’ while living more frugally than they might otherwise in a country manor or in the city. 402 The Riviera’s long term success was 159 398 Alain Corbin has proposed that this rejection of the coast may have been driven by deep-seated fears stemming from the story of the biblical flood and beliefs about the land’s edge as a symbolic boundary between order and chaos. Alain Corbin, The Lure of The Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World 1750-1840 (London: Penguin, 1995). 399 In 1766 the consumptive surgeon Tobias Smollett’s travelogue extolled the benefits of the Niçoise climate sufficiently to inspire interest in readers well-versed in northern winters. Nice soon had a small British population. Tobias Smollett, Travels Through France and Italy (Project Gutenberg e-text, accessed August 2011), Letter XXIV, Nice, January 4, 1765. 400 Corbin, Lure, 53. European fears of the coast began to give way as some looked to the sea for aesthetic and scientific pursuits, inspired by a fascination with the cultural sites along the Italian coast, new hypotheses about the effects of water upon the body, interest in geology and the ocean’s role as unexplored keeper of secrets, and a Romantic celebration of the sea and shore as places that could elicit wonder and increase self-knowledge. 401 James Henry Bennet, Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean (London: J. Churchill & Sons, 1870). 402 Corbin, Lure, 254. assured by the connection of various coastal resorts to the French Rail network in the 1860s. 403 As the cultural historian Mary Blume has argued, though its purported health benefits sparked the development of the region, and opportunities for social climbing added to its appeal, by the end of the nineteenth century visitors came to the Riviera primarily in pursuit of pleasure. 404 We can trace the birth of the summer season along the Côte d’Azur to the summer of 1922, when Americans abroad after the War found in the off-season Riviera an inexpensive (the dollar was strong, while the Franc was relatively weak) beach playground, free from the grasp of Prohibition, and all but untouched by other tourists. 405 In July 1922 the painter Gerald Murphy and his wife Sara vacationed in the fishing village of Antibes with Cole Porter’s family. The Murphys soon initiated Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald into the cult of southern sun-worship; they and other cultural luminaries such as Peggy Guggenheim, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein, formed a loose expatriate community centered on the Murphys and their “Villa America” in Antibes. The Americans brought to the coast a relaxed sense of fashion, a flair for entertaining, and what Blume has called “the briefly contagious national mood of expectation.” 406 The art historian Kenneth Silver has similarly argued that the Americans advanced “a New World idea of leisure, energetic yet casual with a willful flaunting of haut-bourgeois formality, and a highly self-conscious embrace of all that might be rendered elegant by 160 403 The railway reached in Cannes in 1863 and Nice the following year. 404 As Blume has put it, “health may have been the pretext for heading south but the reason was pleasure.” Blume, Inventing, 38. 405 For histories of Americans along the Riviera in the 1920s, see Introduction, FN 37. 406 Blume, 72. virtue of its simplicity.” 407 Gerald Murphy, who swam miles in the Mediterranean and practiced gymnastics and yoga on the beach, helped to start the craze for sporting pursuits that was emerging along the coast. “The upper class French and British would not be seen dead on the Riviera in summer,” the author John Dos Passos recalled of the coast in the early 1920s, “but for Americans the temperature was ideal, the water delicious.” 408 Yet by 1923 trend- conscious Europeans were waking up to the summer charms of the coast. That year, the bronzed Coco Chanel was spotted at various points along the Mediterranean onboard the Duke of Westminster’s yacht, helping to make sun-tan and swimming into popular European pastimes. 409 Artists such as Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, and Raoul Dufy had already begun exploring the coast in search of inspiration and new landscapes, helping to transform the region into what Silver has called the “dream space for the twentieth century.” 410 The south of France also functioned as an informal international writers’ colony. André Gide, Colette, Paul Valery, and Jean Cocteau found inspiration looking out at the Mediterranean, setting for so many tales of storm-tossed adventure. 411 The 1925 renaissance of the Victorine studios in Nice further added to the 161 407 Kenneth E. Silver, “The Murphy Closet and the Murphy Bed,” from Deborah Rothschild (ed.), Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 408 As quoted in Jones, French Riviera, 72. 409 Pascal Ory, L’Invention du bronzage: Essai d’une histoire culturelle (Paris: Editions Complexe, 2008). A piece in Continental Life, January 3, 1925, noted that the Flying Cloud sat moored in the Bay of Monaco while its owner, the Duke of Westminster, ventured onto to land to take part “in all the various tennis tournaments. 410 Silver, Paradise, 25. 411 As the British writer Cyril Connolly described in The Rock Pool, “all along the Riviera, from [Aldous] Huxley Point to Castle [Edith] Wharton and as far as Cape [Somerset] Maugham, little colonies, or irate giants, had settled in. As Quoted in Girard, Riviera, 7. region’s allure, both by providing work for film stars, such as Rudolph Valentino and Mistinguett, and by presenting the area’s stunning natural beauty to global audiences watching films set along the coast. Frequent Riviera visitors, such as Aga Khan and King Farouk, also helped to make the Cote d’Azur an international summer hotspot. Though it is difficult to identify and quantify all of its members with exactitude, the Post-First World War “Riviera crowd” comprised a mix of people from different countries, though most of the central figures were western European and American, and of socially mixed backgrounds, though most members were relatively privileged. 412 Many of the key figures in this informal community were European aristocrats who had survived the War and the Russian Revolution; in the aftermath of these calamitous events, the south of France, where members of the European aristocracy had, since the eighteenth century, regularly come to “take the cure”” and socialize, provided a safe, familiar, and soothing environment for the post-War aristocracy. As David Cannadine has argued, resorts and other wealthy enclaves appealed to the remaining members of the aristocracy after the War because these spaces reminded them of their past glories, while also providing the illusion of escape from the metropolitan societies from which 162 412 See mentions of notables along the Riviera in various issues of Continental Life, 1925-1926 (BNF JO-46302) and lists of hotel guests contained in Les Échos Mondains de Monte-Carlo, various issues, 1927. (BNF JO-51178). See also various issues of La Saison d’été sur la Rivière, 1926-1927. (BNF JO-68725). One newspaper was devoted specifically to Americans on the Cote d’Azur, 1927-1928. (BNF JO-61780) Based on my research, I can provide the following list of notables who visited Monaco in the 1920s: Sir Harry Livesey, Lord Fitzwilliam (likely William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, seventh Earl Fitzwilliam), Vice Consul Guy Hogg, Baroness Orczy, Lord Rothemere, Princess Orsini, the American artist Mary McCormic, Jasch Heifetz, Elsa Maxwell, Suzanne Lenglen, King Gustav of Sweden, Lord Inchape, Marquis Strozzi, Count de Lazara, Hon. S.R. Beresford, Count Draskovich, David Lloyd George, Grand Duke Dimitri, Leon Radziwill, Duke of Connaught, William Dodd. Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer, William K. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Franklin Singer, Marion Crawford, the Dolly Sisters. they felt ever more alienated. 413 A large British constituency - many of its members hailing from the landed gentry - mixed in among the Riviera crowd and 1920s society columns regularly noted the arrival of yachts belonging to several peers of the British Empire. 414 The south of France had already long enjoyed a strong Russian presence, and some members of Riviera crowd were exiled White Russians. 415 As members of the European aristocracy threw themselves into the pursuit of pleasure, some observers began to sense that this was a social class out of place and devoid of purpose. A Monte Carlo croupier referred to the casino’s regular clientele in the 1920s as a “contraband nobility and a shabby aristocracy.” 416 People hailing from different social groups and national backgrounds appear to have interacted with relative freedom as they congregated along the Riviera, this social mixing no doubt aided by increased opportunities for travel and its accompanying exposure to new experiences. As the historian of aristocracy J. M Lee noted, a threat to the established pattern of behaviour…was the alteration in the standard of manners, which opportunities for travel had brought to the upper classes. The next generation of young aristocrats…were accustomed to new habits of leisure; and were emancipated from the routine of the London season and country-house responsibilities. The age of the motor car and the private yacht, the weekend in Paris and the polo 163 413 Cannadine, Decline, 382. 414 See, Continental Life, January 3, 1925 and May 16, 1925. Reference is made to the yachts of Sir Henry Livesey and Lord Fitz William. Reference is also made to the yachts of Madame Herrot, E.W. Pope, and W. Jameson. British shipbuilders set up shop in the principality, offering to build and maintain the pleasure crafts that dotted the harbors. Advertisement for “John I. Thornycroft Yachts.” Continental Life, January 3, 1925. 415 Yvon Gastaud, Nice Cosmopolite 1860-2010 (Paris: Editions Autrement, 2010). 416 Villy, 89. season in Monte Carlo, did not breed the solid worth which the previous generation had expected. 417 Just as high society (in French the grand monde) had historically allowed for some interaction with members of the demimonde, so long as they provided some service to their nominal social betters, be it in the form of “adding color” or through sexual desirability - with the monikers mondain and demimondaine both underscoring the links between a cosmopolitan worldview and privileged or deemed-to-be-glamorous social life - so too along the Riviera in 1920s did cracks appear in the gates to fashionable society, through which a lucky few who provided some form of cultural, social, or sexual capital could enter. A letter F. Scott Fitzgerald sent to a friend from Europe in 1926 reveals the incongruous mix of personalities and backgrounds to be found along the coast: "There was no one at Antibes this summer, except me, Zelda, the Valentinos, the Murphys, Mistinguet, Rex Ingram, Dos Passos, Alice Terry, the MacLeishes, Charlie Brackett, Mause Kahn, Lester Murphy, Marguerite Namara, E. Oppenheimer, Mannes the violinist, Floyd Dell, Max and Crystal Eastman ...” 418 As this informal community of privileged summer revelers began to congregate in established resorts and once-sleepy fishing villages along the coast, so too did a loosely defined and largely unspoken ethos emerge, whose proponents believed that a peripatetic existence and embrace of all means of mobility were enjoyable, worthwhile, 164 417 J.M Lee, Social Leaders and Public Persons: A Study of County Government in Cheshire since 1888 (1963), 42. As quoted in Cannadine 341. 418 As quoted in Blume, Inventing, 77. and enviable pursuits. 419 The practitioners of this ethos and its associated lifestyles, which I will collect under the shorthand “the adventuring spirit,” were united by their love of the new, the fast, and the thrilling. The particular geography of the south of France and its history as a site of cosmopolitan interaction played large roles in fostering the rise of the adventuring spirit. 420 The novelist Cyril Connolly had a name for the feeling that gripped visitors as they arrived along the Riviera: “Mediterranean Madness.” 421 At the edge of Europe, looking towards the Mediterranean and Africa, adventurers imagined themselves self- imposed exiles who commanded sealed-off kingdoms of their own creation. 422 “We thought we were on Crusoe’s desert island” wrote Jean Cocteau from Le Lavandou in 1922. 423 In Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, inspired by time spent with the Murphys (here renamed the Divers) along the coast, a woman asks the Murphys/Divers if they like the Riviera. A friend answers on their behalf: ‘They have to – they invented it.” Such solipsistic ideas about the south of France as an undiscovered land waiting to be 165 419 Ideally, I would have been able, in my archival research outside of Monaco, to look not only westwards to the expatriate communities congregating in resorts along the south coast of France, but also eastwards to Italy and resorts such as San Remo. Future research into the Italian influence in Monaco, particularly within the wider context of the Machine Age would be of great value, especially given the importance of the Italian Futurist movement in promoting new ways of thinking about machine speed and national identity. Concerning the ‘Machine Age,’ see Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005); Nathan Miller, New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2004) 420 The first two chapters of this dissertation trace the ways in which Monaco’s boosters helped to contribute to such ideas about the Cote d’Azur as a cosmopolitan space in the nineteenth century. 421 Cyril Connoly, The Rock Pool (London: Persea Books, 2007). 422 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean And the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Volumes I and II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 423 Jean Cocteau, ‘Letter to Georges Auric, 23 May 1922,’ from Henry Gidel, Cocteau (Paris: Flammarion, 1997). “invented” were chimerical, denying the presence of long-established local communities and the systems of labor and speculation that had already begun to transform the coast. 424 Yet this search for a cosmopolitan Arcadia can also be understood as an attempt, albeit misguided, to reject the national chauvinism and rigid cultural outlooks that many people believed had led to war. 425 Yet as Riviera adventurers helped to make the region an ever-more fashionable tourist destination, they simultaneously undid its supposed “remoteness” and “virgin” quality. This ongoing loop of enjoyment and spoliation yielded a new kind of landscape: mythic and modern; unexplored and storied; slow and fast; quiet and loud. 426 At the heart of the adventuring spirit lay a desire to experience time and space as intensely as possible. 427 While in many ways a continuation of the kinds of “lust for life” that Dreiser had noted in 1911, this particular celebration of mobility was more directly informed by the experiences of the First World War and its aftermath. With the concept of duty to one’s larger community badly compromised by the years of destruction, the Riviera adventurers turned inwards, devoting their energies to the cultivation of the self. They did not assign a great deal of value on fixed allegiances or traditions. By pitting 166 424 Silver, Paradise, 56. 425 On post-WW1 debates about the attitudes that had led to war, see Paul Fussell, The Great War. 426 Again, I lean heavily here on Silver’s arguments. It is worth quoting him at length on the coast’s many paradoxes: “In addition to what we might think of as the inherent contrasts of the coastline – mountains and sea, separated by a tiny strip of flat land; intense luminosity creating strong shadows – there were the contradictions wrought by tourism – foreigners versus Frenchman; (mostly rich) visitors versus (first poor, and then increasingly prosperous) locals; “guests” versus “hosts” – with the attendant distinction between those at leisure and those working in the service of that leisure…The objective correlative of all these contradictions was the automobile.” Silver, 83. 427 On the appeals of acceleration, see Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). themselves against chance, whether behind the wheel of a car or at the casino, they sought to expand the limits of their personal boundaries and to mark their places in a disordered world. Brilliance, youth, and wealth had been wasted on war. Now the primary goal was to live one’s life as fully and with as much exuberance as possible. “The era stands alone,” Sara Murphy later recalled, “but we did nothing notable except enjoy ourselves.” 428 Riviera adventurers preferred movement over stasis, superficiality over depth, and fleeting excitements over lasting relationships. 429 Time and talent were spent in much the same way as money: on things of no lasting importance. “I am not a bucket but a sieve,” the photographer and Riviera gadabout Jacques-Henri Lartigue would say of his southern spending habits during those years. 430 Such ways of seeing the world went hand in hand with an embrace of automotive speed. The overriding sense of acceleration in the pace of life of the 1920s was reflected in the Riviera community’s taste for, as Blume has written, “cocktails that hit fast and hard, clipped speech, short nicknames, clothes that were thrown easily on, and off, and above all swift motor cars.” 431 With the automobile, no coastal sight was too “out of the way;” no adventure fully beyond reach. As Silver has argued, as tourists in cars traveled from site to site (and sight to sight) along the coast, armed with their cameras, the appealing images they produced brought more automobiles – and cameras- to the region, as new batches 167 428 Aaron Latham, ‘The Real Nicole and Dick,’ New York Times, February 13, 1983. 429 The French writer Maurice Sachs recalled the 1920s along the Riviera as a time of “funniness, freedom, easy-come-easy-go and gay abandon.” Girard, French Riviera, 12. 430 Martine d’Astier and Mary Blume, Lartigue’s Riviera (Paris: Flammarion, 2001), 24. 431 Blume, Inventing, 72. of tourists felt “compelled” to capture the coast in pictures as equally alluring as those produced by their predecessors and by professional postcard manufacturers. 432 The juxtaposition of modern machines and the ‘Edenic’ landscape inspired artists to experiment with new subjects and perspectives, as Henri Matisse did in his 1925 View from Inside an Automobile. 433 Lartigue, who in 1927 produced a striking photograph linking ideas about privilege and freedom to Riviera automobilisme – the photograph titled simply as Mediterranean, despite a car in the picture’s foreground that glistens as brightly as the sea behind it - wrote in his diary in 1921: “It’s like magic, having an automobile down here, All you need to say is ‘I feel like being in Cannes, I feel like being in Monaco,’…and you’re off, and you’re there. 434 A postcard sent from Nice to Bandol in 1930 reads as speed incarnate - no opening salutations, only: “Is the engine working? What a beautiful road! I’m leaving for Cagnes.” 435 Fig. 3.8. Henri Matisse, View from Inside an Automobile, Painted in Antibes, 1925. Private Collection. Fig. 3.9. Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Mediterranean, 1927. Association des Amis de Jacques-Henri Lartigue. Ministère de la Culture-France. The new social and cultural practices emerging along the Cote d’Azur after the First World War did not go unnoticed by resort speculators. René Léon, who served as 168 432 As Silver has proposed “The introduction of the two machines – car and camera – is inextricably linked to coastal life; automobiles provided access to places where great pictures could be taken, and the taking of pictures encouraged the ever-increasing use of the automobile.” Silver, 95. 433 Silver analyzes both the Matisse painting and the Lartigue photograph. Ibid, 83-92. 434 As quoted in Silver, Paradise, 95. Silver provides insightful readings of both the Matisse painting and the Lartigue photograph, shedding light on how the presence of automobiles influenced artistic production along the Riviera, 83-100. 435 Société des bains de Mer (SBM) Archives. Image Collection: Folder ‘Cartes Postales’. Postcard addressed to M. Joseph Costatino, Villa ‘La Tunisinenne, Rue des Ecoles, Bandol, 1930. manager of the SBM from 1923 to 1935, recognized the tremendous economic potential of the Riviera crowd, and not only as potential clients. Léon’s actions as SBM director suggest that he realized that the adventuring spirit could be co-opted and used to help advertise Monaco, and a heavily-mythologized Riviera lifestyle, to audiences well beyond the coast. Léon funded three projects during his tenure as head of the SBM whose specific forms suggest that, while continuing his predecessors’ glamorization of mobility to achieve profit, he molded this strategy to channel the freewheeling lifestyle of the Riviera crowd into cultural productions and spectacular distractions that would serve as bold advertisements for Monaco. In all three projects, Léon was aided by Prince Pierre de Polignac, descended from French and Mexican nobility, who, through his marriage to Princess Louis Grimaldi’s daughter Charlotte, had become a significant shareholder in the SBM. 436 Unlike many of his peers in the European nobility, Pierre anticipated that the future of his class lay in its willingness to collude with bourgeois and foreign (which increasingly meant American) economic interests and adopt their modes and practices. Pierre’s actions in Monaco indicate that he recognized that a profitable SBM would benefit not only himself, but the future of the dynasty to which he now belonged. Few cultural works produced in the 1920s captured adventuring spirit, as well as the Côte d’Azur’s particular paradoxes, as fruitfully as the 1924 Ballets Russes production of Le Train Bleu. Conceived while Serge Diaghilev’s ballet company was headquartered in Monaco, and largely funded by the SBM, the piece celebrated the mix of Riviera sporting life and high society privilege that Léon hoped to associate with his 169 436 See Chapter One concerning ownership of SBM stocks. resort. Several artists who collaborated on the work, especially Coco Chanel, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso [see. fig.3.10] were themselves key figures among the Riviera crowd. 437 Set on an unnamed seaside resort in 1924, Le Train Bleu had its genesis at a Ballets Russes rehearsal, when Cocteau, admiring the gymnastic feats that the company’s newest member, Anton Dolin, performed to entertain the rest of the corps, had the idea for a piece that would showcase contemporary sporting life as well as the young dancer’s athleticism. Cocteau wrote the libretto, taking the work’s name from a train service launched in 1923 by the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée Train Company (PLM). The PLM’s year-round service, which connected Calais to the Côte d’Azur via a completely first-class locomotive, with metal sleeper cars painted navy and gold to distinguish it from the standard wooden brown commuters, came to be known as the Blue Train. Journalists often opened their Riviera travelogues by gushing about the trip down to the coast, regarding the Blue Train more as a luxurious hotel on wheels than a mere machine for moving bodies. In 1926, for instance, a Los Angeles Times 170 437 Gerald and Sara Murphy, it should also be noted, were also loosely affiliated with the Ballet Russes, though not directly involved with Le Train Bleu. The Murphys helped to design and paint sets for Diaghilev and hosted a party to celebrate the debut of Les Noces. Girard, French Riviera, 45. correspondent boasted of his “delightful journey…I had one of those new, blue, single berth [first class] sleepers.” 438 Fig. 3.10. Francis Poulenc, “Photograph of the Picassos in front of the Monte Carlo Casino.” 1923. BNF. IFN-55006307. The Ballets Russes’ Le Train Bleu, little more than a parade of frivolities enjoyed by well-to-do tourists during a day at the beach, opens with a curtain by Pablo Picasso, featuring two giantesses running topless hand in hand along the beach. Picasso’s curtain parts to reveal the sculptor Henri Laurens’ Cubist fantasy of a seaside resort, with two lopsided cabanas (reminiscent of the ones Gerald Murphy had installed near ‘Villa America’) and a pair of oversized fish in mid-dive flanking the scene. Coco Chanel drew upon her prewar experience as a Deauville modiste to fashion costumes incorporating (and in many cases dictating) the latest trends in beach and sporting attire. 439 Contemporary audiences would have recognized a few resort clichés 171 438 Mordaunt Hall, “Monte Carlo Past and Present.” New York Times. December 31, 1922; F.Britten Austin, “At Monte Carlo.” Los Angeles Times; September 12, 1926. Further adding to the popular interest in the PLM’s service were a series of ‘Blue Train Races’ run in the 1920s, in which automobilists vied to outrun the train on its Calais to Cannes voyage; as with the 1911 Monte Carlo Rally, making a sport out of reaching the Riviera. Arrival by train in Monaco was also central to the action in Ernst Lubitsch’s 1930 film Monte Carlo. After the penniless Countess Helene Mara leaves Prince Otto Von Seibenheim at the altar she flees to Monaco by train. The plot develops alongside this journey, as Lubitsch provides several shots of train machinery to link Countess Helene’s growing sense of freedom to rail travel and eventually with arrival in Monaco; upon reaching the resort she heads straight to the Monte Carlo casino. Agatha Christie meanwhile explored the darker side of such freedoms, playing on long-standing anxieties about the fates of women left unsupervised along the Cote d’Azur. Christie’s 1928 novel, The Mystery of the Blue Train, featured an American heiress who, like countess Mara, also runs away from her impending marriage, but unlike her happier European counterpart, is found dead as the Blue Train pulls into Nice. 439 The dark suede bathing caps and large pearl stud earrings le Train Bleu introduced to Parisians and Londoners would soon become de rigeur among the smart set. The striped tricots Chanel produced may have been inspired by the crew’s uniforms she saw while aboard The F lying Cloud, the yacht owned by the Duke of Westminster, with whom she had begun an affair in Monaco the previous year. The rubber slippers she produced were unsuited for ballet and the hand-knit bathing suits were hard for the dancers to grip, but the outfits were a hit with audiences. populating the stage. Dolin’s sunburnt and self-obsessed ‘Beau Gosse’ (Handsome Lad) pursues Lydia Sokolova’s flirtatious flapper, Perlouse. The corps de ballet is comprised of ‘tarts’ and ‘gigolos,’ as Cocteau’s libretto dubbed them, indulging in beachside hijinks in racy swimwear. Bronislava Nijinska’s Tennis Champion, was based on Wimbledon winner and Riviera regular Suzanne Lenglen, while Léon Woizikovsky’s pipe smoking Golfer nodded to the Duke of Windsor, another frequent Riviera visitor. The bulk of the action concerns ‘Beau Gosse’ parading around the stage with greased hair and a tight bathing suit cut high up on the thigh, as he tries to impress the assembled beachgoers with a slew of cartwheels, somersaults, and trampoline work. With all of its cabana antics and swinging rackets, the piece is full of innuendo; sport and sex become interchangeable. Le Train Bleu helped to promote the idea that athleticism was no longer considered ‘unfeminine,’ at a time when seaside sporting was becoming an increasingly lucrative business. Jeanne Lanvin, Charles Worth, Jean Patou, and Edward Molyneux had, like Chanel, all opened up sportswear boutiques on the Côte d’Azur in the 1920s. 440 Fig. 3.11. Scene from Le Train Bleu. 1924. BNF. Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, album Kochno. Fig. 3.12. Photograph of Lydia Sokolova (Perlouse); Anton Dolin (Beau Gosse); Bronislava Nijinska (Tennis Champion); Léon Woizikovsky (The Golfer), 1924. BNF. Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, album Kochno. Fig. 3.13. Photograph of Pablo Picasso’s Le Train Bleu Curtain at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Getty Images, 2010. 172 440 Jacqueline Herald, Fashions of a Decade: The 1920s (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2005), 54; Girard, Riviera, 9. All ballet is by definition concerned with movement, but Le Train Bleu brought new ideas about social and physical mobility to the fore, while playing upon emerging technologies of producing and capturing movement. Cocteau’s elliptical libretto, with its staccato style, set the tempo for this celebration of modern movement: Tarts. Gigolos. Sunbathing. Then gigolos run (in place) and do rapid physical exercises, while the tarts, scattered in groups, assume the graceful poses of colored postcards… 441 Elsewhere, the libretto instructs dancers to move as if in a film’s slow motion sequence and pose in mid-action “with their mouths open; people jumping,” as if for “magazine snapshots.” 442 As the dance historian Lynn Garafola has noted, such poses mimicked the action photographs that were beginning to appear with frequency in the sports pages of newspapers, and referenced the growing craze for taking vacation snapshots. 443 Groups of women strike poses in unison, evoking both classical friezes and the dancing Tiller Girls that so fascinated Siegfried Kracauer the previous year. 444 Nijinska’s choreography was reportedly inspired by seeing the famed ballroom dancing duo of Marjorie Moss and George Fontana dancing at Monte Carlo’s grand Hotel Métropole. At Cocteau’s behest, Nijinska also watched newsreels of Lenglen to study her posture and movements. 445 Yet for all of the ballet’s references to movement, the famed locomotive is itself absent from Le Train - a bit of whimsy indicative of the work’s lighthearted approach. 173 441 As quoted in Garafola, Diaghilev, 108. 442 Garafola, Diaghilev, 108. 443 Garafola, Diaghilev, 108. 444 See Kracauer, Mass Ornament. 445 Anton Dolin, Ballet Go Round (London: M. Joseph, 1938), 67. Diaghilev underscored the piece’s associations with speed and contemporary fashions in his introduction to the Programme for the ballet’s London debut: The first thing one notes about Le Train bleu is that it has no blue train. This being the age of speed, it has already reached its destination and dropped off its passengers. We can see them on a beach that does not exist in front of casino that exists even less. Above will pass an airplane that you won’t see, and whose presence is in fact meaningless. 446 Diaghilev’s joke is that the “presence,” or lack thereof, of offstage trains and airplanes was not in fact meaningless, but precisely the opposite. For Diaghilev the mere idea of train and air travel and all of the associations with privilege and modernity that the technology would evoke in audience members’ imaginations were of more use than the machine itself; the point of arrival more important than the journey. It is telling that the Monte Carlo casino, though never seen, does not go unmentioned in Diaghilev’s program; it is offered as yet one more marker of Riviera privilege, conspicuous by its absence. The profits of the Monte Carlo casino in fact helped to fund the ballet, and it was in the casino’s adjoining Théâtre de Monte Carlo that Le Train Bleu had been both conceived and rehearsed. Diaghilev at that point had already made Monaco his permanent winter base of operations, in what would - thanks to a series of lucrative SBM contracts - prove to be one of the most financially-stable periods in the company’s history. 447 Pierre de Polignac, who, as the dance historian Sjeng Scheijen has written, “cultivated a reputation as a lover of culture [and] took up the role of Diaghilev’s guardian angel,” played a key role in bringing the Ballets Russes under the SBM 174 446 Nicole Wild and Jean-Michel Nectoux, Diaghilev, les ballets russes, (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1979) 125. 447 Garafola, 238. umbrella. 448 Diaghilev, as Cocteau, remembered him, was forever “running from patron to patron, from hotel to hotel, from country to country, in search of the means to bring to life the luxuries he offered the world, and to feed and house the multicolored retinue he brought in tow.” 449 Monaco offered a haven from that exhausting routine, and a new source of potential patrons. The impresario’s diaries from his time in Monaco contain a page with the heading ‘Patronage M. Carlo;’ a list of past and potential supporters that includes some of the most prominent names of the era: de Polignac, de Noailles, Radziwill, the Aga Kahn, Rothemere, Cunard, de Rothschild, and the King of Spain. 450 Individual patrons helped to pay bills and open doors, but the SBM financed a huge portion of Diaghilev’s operation. 451 Under the SBM’s patronage, the Ballet Russes Company lived rent-free for six months of the year. 452 In return, key figures in Monaco clearly felt comfortable trying to influence his creative process. In 1924, for instance, the impresario received a letter from an advisor to Prince Louis advising that “His Serene Highness” had “taken an interest’ in a local Monegasque artist and that he “would be 175 448 Sjeng Scheijen, Diaghilev: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 379. Judith Chazin- Bennahum, René Blum and the Ballets Russes: In Search of a Lost Life (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2011), 80, also discusses Prince Pierre’s influence. Lynn Garafola, does not explicitly name Pierre, but highlights the influence of his relation Princesse Edmond de Polignac in convincing Diaghilev to settle in Monaco in 1922. Garafola, 237. 449 Detaille and Mulys, with forward by Cocteau, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, 9. 450 BNF Opéra, Fonds Kochno, piéce 156. 451 See various SBM-Diaghilev contracts, too numerous to list individually, housed in the Fonds Kochno at the BNF Opéra as well as at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library. Garafola’s Diaghilev is the definitive work on the Ballet Russes. My research has also been informed by a Chazin-Bennahum; Jennifer Homans, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2011); and Sjeng Scheijen, Diaghilev: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). As though as Garafola points out, it is difficult to ascertain exactly how much money came from which patron and how it was used, given a relative lack of archival material specifically pertaining to financial figures. Garafola, 238. 452 Garafola, Diaghilev, 108. happy if you will receive him and, eventually, help him.” 453 This was not the only letter Diaghilev received from Louis asking for favors. 454 Thus while Le Train Bleu’s specific themes may have arisen organically alongside the new lifestyles of the Riviera crowd, it is worth considering that Diaghilev, so skilled at finding and pleasing patrons, would have been keenly aware how deeply the subject matter and styles of this production would have pleased his patrons, especially Léon and de Polignac. The piece ran exclusively outside of the principality, advertising Riviera fashions and resort lifestyles to audiences in Paris and London. Léon and de Polignac would no doubt have been thrilled to read the review of one London critic, who proclaimed that ''It is as difficult to get a seat for Le Train Bleu as it is to get a seat for the thing itself during the height of the Riviera rush.” 455 Two years after Le Train Bleu brought the Côte d’Azur to two of the major metropolises of Europe, de Polignac orchestrated another SBM-funded project intended to broaden the resort’s international appeal. In 1926 he engineered the SBM’s hiring of Elsa Maxwell, the Iowa-born event planner and Hollywood maven. 456 Maxwell was renowned for her ability to bring people from disparate social worlds together; she was a master, as she herself would claim, at “introducing people with talent to people with money.” 457 The previous year, Maxwell had transformed the Lido in Venice from a drab 176 453 “Letter from Prince of Monaco to Diaghilev.” May 29, 1924, Paris.” BNF Opéra, Fonds Kochno, Piece 63. 454 “Letter from Prince of Monaco to Diaghilev.” September 11, 1927, Paris. BNF Opéra, Fonds Kochno, Piece 63. 455 As quoted in Gay Morris, ‘'Le Train Bleu' Makes a Brief Stopover,’ New York Times, March 4, 1990. 456 Concerning the hiring of Maxwell, see Elsa Maxwell, R.S.V.P. Elsa Maxwell’s Own Story, (New York: Little, Brown), 183-191; Sam Staggs, Inventing Elsa Maxwell (New York: St. Martins, 2012), 153-158. 457 Staggs, op. cit. getaway for Italian families into an international tourist destination. Léon hired her not simply to Americanize the resort but also to bring her high-society connections in Europe, especially in Paris where she had been based for several years and was an influential figure, to the principality. Maxwell was charged with bringing a summer season to Monaco and to attract clients drawn to sporting culture that was emerging along the coast. As Maxwell put it, “Monte Carlo asked me to prescribe a tonic for its anemic pull as a tourist attraction,” and she responded that the principality needed to pay “homage to the New King…le soleil.” 458 She called on the American architect Addison Mizner, the world’s foremost resort architect, whose Spanish colonial and Mediterranean Revival buildings had helped to put Florida’s Palm Beach on the map and set a style for resort architecture that remains highly influential. 459 Under Maxwell’s and Mizner’s direction, the SBM hired resort architect Roger Seasall in 1928 to build the pink stucco Monte Carlo Beach Hotel, which, with its Olympic-sized swimming pool, terra cotta roofing, blue tiles, and thatched breezeway lined with palms and columned arches, nodded as much to the Mediterranean as it did to America. Maxwell tried to make the hotel live up to its billing by hatching a them to build an artificial beach made of sand poured on rubber at the edge of the complex, but this was quashed when it was pointed out that the rubber would disintegrate in the sea water. Under Maxwell’s direction the SBM also launched a new, less stuffy, casino, Le Sporting d’Été, with sliding roof so gamblers could play roulette en plein air. The French architect Charles Letrosne built another casino, le 177 458 Maxwell, 186. 459 Donald W. Curl, Mizner’s Florida: American Resort Architecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987) Sporting d’Hiver, where Léon hired women to perform a ‘leg show’ in a troupe that came to be known as ‘Les Girls’ and, in another example of American influence in Monaco, starred a former Ziegfeld Follies dancer. Maxwell meanwhile invited her Hollywood connections to the resort and threw a series of over-the-top parties that made for good copy. 460 American newspaper audiences were especially keen to read about the frivolities on offer along the Riviera, and the press obliged them; the offices of the Paris edition of the New York Herald had a sign in its newsroom during the 1920s: IT NEVER RAINS IN NICE. THERE'S ALWAYS SNOW IN SWITZERLAND. ALL RESORT GEESE ARE SWANS. 461 By hiring Maxwell to make Monaco the premier summertime and sporting destination along the coast, Léon repeated François Blanc’s foundational strategy of driving long-term gambling business through short-term deficit spending on resort construction. Attempting to unseat Cannes as the leading site for tennis on the Riviera, Léon in 1928 opened the immense Monte Carlo Country Club, with twenty-three tennis courts and luxurious clubhouses, and commissioned publicity materials that proclaimed that the club was “the preferred rendezvous of the Côte d’Azur’s Anglo-Saxon colony.” 462 The budgets for such building projects and their accompanying advertising 178 460 Maxwell, 183-191. 461 Levenstein, We’ll always Have Paris, 15. 462 “Programme général de la saison de Monte Carlo 1923-1924.” Text by Louis Laloy. BNF Richelieu, Arts du spectacle, 8- RF- 81819. campaigns numbered in the tens of millions of francs and forced the company to take out massive loans from its savings and against future earnings. 463 Besides both being key parts of Léon and Maxwell’s plans to reinvent Monaco as a summer resort, the Monte Carlo Beach Hotel and the Monte Carlo Country Club shared another trait in common: both were located a quarter of a mile outside Monaco, on French land to the east of the principality, purchased, per Maxwell’s advice, by the SBM. The Monte Carlo Golf Club, built by the SBM in 1911, was also located in France, atop Mont Agel. The “idea” of the Monte Carlo casino-resort, whether it took physical form as a hotel, a club, or a golf course, was powerful and pervasive enough to cross political borders. One could stand in France and (so long as one was safely removed from the outside world within the comfortable confines of one of these embassies of leisure) still think of oneself as being in Monaco. Fig. 3.14. Photographs of the Monte Carlo Beach Hotel. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Hotels’. Undated. The SBM’s channeling of the adventuring spirit is evident in a poster produced by the illustrator ‘Sem’ (Georges Gourat) in 1932 to advertise the Monte Carlo Beach Hotel and the summer season that Maxwell had helped to bring to the resort. 464 ‘Sem’’s poster dubs Monaco as “Paradise Found,” while giving the Genesis narrative a hedonistic twist. A muscular Adam and a sun-bleached athletic Eve have returned to reclaim Eden, now modernized with the latest resort amenities. Eve holds the apple proudly and the 179 463 A 1928 New York Times article reported that the Monte Carl Country Club had cost $2,500,000 to build. ‘New Beach At Monte Carlo Will Rival The Famous Lido’ New York Times, March 11, 1928. In 1931 the SBM budgeted thirty million francs for construction projects to ‘augment the summer season.’ The company took out a sixty million franc loan from its savings to work on these and other building projects. ‘Annexe au Procés Verbal.’ February 16, 1931. SBM Archives, Folder 1931. 464 A reproduction of Sem’s poster can be found in the SBM Image Collection. troublesome snake has become a benign sea-creature who safely guides the duo as they surf while being pulled by a motorboat. Friendly birds (who appear more as post- Flood doves than as hungry seagulls) look on. Small pleasure crafts peacefully coexist with an immense ocean liner, evocative of the ships that by were by then, as a reporter from the Berkeley Gazette put it “dumping seventy-odd shiploads of Americans…at Monte Carlo.” 465 The Monte Carlo Beach Hotel can be seen in the center of the background plane, blending in harmoniously with the pastoral landscape. Just as Henri Barbusse’s First World War novel Le Feu closed with a flood, absolving Europe of the sins that led Europe to destroy itself, so does Sem’s poster offer water as rebirth, promising that paradise could again be found in Europe, so long as one could harness the appropriate means of transportation to reach and enter the garden. Léon’s key strategies can be gleaned in this single image: a French commercial artist links Monaco to the sporting Riviera lifestyle, modern American-style amenities, the storied Mediterranean landscape, bold sexuality, sun-tanning, and sea-bathing – all combined in an easily-digested and mass-produced representation carefully choreographed to lure as many as people to the resort as possible. Fig. 3.15. ‘Sem’ (Georges Gourat), “Monte Carlo Beach: Le Paradis Retrouvé,” 1932. SBM Image Collection. No event in Monaco better represented the ways in which the SBM traded upon the specific outlooks and practices of the “Riviera Crowd” than the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix, run on April 14, 1929. The race celebrated not only Monaco’s historical associations with the latest travel technologies but the consolidation of the aristocratic- bourgeois alliance that controlled the principality, and which, as we have seen, profited 180 465 “Along the Riviera.” Berkeley Gazette, January 12, 1925. in large part by harnessing the power, actual and symbolic, of these new technologies. In a festival of skill’s dominance over chance, run in front of the world’s most iconic casino, competitors driving some of the latest and most luxurious consumer goods produced by European industry sought to gain distinction by displaying their technical mastery of machine speed. That the Grimaldi and the SBM were willing to fund this complicated event (which resulted that year in net losses, as it would for more than two decades) indicates that they were particularly drawn to the ways in which the Grand Prix would help to glamorize the Monte Carlo casino-resort’s specific forms of social life. 466 The event transformed the streets of Monaco into a twentieth century panorama, allowing drivers - as well as spectators at the race and consuming words and images that recounted the event in the popular press, in poster advertisements, and in newsreels - to experience the key social sites in Monaco in compressed time. The race made an asset of the principality’s small size, telling potential visitors to Monaco that not only did the resort offer more than a casino, but that everything a person could want while on vacation would be available within close proximity. Monaco’s workers were kept conveniently out of sight: of the five neighborhoods in Monaco that could have served as routes, the circuit passed through only two, Monte Carlo and Le Condamine, the key centers of tourist life and retail business. 467 Through the Monaco Grand Prix, 181 466 According to motorsport journalist David Hodges’ 1964 history of the event, the Monaco Grand Prix by that point had “never been a profitable race for the organizers, whose loss up to now has been guaranteed annually by the town.” [Hodges, 2] By “town” one presumes that Hodges means the SBM, which for the greater part of Monaco’s history has financed almost all of the principality’s operations, from sewage to electricity. Concerning the large financial losses accrued during the 1929 Monaco Grand Prix, see also Chambert-Protat, 73. 467 Workers lived primarily in the surrounding French town of Beausoleil, which Léon’s predecessor, SBM Director Camille Blanc, had built, also serving as mayor, during his tenure as head of the company between 1884 and 1923 these two neighborhoods, but especially Monte Carlo, and most specifically the Monte Carlo casino at which the race meets its summit and halfway point, came to define the principality in the public imaginary. 468 Léon and de Polignac again played key roles in bringing the project to fruition. According to Antony Noghés, the Monegasque tobacco wholesaler who founded the race, the idea was borne out of a simple desire to gain recognition for Monaco’s Automobile Club. In 1928, Noghés encountered difficulty in Paris while lobbying for his small club’s admission to the International Association of Recognized Automobile Clubs (IARAC), whose directors believed that Monaco’s size would prohibit the principality and its club from ever staging an “internationally relevant” motorsport event. 469 Noghés contended that the Monte Carlo Rally, which had continued to run annually since 1911, constituted precisely such an event, but IARAC officials retorted that the Rally, because it took place almost entirely outside of the principality, actually owed its success to the work of other European nations and their auto clubs. Tiny Monaco might serve as a glamorous finish line for a European-wide rally, but it could never host its own international racing event, and therefore Noghés’ group of auto enthusiasts could hardly be considered an internationally-relevant body. Noghés claims to have immediately thought up the Monaco Grand Prix in response, promising his critics “that next year you 182 468 Concerning the symbolic power of tourist districts in relation to their wider urban contexts, see Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 50-51. 469 Anthony Noghés as quoted in Hodges, vii. The Automobile Club of Monaco formed in 1925 as an offshoot of the Cycling and Automobile Sport Club of Monaco, which had overseen the Monte Carlo Rally since 1911. Founded in 1890, the Cycling and Automobile Sport was before 1907 known as the Cycling Sport Club of Monaco. will be present at an international race which will be held on the territory of the Principality and which will excite world-wide interest.” 470 Returning home with “the idea of the Race within the Town having been launched,” he fixed on finding a way to transform the streets of Monaco into a race track that could measure among the greatest in Europe. He recalled how For days on end, I went over the avenues of the Principality until I hit on the only possible circuit. This skirted the port, passing along the quay and the Boulevard Albert Premier, climbed the hill of Monte Carlo, then passed round the Place de Casino, took the downhill zig-zag near Monte Carlo station to get back approximately to sea level and from there, along the Boulevard Louis II and the Tir aux Pigeons tunnel, the course came back to quayside.” 471 Noghés assertion that the specific route he devised was “the only possible” option is misleading. The SBM, which had made ninety-eight million francs in profit in 1928, possessed the means to construct a dedicated race course in an area set apart from the town center, just as neighboring Le Mans had so successfully done to launch its own motorsport event in 1906. 472 Monaco, despite its restrictive size, also offered a number of other potential roads that could have been used instead of those that were selected. Noghés himself commented on the difficulty of readying the roads to accommodate his specific choice of circuit: “Today the roads comprising this circuit look as though they were made for the purpose,” he told a journalist in 1964. “But then! Some of the obstacles seemed to be insuperable - – the steps near the Bureau de Tabac, for example, had to be replaced by an inclined plane connecting the Quai des États-Unis 183 470 Ibid. 471 Ibid, viii. 472 SBM profits as listed in Fielding, 127. with the Quai Albert Premier.” 473 Noghés first proposed the idea to the famed race-car driver Louis Chiron, also a local Monegasque, as well as to Prince Pierre. 474 As Noghés, whose son would later marry Prince Pierre’s daughter Antoinette, recounted, “administrative formalities were eased and difficulties smoothed away while the public services gave of their best to make effective contribution,” while claiming that the race was run “under the patronage of H.S.H. Prince Louis II.” 475 In fact, the SBM largely funded and would continue to fund the event, despite the financial losses incurred. 476 The race began at the edge of Monaco’s harbor, reinforcing the principality’s long history as a Mediterranean port, its more recent history as a nineteenth century spa resort, and its contemporary aspirations to become a center of summertime sporting life. In keeping with the general embrace of anything to do with chance in the casino-resort, starting positions were decided by the drawing of lots rather than by the more typical pre-race speed trials. 477 Leaving the harbor, the drivers climbed up the Boulevard Albert Premier, named for Louis’s father and predecessor, passing by the Chapel of Sainte Devote, burial ground of the principality’s patron saint, and a central site of social interaction in this predominantly Catholic territory. Having climbed the hill to Monte Carlo, via the Avenue Massenet (reminder of how important opera had been to Monte Carlo’s emergence as a fashionable resort in the nineteenth century), the course 184 473 Ibid, vii. 474 Ibid. 475 Hodges, viii. 476 See FN 466. 477 Hodges, x. navigated between the Hôtel de Paris and the Monte Carlo casino. 478 Here the drivers reached the race’s key half way point as well as the Mount Olympus of Monaco’s social world. The Hôtel de Paris, which for many years housed the SBM’s headquarters, was the central seat of bourgeois influence in the principality; anyone of note who visited or lived in the resort between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries would have either dined, drunk, or slept in this building. 479 The drivers would next have passed down the Avenue des Beaux Arts towards the Monte Carlo train station, which, as Diaghilev’s Le Train Bleu made clear, was a charged symbol of contemporary Monegasque social life. The course then passed underneath the train station, and the Pigeon Shoot, a central site for recreation, and quasi-aristocratic competition. 480 Exiting the tunnel, the drivers had to execute a key turn, in front of Monaco’s Bureau de Tabac; perhaps a coincidence, or perhaps a conscious decision by the tobacco wholesaler, Noghés. 481 They then passed by the Quai des États-Unis, reminder of American influence in the resort and along the coast. Returned to the water’s edge, the racing/ social circuit was completed. 185 478 The drivers reached Avenue Massenet via what is now called Avenue Ostend, almost certainly in commemoration of the 1918 Raid on Ostend. I have been unable to find out exactly when Avenue Ostend was given its current name. 479 In 1916, for instance, the media magnate Lord Beaverbrook reputedly purchased the Daily Express from a peer while walking from the hotel to the casino. Given its one hundred and eighty-seven rooms and central location the hotel would become the logical choice for Gestapo headquarters in Monaco during the Occupation. As we have seen in Chapter One François Blanc, founder of Monte Carlo, stated that he wished the building to “be spoken of as a marvel, thus acting as a splendid advertisement” for both the SBM and Monaco. Egon Corti, The Wizard of Homburg and Monte Carlo (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1934), 186. 480 See Chapter One. 481 Note that Noghés mentioned how difficult it had been to accommodate this particular part of the course. See FN 128. Motorsport enthusiasts still refer to the turn as Tabac, though the original store is gone. Fig. 3.16. The 1929 Monaco Grand Prix Circuit. Archives of the Automobile Club de Monaco. Fig. 3.17. Drivers passing by the harbor, 1929. Archives of the Automobile Club de Monaco. Fig. 3.18. The Church of Saint Devote with Gitanes Banner. Agence DPPI. No Date. Fig. 3.19. Drivers in the 1932 Monaco Grand Prix, turning with train station out of frame on left. Agence Meurisse, 1932. BNF. MEU 85924 A-93453 A. Fig. 3.20. Starting / Finish Line of Monaco Grand Prix, 1930. Agence Meurisse, 1930. BNF. MEU 71650 A-78585 A. Fig. 3.21. Driver passing by the Monte Carlo Casino in the 1930 Monaco Grand Prix. Agence Meurisse, 1930. MEU 85924 A-93453 A. Fig. 3.22. Driver finishing the 1932 Monaco Grand Prix de Monte-Carlo. Agence Meurisse. 1932. BNF. MEU 85924 A-93453 A. An enthusiastic report on the race in the following day’s edition of Le Figaro indicates how effectively the event publicized Monaco’s key sites to people outside of the principality. While passing rather quickly over the actual details of the race itself, the item focused on how The idea of The Race within the Town…could not have triumphed so spectacularly were it not for the decorative qualities of the Bay of Monaco, which provided a grand natural stage, full of wonderful color. On the right, the picturesque rock of Monaco, so beautifully fierce; to the left, the luxurious escalade of grand hotels…between the two, the delightful little harbour so graciously situated…with the blue of the Mediterranean stretching to the horizon….Glued to their windows, gathered on the terraces of the hotels or beside the roads that pass the promontories of Monaco and the Pigeon Shoot, countless spectators were delighted by this beautiful and exciting spectacle, which reminded them of how fortunate they were to be in so magical a setting. 482 186 482 ‘Le Grand Prix automobile de Monaco,’ Le Figaro, April 15 1929 The reception of the event in the international press was overwhelmingly positive; even Action Française, which in spite of its monarchist bent normally took a staunchly anti- Monaco stance, allowed that the race had been a “beautiful contest.” 483 By 1931 the race was already so well-known internationally that that the Associated Press report on that year’s Grand Prix referred to it as the “famous automobile road race.” 484 In the following years journalists would devote as much of their reports to spotting the grandees in attendance as they would to recounting the race itself. In 1932, for instance, a New York Times reporter noted that Lord Inchcape, Vice President of the Suez Canal Company, and Ignace Paderewski, were among the notable spectators in attendance, looking on “while a dozen American and English yachts were lying in the harbor.” 485 The Times’ coverage two years later noted the presence of King Gustav of Sweden, former King Alfonso of Spain, and Prince Nicholas of Rumania. 486 Posters advertising the event also allowed people outside of Monaco to experience the delights of the race and its “picturesque” circuit. While the SBM had announced the 1929 with a bland text-only poster, the company promoted the following year’s event via a boldly-colored poster that advertised not only the race, but also the modernity of the resort where it was held. Between 1932 and 1937, the French commercial artist Géo Hamm produced posters for the SBM have since become some of the most iconic images of Monaco. Hamm’s posters – setting what has since become 187 483 Action Française, April 15, 1929. For general assessments of press reactions to the Grand Prix, see FN 4. 484 ‘Chiron Wins Monaco Auto Race,’ New York Times, April 20,1931 485 ‘Italian Sets Record in Auto Grand Prix,’ New York Times, April 18, 1932. 486 ‘Moll First in Auto Race,’ New York Times, April 3, 1934. the standard Monaco Grand Prix poster style - typically featured illustrated cars and drivers, equally sleek in appearance, against an exotic Mediterranean backdrop; with pertinent information succinctly and via a clean sans serif font. Occasionally, the casino appears in the background; palm trees, now a charged symbol of Riviera luxury, almost always. 487 Hamm’s posters highlight the appealing paradoxes of the new Côte d’Azure landscape; but in these advertisements the modern machine always dominates the mythic landscape. These posters always depicted an imagined and illustrated scene rather than a photographic documentation of any actual race; the gaze was ever towards the future, the unknown outcome. Yet, in these fantasy images there lies an underlying invitation to tourists to come and witness the seemingly impossible site of automobiles speeding through city streets; and perhaps capture with their cameras an image as alluring as those dreamed up by Hamm and his fellow artists. To advertise the event via photography, in other words, would have been to rob the event of its special mystery. Fig. 3.23. Poster Advertising the 1929 Monaco Grand Prix. Artist Unknown. SBM Image Collection. Fig. 3.24. Géo Ham, Monaco Grand Prix 1933. Imprimerie Monégasque, 1933. The driver appears to be passing through the tunnel beneath the Tir aux Pigeons. SBM Image Collection. Fig. 3.25. Géo Ham, Monaco Grand Prix 1934. Imprimerie Monégasque, 1934. The Monte Carlo casino features in the background. SBM Image Collection. Fig. 3.26. Géo Ham, Monaco Grand Prix 1935-1937. Imprimerie Monégasque. 188 487 Concerning the palm tree as icon of the Riviera, see Jean-Bernard Pouy, “Des Symboles à la Dérive,” in Brigitte Ouvry-Vial, René Louis, and Jean-Bernard Pouy, (eds.), Les Vacances: Un Rêve, un Produit, un Miroir (Paris: Autrement, 1990), 109-10. Thanks in large part to Léon’s bold strategies, the SBM continued to yield annual profits throughout most of the 1930s, and the global economic depression hit Monte Carlo far less hard than it did rival resorts such as Nice and San Remo. 488 This history of the Monaco Grand Prix and its antecedents thus would appear to be a rather tidy story of local boosters, drawing on an international collection of commercial artists, impresarios, and consultants, successfully promoting the resort and its various spectacles to an equally international group of privileged visitors. So far absent from this history of mobility, privilege, and power, however, are the Monegasques themselves. Examining another procession that took place through the streets of the principality in the spring of 1929, reveals the tensions between Monegasque workers, the SBM, and the Grimaldi dynasty that had been growing for decades. Monegasques had long grumbled about SBM jobs going to foreigners, and the Grimaldi princes accordingly pressured the casino’s managers to hire more locals. The SBM’s directors, head management, and most of its shareholders were French, with a significant presence of Germans among head managers before the First World War; and only a quarter of the croupiers, the most sought after job on the floor, were Monegasques. 489 Léon, for one, believed he had good reason not to hire locals. As he argued in a letter to Prince Louis, Monegasque workers had only submitted with “great difficulty” to the discipline required in the running of a casino; “no sooner is an employee hired, than he pleads on his Monegasque status to ask for preferential treatment: a 189 488 Data is available for the following years: 1932: thirty-two million francs profit; 1933: sixteen million in profit; 1935: losses of six million; 1937: profits of two million; 1938: profits of eight million. On the successes and failures of the SBM in relation to competing resorts in the 1930s, see Fielding, 128-130. 489 I discuss such Monegasque-SBM/Grimaldi tensions in Chapter One. raise, a change of assignment, a promotion.” 490 The casino director assured Louis that the point of hiring any new staff, regardless of nationality, was moot because his operation already suffered from a surplus of one third too many employees; the SBM staff at this time was one third Monegasque. 491 With tensions rising, Léon used interviews with the international press to engage in a war of words against his employees; in 1925, he told an American newspaper that Already they are calling me a reformer. I am going slowly for I do not wish to start a revolution in the principality of Monaco. You probably know Prince Louis has an army of only one hundred soldiers, and the employees of the casino number more than three thousand….There is a camaraderie among the old employees that approaches the proportions of banditti. But these old chefs [pit bosses] and croupiers are certain to lose. 492 The Monegasques in turn founded two newspapers through which they launched volleys at the SBM and its Jewish casino director. 493 Eugène Marquet, a local architect and President of Monaco’s National Council, a political assembly with little actual power, founded Les Échos Monegasques, a local newspaper through which he and other Monegasques voiced their anger at the foreign presence in the principality. Les Échos’s contributors were particularly angered that the French banking firm of Daniel Dreyfus had acquired a major interest in the SBM in 1925. 494 “The Israelite [the French 190 490 “Letter from Rene Leon to Prince Louis.” April 7, 1928. SBM, Folder 1928. 491 Ibid. 492 ‘Along the Riviera.’ Berkeley Daily Gazette. January 12, 1925. 493 See various issues of Tout Va and of Les Échos Monegasques, especially 1929-1930 (J-984798). 494 Camille Blanc, son of Monte Carlo’s founder, had been forced out as SBM director in 1923, when the international arms dealer Basil Zaharoff acquired a major share in the SBM and installed Léon as his director. Zaharoff sold out to the Dreyfus firm in 1925. pejorative for Jew] Daniel Drefyus has ensured the reelection [as head of the SBM] for six years of the Israelite René Léon,” wrote one unnamed contributor. “More than ever, the Monte Carlo casino remains the great Ghetto of the Littoral.” 495 Léon was referred to as “Robespierre multiplied by Marat,” who had, the paper alleged, told his “co- religionists” that though he did not think that he would hold on to power much longer, he intended to leave Monaco “with a fat wallet.” 496 The editors of les Échos Monegasques also began referring to Léon by a made-up name ‘Van den Put’ (sometimes ‘Van der Put’), which seems intended to imply a Germanic and aristocratic background; they also alleged that the casino director had taken the French name Léon to disguise his true “foreign” identity. 497 Adding fuel to the fire was the revelation in 1926 that Léon had fatally struck a thirteen-year old girl in Savoy with his automobile, for which he received only a fifteen day sentence from the French court at Besancon. 498 Some Monegasques began to talk of revolution. In 1926 the New York Times quoted an unnamed representative of the “common people” of Monaco as saying: “Blow the Casino into the sea and Monaco would be a better place for all.” 499 An anonymously-authored poster, plastered across several Rivera resorts during the night of June 6 or 7, 1928 offers an example of the anger towards foreign workers, as well towards the SBM and Léon: 191 495 Les Échos Monegasques, April 27, 1929. 496 Les Échos Monegasques, May 3, 1929. 497 Les Échos Monegasques, February 16, 1929and May 3, 1929. 498 Citizens Open War on Monte Carlo Casino, Starting a Paper to Expose Gambling Evils New York Times (1923-Current file); Apr 7, 1926; 499 Citizens Open War on Monte Carlo Casino, Starting a Paper to Expose Gambling Evils New York Times (1923-Current file); Apr 7, 1926; MONEGASQUES STAND UP! The most repugnant insult has just been sent to the Monegasque people, on behalf of a métèque [a pejorative akin to ‘wog‘] who has exploited us for years, [the] administrator of the House of gambling….Our freedom is not made to be controlled by these wretched characters, these shady racketeers, from whom we shall wrest that which they owe us, the Monegasque people….It is vital, once and for all, to rid ourselves of the absentee-managers from who-knows-where, and we will succeed in cutting them down. We have had enough of this octopus with its many tentacles! Enough of this plague of invaders!....The Monegasques must be the Masters of their own land! 500 As these and other anti-SBM posters went up in various resort towns, a Niçoise security official worked with the SBM and the head of Monaco’s security forces, a M. Michel, to amass evidence regarding potential subversives. 501 In response, Les Échos Monegasques reported on Michel’s own movements in their pages. 502 The SBM could not keep the matter intra muros for very long. By August of 1928 the international press had picked up on the story, reporting the “revolutionary agitation” that was likely to be even more widespread than was apparent on the surface, “since several thousand employees of the casino dare not join for fear of losing their positions.” 503 The situation grew dire in the winter of 1928, with the resignation of all twenty-one members of Monaco’s National Council in protest over the SBM’s failure to provide adequate water, electricity, and sanitation services. The resigned Council called for increased constitutional privileges and even complained that the SBM had not sufficiently promoted the resort to foreigners, causing local tradesmen who depended 192 500 SBM, Folder 1928, subfolder ‘Crise Monegasque’ 501 “Letter from M. Duchamp to ‘Mon Capitain.” June 5, 1928. SBM, Folder 1928 and “Police Intelligence.” June 10, 1928. SBM, Folder 1928. 502 Les Échos Monegasques, February 2, 1929. 503 “Monaco Sees Danger Of Internal Trouble.” The Washington Post, August 12, 1928. on the tourist trade to fear bankruptcy. The resignation of the National Council attracted a great deal of international press coverage, though foreign journalists were largely hesitant to sympathize with the political demands of a population that paid no income taxes. 504 Prince Louis, however, worried about the negative publicity and attempted to broker a compromise; from his chateau in the north of France (Louis and his predecessors spent the majority of their time in their French estates) he issued a proclamation that traded on Monegasque worries about their international reputation and the negative effects that this uprising would have on tourism. “Already the events of recent weeks have been greatly exaggerated and bruited abroad,” the prince wrote, “and it is time we put an end to these regrettable rumours. On the eve of the season most essential to Monaco’s prosperity, Prince Louis calls the people of Monaco, in the name of and by the affection they hold for their country to an appreciation of their sane and essential duties.” 505 Louis’ fear-mongering failed to quell the Monegasque unrest. On March 24, 1929, the resigned members the National Council called a “General Assembly of the 193 504 “Monaco Parliament Resigns in a Body.” The New York Times, December 16, 1928. “Monacans [sic] Seeking Rights From Prince.” New York Times, December 23, 1928; “Monte Carlo Ends Tempest in Teapot.” New York Times, December 23, 1928; “Six Picked to Solve Monte Carlo Crisis.” New York Times, December 27, 1928; “A Prince at Loggerheads with his Subjects.” Manchester Guardian, December 28, 1928; “Ask Brighter Lights to Lure our Rich.” New York Times, December 30, 1928; “Monte Carlo is Shaken by Wind of Change.” New York Times; December 30, 1928; “Monaco Ignores Return of Prince.” New York Times, January 2, 1929; “Prince of Monaco.” The Manchester Guardian, March 19, 1929. 505 As quoted in “Monte Carlo Calm Restored by Prince.” The New York Times, Dec 18, 1928. Monegasque People.” 506 Eugène Marquet gave a vitriolic speech, delivered in the local Monegasque dialect, which was later translated into French in les Échos Monegasques “for the benefit of our foreign friends and for Prince Peter [assumedly referring to Pierre by the English version of his name, and intended as an insult] who has not been able to take the time to familiarize himself with our language.” 507 According to the editors of les Échos Monegasques, shouts of “To the Palace!” were heard as anger mounted during the General Assembly. 508 The Assembly broke and six hundred Monegasques, on foot, “in rows of four, led by President Marquet and the seven delegates,” descended onto the Rue Grimaldi. 509 The Rue Grimaldi, then and now one of the principality’s busiest streets and retail centers, begins at the Quai des États-Unis, where it forks with the Rue Albert Premier. The protest thus began some fifty feet from what would soon serve as the starting line of the Monaco Grand Prix. While the Grand Prix would take drivers in a north-westerly route towards the casino, the protestors headed in the opposite direction, proceeding south-east towards 194 506 My description of the events of March 24, 1929 and its aftermath is based on information gathered from various contemporary news reports, including “3-Hour ‘Revolution’ Stirs Monte Carlo,” New York Times. March 25, 1929. “Riot in Monte Carlo,” Manchester Guardian. March 25, 1929; “Revolting Populace Storms Prince of Monaco's Palace,” Washington Post. March 25, 1929. “The Crisis Over in Monaco,” London Times. April 3, 1929. “A New ‘Dictator’,” Manchester Guardian, March 30, 1929. Peace in Monaco.” London Times, April 9, 1929; “Monte Carlo, Bereft Of Its Rich Gamblers, Mourns "Great Days."” The Washington Post, May 5, 1929; “Monaco and its Crisis.” The Observer, April 7, 1929; “Monte Carlo Earnings Decreased.” The Wall Street Journal, May 4, 1929. A lengthy description of the day’s events in les Échos Monegasques on March 29, 1929 was especially useful, though I have approached this account with caution given the director involvement in the events of those who produced this description. The nominal purpose the general assembly was to discuss the issue of Prince Pierre having refused to meet with a delegation of Monegasques who wished to present his father-in-law with their demands that he reaffirm his commitment to Monaco’s constitution, granted in 1910. 507 Les Échos Monegasques on March 29, 1929. 508 Ibid. 509 Ibid. the Grimaldi palace. As they reached the police station in la Condamine, where Rue Grimaldi meets the Avenue de la Porte-Neuve, leading to the palace, they were met by roughly two dozen policemen who attempted to block their passage. The “cortege” (so described in Les Échos Monegasques) tried to press on unsuccessfully. 510 Marquet, in an exchange of words with M. Michel, reportedly said, “I am surprised to learn that we have closed the streets of Monaco to the Monegasques,” to which Michel replied that he had received orders to use force, if necessary, to halt the procession. Accounts differ over what followed; some newspapers reported that the police had ‘fired into the mob,’ while others reported that it was the protestors who had fired shots, injuring a policeman amid cries of “Vive la République Monegasque!” 511 Les Échos Monegasques contended that a police officer had fired into the air, but that there were no critical injuries. 512 All accounts agreed that approximately six hundred Monegasques eventually breached the protective cordon and entered the palace gates where an even greater police force awaited. According to Les Échos Monegasques, a police car “our Police Prefect’s lucky charm [trouvaille]” had at first blocked passage through the gates. 513 Calm was restored, and a delegation led by Marquet eventually aired their grievances to a reportedly sympathetic Prince Pierre, acting as a representative for his father-in-law. After the meeting Les Échos Monegasques reported cries of “Vive la Constitution! Vive la President Marquet! Vive le people Monegasque!” 514 195 510 Ibid. 511 See FN 155. 512 Les Échos Monegasques on March 29, 1929. 513 Ibid. 514 Les Échos Monegasques on March 29, 1929. Prince Louis agreed to address demands for constitutional reform, scheduled elections for June, and promised that a delegation would address the issues of utilities and employment of Monegasques. Marquet later told the press that the majority of Monegasques supported the royal family and were not in favor of a republic. 515 The event, which the New York Times dubbed the “3-hour ‘Revolution,” was over. Louis’s promises of reform, however, turned out to be hollow, and in 1930 he suspended Monaco’s constitution, though it was ultimately reinstated. The Grimaldi dynasty continues to rule Monaco in an absolutist manner, with little democratic participation. 516 Less than two weeks after the failed protest against foreign influence, the Grand Prix pulled the entire principality into its orbit and converted it to the cult of speed. The noise of sixteen engines, amplified by the semicircle of cliffs that makes Monaco a natural amphitheater, was likely the loudest sound most spectators had ever heard outside of wartime. 517 Crowds in the grandstands and lined along the course would have restricted a person’s ability to move about freely, while the circuit itself, passing by Monaco’s harbor, main church, central hotel, casino, and train station, restricted access to transportation, prayer, shelter, and commerce. Even those few people in Monaco who may have chosen to stay away from the race would have heard it unfolding from their 196 515 See FN 155. 516 Concerning my claims that Monaco is ruled in an absolutist manner, see FN 45. 517 Daley, Cars at Speed, 53. rooms, and, given Monaco’s restricted size, likely would have smelled the exhaust fumes as well. 518 The spectacle was inescapable; impossible to ignore. While the War had shown the devastation that could be wrought by a mix of blind nationalism and modern technology and its aftermath, with millions relocated, displaced, repatriated, had made movement of bodies into an international crisis, the Grand Prix in Monaco - which had maintained official neutrality throughout the hostilities- suggested a less worrisome means of machine-based battle, and a pleasant rather than terrifying movement of bodies. Men could win glory for their nations in their powerful machines, not by pushing up against one another, but by collectively taking possession, if only temporarily, of a “neutral” and “international” space. Territory was neither won nor lost; only circled ad infinitum. While Le Train Bleu had proposed that arrival along the Riviera was more important than the rail voyage itself, the Grand Prix turned the streets of Monaco into both the journey and the destination; the performance of the ritual as vital as its outcome. The two 1929 processions through the streets of Monaco varied in their effectiveness as they varied in purpose and form. The memory of the first in what would become an annual celebration of mobility in Monaco – which continues to attract an international array of participants, spectators, and sponsors – endures. One of the streets on which the circuit runs has been named Avenue Louis Grimaldi II, and one of the race’s most difficult turns is now known among motorsport enthusiasts as the 197 518 A New York Times article in 1958 focuses on Monegasques upset by the ‘explosive’ noise of the automobiles, as that year’s trial runs were held before dawn as the circuit could not be closed during the day so as not to interfere with business: “The noise seems to shake everything from the masts of the yachts in the harbor to the aperitifs being sipped by spectators on the terrace of the Café de Paris.” “Racing Cars’ Roar Awakens Monte Carlo Early.” Robert Daley, New York Times, May 18, 1958. “Virage Noghés.” 519 The author of a recent history of the race, endorsed by the Grimaldi palace, has suggested that the Grand Prix is “for many foreigners, the emblem of [Monaco’s] dynamism, of its modernism, of its classe Grand Luxe, and of its tremendous economic success.” 520 The other candidate for the title of event most commonly associated with Monaco is the 1956 wedding of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly, the subject of the following chapter. But as the Grand Prix is an annual rather than one-time occurrence, the race, more so than the wedding, has profoundly shaped public perceptions of the principality. By contrast, the failed demands of Monegasques seeking representation without taxation, driven by local chauvinism and hateful xenophobia, has been largely forgotten. The worker protest was no empty ritual, and that was why it was so swiftly stifled and consciously erased from memory. This movement of bodies (in this case local rather than foreign) through Monaco’s streets held a clear purpose and sought to reach a clear destination – a straight line drawn from the center of business to the seat of royal power, rather than an enclosed circle of self-regard looping unceasingly, like a snake eating its own tail. Such visible displays of labor disturbed Monaco’s idealized image by revealing the human cost behind the principality’s spectacular productions. This walking of subjects towards the palace gates to seek an audience with their Prince was almost 198 519 Chevrolet’s owners, no doubt influenced by the enduring popularity of the Monaco Grand Prix, helped to perpetuate the association of Monaco and motoring in the minds of international consumers when they released their sport coupe, the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, in 1970. 520 See, Chambert-Protat, 13. Note that the Grand Prix ran annually from 1929 to 1937, was not held again until 1948, and afterwards only ran on uninterrupted annual basis since 1955. It is undeniable that despite being run on one of the most illogical, twisting, and impractical courses in existence, the Monaco Grand Prix remains the benchmark Formula One event against which all others are measured, and an annual date on the social calendars of wealthy jetsetters. medieval in comparison with the forward-looking image of the resort that the SBM and Grimaldi wished to project. While a statue of the winner of the inaugural Grand Prix, the foreign-born William-Grover Williams, greets tourists and commuting workers as they emerge from the principality’s subterranean train station, a few dozen feet from where both the race and the protest began, there is no marker to commemorate the uprising of March 25, 1929 that started on the same site, nor is there any mention of it in any histories of the other procession through the streets of Monaco that followed so closely on its heels. 521 199 521 See FN 4 for histories of the Monaco Grand Prix. None of the local Monegasques or foreigners living or working in Monaco with whom I talked in the course of my research appeared to have any knowledge of the 1929 protest. Chapter Four The Wedding of the Century: Myth, Media, and Marriage in Monaco “Never was so much journalistic talent focused for so long on an event that in the last analysis boils down to two people uttering the words “I do.” 522 So recalled Washington Post columnist Dorothy Kilgallen in the spring of 1956, as she looked back on her recent assignment covering the wedding of Prince Rainier of Monaco and Grace Kelly. Kilgallen had been one of nearly two thousand journalists gathered in the tiny principality, at the time the largest collection of media personnel ever to have been assembled in one place. NBC had sent six correspondents to cover D-Day, but assigned nine to cover what the press dubbed ‘The Wedding of the Century.’ 523 Amid the swarm of whirring cameras and popping flashbulbs, it was an illustrator, Rowland Emett, who most astutely captured the historical significance of this moment. Introducing Emett's drawings to its readers, Life magazine, famed for its photo- journalism, explained why it had commissioned “a cartoonist” to report on the atmosphere in Monaco in the days leading up to the wedding: “The preparations could be depicted only in a medium as fantastic as the magical mood.” 524 Emett’s illustration offered a glimpse behind the curtain, as workers readied Monaco for the international 200 522 Dorothy Kilgallen, ‘Maladie Gracieuse Affects the Press,’ The Washington Post, April 20, 1956. 523 Robert Lacey, Grace (New York: Berkley, 1996), 251. 524 Rowland Emett, ‘Monaco Mania,’ Life Magazine, April 23, 1956, 66-68. media spotlight: a telephone-operator-as-Vishnu struggles to keep up with a flood of calls, while a robed friar lectures members of the press about protocol, an airplane marked presse drops pamphlets from the sky, and a photo-journalist splays himself across a roulette table. A klieg-light sun and moon-as-film-director reference the studio- system ‘constellation’ that was losing one of its brightest stars, underscoring Hollywood’s influence on the proceedings. Rainier and Kelly would seem conspicuous in their absence from the illustration, but the couple was in fact tangential to Emett’s report. Life’s “cartoonist” understood that the real story in Monaco was not the wedding, but rather its manufacturing as a newsworthy event, its careful crafting as a modern fairy tale to be consumed by global audiences. 525 Fig. 4.1. Rowland Emett, ‘Monaco Mania.’ Life Magazine, April 23, 1956. While the 1956 wedding in Monaco - broadcast to thirty million European viewers in nine countries, at the time the largest audience for a live event in the history of television - helped to mark the dawn of the age of what Daniel Boorstin, in his landmark 1961 study, The Image, would famously call the “pseudo-event,” it also represents the apotheosis of a longer history of astute media manipulation in the principality. 526 Since the founding of the Monte Carlo casino-resort in 1863, the managers of the SBM and the Grimaldi princes had skillfully harnessed the power of popular media to advance their claims that the resort catered to the most glamorous, modern, upwardly-mobile, 201 525 Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Vintage, 1992). 526 For histories of the media and of journalistic practice, see Asa Briggs and Peter Burke. Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (London: Polity, 2010); Martin Conboy, Journalism: A Critical History (London: Sage Publications, 2004); Mitchell Stephens, A History of News (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). For a study specifically focused on the media landscape of the 1950s, see Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). and cultural-savvy individuals of any given era. 527 In the early 1950s, with Monaco’s tourist-driven economy experiencing a period of steady decline, the principality’s boosters understood that only by updating their promotional strategies to suit contemporary fashions – in effect, to tell a new ‘story’ about Monaco - could they conceivably hope to regain the extraordinary levels of wealth that made the very lifestyles they mythologized possible. Prince Rainier and his advisors, bent on modernizing the principality, turned to the most powerful storytelling medium in existence: moving pictures. The televised wedding of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly, combining the dynastic pomp of European monarchism with the sleek production values of a feature-length film, would mark the culmination of a cross-class and cross-border ‘love story’ that had already been playing out for several months in the popular press, almost as though it were a serialized romance novel. 528 Scholars who have analyzed how royal rituals, such as weddings, coronations, and jubilees, function in the modern era have suggested that monarchs and state officials have treated these events primarily as displays of state power, meant to legitimize dynastic lineage while creating or codifying some form of state-based 202 527 See, for example, Francois Blanc’s manipulation of print journalists in Chapter One, and the SBM’s commissioning of color poster artists in Chapter Two. 528 Claims about unprecedented numbers in media presence and in television viewership have been made in several sources, including ‘Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco’: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, 2010) a documentary film produced under the direction France Institut National de l’audovisuel (INA) and co-produced by Arte France, Radio Svizzera di lingua Italiana, and YLE Teema, that draws on archival material from the NARA, Atelier des archives, Film Images, and the Ina. By contrast the British Broadcasting Corporation has estimated the viewership of Elizabeth’s coronation at twenty million. "On This Day: June 2, 1953: Queen Elizabeth takes coronation oath," British Broadcasting Corporation. Accessed via the BBC web site, June 2012. identity. 529 While the wedding of Rainier and Kelly indeed served to legitimize the Grimaldi reign and rally the small Monegasque population around a public ritual, the people who orchestrated the event – most specifically Prince Rainier and his advisors - were far less interested in telling the local population what it meant to be Monegasque than they were in telling global audiences that Monaco was a place where people from around the world could come, not to enjoy local Monegasque culture, but to participate in a cosmopolitan resort lifestyle. Unlike Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, intended to reassert the glory of the United Kingdom in the face of its waning global influence, the wedding in Monaco was not meant to advance any specifically political local aims, nor was it meant to display the unique contributions that Monegasque culture had to make 203 529 The best work on modern royal ritual remains Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), especially David Cannadine’s essay within that volume “The Context, Performance, and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the Invention of Tradition,” c. 1820-1977. Simon Schama has offered an interesting counterpoint to Cannadine’s claims that the British monarchy was “reinvigorated” by its displays of elaborate royal spectacle by suggesting that such displays were not effective in isolation but rather that “those monarchies that have survived into the late twentieth century have done so through a calculated combination of the ritual and the prosaic; of high ceremony and bourgeois domestication.” Simon Schama, “The Domestication of Majesty: Royal Family Portraiture, 1500-1850.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 17, No. 1, The Evidence of Art: Images and Meaning in History (Summer, 1986), pp. 155-183, 155. For studies of modern royal spectacle, see Emily Allen “Culinary Exhibition: Victorian Wedding Cakes and Royal Spectacle.” Victorian Studies , Vol. 45, No. 3 (Spring, 2003), 457-484 ; Margaret Homans, Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837-1876 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Caroline Chapman and Paul Raben, eds. Debrett's Queen Victoria's Jubilees 1887 and 1897 (London: Debrett, 1977) Frances Dimond and Roger Taylor, Crown and Camera: The Royal Family and Photography 1842-1920 (London: Penguin, 1987); Judith Williamson, “Royalty and Representation,” in Consuming Passions: The Dynamics of Popular Culture (London: Marion Boyars, 1986), 75-89. J. G. Blumler, ‘Attitudes to Monarchy: Their Structure and Development During a Ceremonial Occasion,’ Political Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 1971; Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, ‘Rituels publics à usage privé: Métamorphose télévisée d'un mariage royal’ Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales , 38e Année, No. 1 (January - February, 1983), 3-20; Luke McKernan, ‘The Modern Elixir of Life': Kinemacolor, Royalty and the Delhi Durbar,’ Film History, Vol. 21, 2009, 122-136; Marguerite Helmers, ‘Media, Discourse, and the Public Sphere: Electronic Memorials to Diana, Princess of Wales, ’College English , Vol. 63, No. 4 (Mar., 2001), 437-456. See also, Edward Shils and Michael Young, “The Meaning of Coronation,” Sociological Review vol. 1. no. 1, 1953. to the world. 530 Rather, the wedding was a celebration of a cosmopolitanism worldview, and most especially of global film culture. 531 The history of this wedding and its media reception sheds light on the cultural history of the 1950s by showing how the local boosters of what I have elsewhere called a “cosmopolitan company town” drew on the services of another locality whose industry depended on cultural mobility - Hollywood – to achieve their local goals. Scholars tracing histories of cross-border exchange during the postwar era have tended towards nationally-bounded frameworks, favoring models such as the “Americanization” of France. 532 By suggesting that Prince Rainier and his advisors consciously sought out Grace Kelly to ‘play the role’ of Princess of Monaco, thus attempting to harness the 204 530 Concerning the Coronation of Elizabeth II, see Cannadine; Shils and Young. See also, D.C Cooper, Looking Back in Anger,’ in Vernon Bognador and Robert Skidelsky (eds.), The Age of Affluence, 1951-1964 (London: Macmillan, 1970), and Leonard M. Harris, Long to Reign Over Us? (London: Kimber, 1966); Mary Wilson et al. The Queen: A Penguin Special (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977). 531 Concerning postwar film culture as globalized culture, see Vanessa R. Schwartz, It's So French!: Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007). 532 Concerning cultural relations between Europe and the United States after the Second World War (in a list that most often focuses on Franco-American relations), see Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: Americas Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Belknap, 2006); Christopher Endy, Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Harvey Levenstein, We'll Always Have Paris: American Tourists in France since 1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Brian A. McKenzie, Remaking France: Americanization, Public Diplomacy, and the Marshall Plan (New York: Berghan Books, 2008); Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Stephen Ricci (eds.), Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity 1945-95 (London: British Film Institute, 1998); Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, And Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1998); Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995); Penny M. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); Annabel Jane Wharton, Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005). For a more interactive model of Franco-American exchange, see Schwartz, It's So French! op. cit. power of postwar celebrity culture by associating their financially-struggling principality with an internationally-recognizable and trendsetting film star, this chapter instead investigates how transnational exchange functioned at a more localized and individualized level. 533 Grace Kelly, or more specifically her public persona, was offered up as one more postwar American product to be consumed, yet Monaco’s boosters were drawn to Kelly’s ability to represent global film culture as much as they were drawn to her ability to help them associate their principality with American prosperity and modernization. Yet by seeking to co-opt the Grace Kelly persona to bolster Monaco’s claims to be a cosmopolitan resort with international appeal, Rainier and his advisors infringed on American claims of ‘ownership’ of film culture, despite the inherently global aspects of film production in the postwar era and the international celebrity culture that this industry fostered. Since the founding of Monte Carlo in 1863, the SBM’s managers and the Grimaldi princes had encouraged people to believe that life in Monaco was somehow more rich and exciting than reality, that visitors to the resort would feel as though they 205 533 While it is impossible to know the particular circumstances surrounding any couple’s courtship or marriage, this chapter proceeds under the presumption that the Kelly and Rainier wedding and marriage did not evolve completely in isolation of Monaco’s economic decline or Kelly’s celebrity status. Based on my research into the functioning of the SBM and the frequent collusion between the managers of this corporation and the Princes of Monaco, I consider the actions of Rainier and his handlers as the logical extension of the kinds of strategies employed by Monaco’s boosters traced in the previous chapters. Several biographies of Grace Kelly have also implied that the courtship and marriage may have been founded on more than romantic love. I have consulted the following biographies of Kelly, approaching these sources with necessary caution: Steven Englund, Grace of Monaco: An Interpretive Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1984); Lacey; Wendy Leigh, True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008); Donald Spoto, High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly (New York: Harmony Books, 2009); James Spada, Grace Kelly: The Secret Lives of a Princess (New York: Dell, 1998); J. Randy Taborelli, Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairy Tale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier (New York: Grand Central, 2003). were fictional characters living out their individual narratives against appealing backgrounds that had been specially crafted to provide the appropriate settings for their chosen genre. A visitor to Monaco might play the intrepid explorer in the casino’s highly- themed Moorish Room or exotic gardens, or the country squire at the Pigeon Shoot, or the hero of a spy thriller or detective novel amid the demi-mondaines and cutpurses who allegedly haunted the gaming rooms. Indeed, some people began to seek out in Monaco the very things promised to them by decades of sensational Monte Carlo stories; visitors to the principality were disappointed, for instance, to find that the suicide section of the Monaco cemetery that they had read about in so many novels did not actually exist. 534 Creators of fiction continued to be drawn to Monaco precisely because it had been so heavily mediated for so many years. Because most people had only experienced the resort through works of fiction or often equally-fictive journalism, someone creating a novel or film could create an exciting universe in Monaco while still maintaining a level of believability. Popular audiences either lacked the direct experience necessary to judge the verisimilitude of such stories or they willfully suspended disbelief because they enjoyed consuming such fantastical tales. Monaco’s gambling rooms and hotels also offered plausible arenas in which strangers from different backgrounds could cross paths, and in which their fortunes could rise or fall quickly, with little need for a back story. In addition, the principality’s seemingly negligible international political status allowed storytellers to satirize a relatively 206 534 As traced in Chapter Two. powerless target while maintaining a cool distance. As one British journalist put it in 1910, “there is nothing easier in this world than to criticize Monte Carlo.” 535 David Dodge, the author of To Catch a Thief, set along the Côte d’Azur, explained why he often used Monaco as a setting for his novels: Romance is in its soil, in its air, in the stories told about it, in the wonderful lies that could only be lied about a nation the size of chicken farm ruled over by the last surviving absolute monarch in Europe....It’s Glamourville. 536 Dodge’s use of the word ‘Glamourville’ is revealing, for ‘glamour’ can describe that which is alluring and beautiful, but also a magical spell or haze in the air that causes its victims to perceive objects differently than how they truly are. 537 For Dodge’s purposes, the principality could serve as both a real place, with romance “in its soil”, and, because of its mythical standing within the popular imagination, as a dream-space in which he could insert whatever fantasy he wanted into the picture. Monaco’s image was so frequently distorted that only a few years after it began to gain prominence, a cottage industry sprung up of writers claiming to reveal Monte Carlo’s ‘true’ nature. Though the authors of works such as The Truth about Monte Carlo; Behind the Scenes at Monte Carlo; Confessions of a Croupier; and Monte Carlo Facts and Fallacies professed to be relaying the resort’s realities, these books did little more than perpetuate the most well- 207 535 “In the Paradise of Gamblers: The Truth about Monte Carlo,” The Graphic, March 12, 1910. 536 David Dodge. The Rich Man’s Guide to the Riviera (New York: Little, Brown, 1962), 90. 537 The Scots gramyre means “magic’, ‘enchantment’, or ‘spell,’ while the Ancient Greek grammárion, refers to the weight unit of ingredients used to make magic potions. worn fantasies their readers appeared to have wanted confirmed. 538 The SBM’s managers and the Grimaldi princes recognized the economic benefits of allowing journalists and producers of fiction to spin such “wonderful lies” about the resort. During Monte Carlo’s first two decades of operation François Blanc attempted to gain total control over the ways in which the principality was portrayed in popular media, and yet, as one of his successors fretted in 1882, the company was often unable to “count on the newspapers we pay any more than we can on those…whose demands we have not been able to accommodate.” 539 By the turn of the twentieth century, however, the company’s directors were operating under the belief that any publicity would be good publicity. “At first in its relations with the press,” a press agent hired by the SBM wrote in a 1901 report, “the Société had, above all, the goal of obtaining its silence. But now that we have another goal, it would be wise not to lose the benefits of publicity which have, undoubtedly, served us well.” 540 As Monaco grew in renown, aided by the proliferation of popular representations of its (in)famous casino, the SBM enjoyed steady growth in the first half of the twentieth century. 541 The company even managed to turn large profits every year between 1941 208 538 Hector Henriett, Les Coulisses de Monte-Carlo (Unknown Publisher, 1895); Paul de Ketchiva. Confessions of a Croupier (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1928) and The Devil's Playground: Behind the Scenes at Monte Carlo (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, 1930); Edward Legge, The Truth about Monte Carlo (London: 172 Strand, circa 1900); Hiram S. Maxim, Monte Carlo Facts and Fallacies (London: Grant Richards, 1904). William Le Queux’s Secrets of Monte Carlo (Unknown Publisher, 1899) is mentioned in Adolphe Smith, Monaco and Monte Carlo (London: Grant Richards, 1912), 393. 539 ‘Report from Jalivot to the Governor General.’ undated (numbered 1064), 1882. SBM, Folder 1882. 540 ‘Historique du Services Publicité.’ Undated, 1901. SBM, Folder 1901. 541 My claims concerning Monaco’s growth are based on consulting various SBM balance sheets, too numerous to list individually, contained in Folders 1900-1939, SBM Archives. I trace the wide popularity of representations of Monaco in Chapter Two. and 1945. 542 Yet by the 1950s, as France steered its economy into a period of growth that would be retroactively remembered as les trente glorieuses, Monaco was mired in financial decline. 543 The casino ended the 1940s with one of the worst years in its history, showing a seventy-five percent operating loss and a ninety percent decrease in the number of visitors, compared to pre-Second World War figures. 544 French officials kept a close eye on the situation, worried that with operating capital running low, Monegasque officials were dipping dangerously into the principality’s gold reserves. An official from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted in a 1954 report that in Monaco “a malaise has clearly set in. The prince, whose popularity is dwindling, appears preoccupied with his own pleasures and with seeking out fruitful financial arrangements, greatly upsetting his subjects and their representatives.” 545 Monaco’s decline was in large part tied to the same glamorous images of the Monte Carlo casino-resort that several generations of managers of the SBM had so carefully orchestrated to fuel its tremendous growth between over the last century. By the 1950s, some middle-class tourists were beginning to demonstrate their distaste for 209 542 Profits in 1941 were six million francs; and roughly twenty-eight million per annum in 1942, 1943, and 1944. See, Fielding, The Money Spinner, 130. For Monegasque collaboration with Vichy, see the Archives Départementales des Alpes-Maritimes (ADAM), Fonds de la préfécture: Relations Avec Monaco WW2. See also, Pierre Abramovici, Un Rocher Bien Occupé: Monaco pendant la guerre, 1939-1945 (Paris: Seuil, 2001). 543 On the subject of les trente glorieuses, see Jean Fourastié, Les Trente Glorieuses, ou la révolution invisible (Paris: Fayard, 1979). 544 These figures are from Fielding, The Money Spinner, 133 and Jackson, Inside, 183-187. A further indication of the SBM”s slump is that while the company typically paid five percent of its gross to the Monegasque treasury, plus a percentage of net profits, following the end of World War II it reduced the principality’s share of the gross to three and a half percent. 545 ‘Note de la direction Europe, 27 novembre 1954, Archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères. EU 20-5-4. As quoted in Quoted in Frédéric Laurent, Le Prince sur son rocher (Paris: Fayard, 2003) 178. the very image of quasi-aristocratic elitism and privilege that Monaco’s boosters had used for so long to lure them to the principality. As Dodge put it in his memoir of living along the Côte d’Azur in the 1950s, Monte Carlo by that time “had lost its chic. Glamourville was strictly for squares.” 546 Monaco’s legacy had now become a liability; the SBM’s managers had traded for too long on the resort’s storied past and failed to keep up with changing fashions. The American journalist Tom Wolfe, discussing the rise of Las Vegas in a 1965 essay, suggested that Monte Carlo lost out to its American imitator in the 1950s because the former remained mired in “the plush mustiness of the nineteenth-century noble lions.” 547 “In Monaco,” Wolfe suggested, “there are still Wrong Forks, Deficient Accents, Poor Tailoring, Gauche Displays, Nouveau Richness, Cultural Aridity – concepts unknown in Las Vegas.” 548 Wolfe’s arguments were somewhat off the mark, however. While Las Vegas might have been packaged as an equal-opportunity resort, gambling there was actually a highly stratified social experience; it was only that hierarchies in Las Vegas were obscured, with the high-rollers shuffled out of view in penthouse suites and private gaming rooms. 549 Although Las Vegas may not have been as ‘democratic’ a gambling environment as casino owners suggested, the management of the SBM was keenly aware of how 210 546 Dodge, The Rich Man’s Guide,100. Another American noted that the famous gambling playground appeared to be “on the point of death…a slowly expiring community of retired generals, drab gamblers and stray cats.” Geoffrey Bocca, Bikini Beach: The Wicked Riviera as it Was and Is (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1962) 148. 547 Las Vegas.” Tom Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965). 548 Ibid. 549 On the subject of Las Vegas as a ‘democratic’ space, see David G. Schwartz, Suburban Xanadu; The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond (New York: Routledge, 2003). positively tourists had responded to the particular ways in which Monaco’s American rival was operated and advertised. In 1949, the company sent its head croupier across the Atlantic on a fact-finding mission; he returned with craps tables and hired games supervisors from Reno to teach the casino staff how to deal dice. 550 An apocryphal story holds that the move to introduce craps was prompted by an SBM employee overhearing the American film star Edward G. Robinson, visiting the nearly empty casino while on break from the Cannes Film Festival, declare that “what this joint needs is a real crap game.” 551 In 1949 the SBM also promoted a new attraction that it had long considered too déclassée to introduce to the casino floor: slot machines. That same year, Prince Rainier ascended to Monaco’s throne and immediately set about on a modernizing campaign, seeking out American expertise and capital. The prince tried unsuccessfully to convince American hoteliers to build in the principality, and also failed in an attempt to arrange for two American investors to purchase a majority share in the SBM; the scheme was quashed by admonishing words from French officials, worried about Americans wielding too strong a financial influence in the principality. 552 As one of the SBM’s largest shareholders, Rainier also became engaged in a power struggle with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who between 1952 and 1953 purchased two hundred thousand shares in the SBM through various proxy buyers, a majority share. 553 Onassis’s investment in the company meant much 211 550 David G. Schwartz, Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 323. 551 Jackson, Inside, 183. 552 Laurent, Le Prince, 183-186 draws on documents from the Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to trace the exchange between French and Monegasque officials concerning this attempt to bring American investors to Monaco. 553 ‘Shipping: The Man Who Bought the Bank.’ Time Magazine, January 19, 1953 more than having a say in how the casino was run; SBM properties, including several hotels, three separate casinos, and shops and restaurants, occupied one third of Monaco’s entire territory. 554 Further compounding Rainier’s woes was the revelation in 1955 that one of the principality’s chief investment engines, the Society of Precious Metals, had gone bankrupt, leading to an embarrassing scandal. 555 Onassis, in addition to seeking return on his investment in the SBM, had a vested interest in helping Monaco maintain its sovereign and tax-free status, as he had headquartered his shipping empire in the principality. For Monaco to remain sovereign it not only had to remain financially independent; Rainier also had to produce a legitimate heir. 556 In 1955, Onassis suggested to Rainier’s confessor and chief advisor, Father Francis Tucker, an American priest whom the Prince called “the director of my conscience,” that an American film star might make an ideal bride for Rainier, hopefully resolving the issue of an heir while also bringing some much-needed media attention to Monaco and its casino-resort. 557 Rainer and his handlers were very receptive to the idea; just as centuries of royal houses had married into other dynasties to consolidate their power, so too would the Grimaldi dynasty through marriage to Hollywood “royalty” align itself with another powerful house, in this case the Hollywood studio system. Searching for an American film star, rather than a European one, linked Monaco to the 212 554 Laurent, Le Prince, 196. 555 Richard Severo, ‘Prince Rainier, Who Brought Stardom to Monaco, Dies at 81,’ New York Times, April 7, 2005. 556 As stipulated during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919: “In the event of the Crown falling vacant, especially in default of an heir whether direct or adoptive, the territory of Monaco shall form, under the protection of France, an autonomous state called the State of Monaco.” 557 “The director of my conscience,” quoted in Rosette Hargrove, ‘Prince Rainier’s Chaplain Credited with an Assist in Snaring Grace Kelly,’ The Milwaukee Journal, March 17, 1956. American client base that Rainier coveted, while also associating the faded and struggling principality with the most powerful and modern nation in the world. Yet Rainier and his advisors likely recognized that it was as a representative of global celebrity culture that a film star would prove most useful to Monaco’s tourism industry. The public responsibilities of the future Princess of Monaco would not have been expected to have been much different than those of a postwar film celebrity. Hollywood stars, with legions of followers, were often portrayed as “royalty” - John Wayne, as the “Duke,” for example - and, as the cultural historian Leo Braudy has argued, we can similarly consider actual monarchs, who are in most cases well-trained public performers, as highly accomplished actors. 558 Several sources claim that Onassis specifically suggested Marilyn Monroe to Father Tucker as a potential mate for Rainier, and that Monroe was amenable to the idea. 559 Yet Rainier and his entourage apparently did not think that Monroe exuded a sufficiently dignified public image. 560 Hollywood had another star who seemed better suited for the public responsibilities of a Grimaldi princess. Grace Kelly, who refused to 213 558 On monarchs as actors, see Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown; Fame and its History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) 315-380. 559 The Onassis-Monroe-Rainier story appears in Prince Rainier’s obituary in The Telegraph, April 7, 2005, and in Wendy Leigh’s ‘Marilyn and Jackie's 11-year itch,’ in The Observer, June 22, 2003. Peter Evans, in Nemesis: The True Story of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie O, and the Love Triangle That Brought Down the Kennedys (New York: William Morrow, 2005), claims that Onassis confirmed the story in an interview with the author. Donald Spoto’s High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly (New York: Crown Archetype, 2009) also repeats this claim. Lois Banner, a major Monroe biographer, has told me that she had also encountered this story and believed it to be true. 560 The year after the wedding in Monaco, media scholar Thomas Harris published an essay comparing the popular images of Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe. Harris traced how the stars’ respective studios carefully molded Kelly’s and Monroe’s public images to present the former as the kind of woman men would like to marry and the latter as a woman men would covet primarily as a sexual object. Thomas Harris, 'The building of popular images: Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe' in Studies in Public Communication, vol.1, (1957). include her measurements in press kits or overly expose herself on film, projected refinement and poise in person, onscreen, and in other media; she was considered highly desirable, but managed to retain a prim girl-next-door quality. Journalists suggested that Kelly, hailing from of a successful and well-regarded Main Line Philadelphia family, represented the “best” of what a privileged American upbringing could produce. 561 In her eleven films, the actress played a wife or fiancée in more than half, and in the remainder (save for Rear Window) she was chaperoned by a doting relative. 562 “With Grace,” an unnamed MGM publicist told The Chicago Tribune in 1957, “we put on a high style, a high line campaign.” 563 Perhaps this was why Kelly got away with several sexual double entendres in Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, despite the fact that the censor Joseph Breen had told the studio that he could not approve “a sex relation between Francie and Robie,” and admonished the script’s risqué wordplay. 564 Directors such as Hitchcock clearly responded to, as much as they helped to 214 561 Leo Rosten, in ‘Hollywood Manners and Morals’, Look Magazine, April 10, 1956, referred to the actress as the “symbol of beauty, breeding and poise.” 562 Gordon Gould, ‘Hollywood's Secret: Sex Symbolism,’ Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov 17, 1957. 563 Ibid. 564 “Production Code letters, May 6 and July 9, 1954, Joseph Breen to Luigi Luraschi,” To Catch a Thief Production Files, Margaret Herrick Library. Breen also worried about “the Bikini or French type bathing suit” and “undue breast exposure.” In To Catch a Thief, Kelly’s Francie Stevens wryly asks Cray Grant’s John Robie if he’d prefer “a leg or a breast” during their picnic. Hitchcock also managed to include a scene of Stevens and Robie alone in her hotel room (finally away from Kelly/Stevens’ requisite chaperoning relative), with Stevens in a low cut dress suggesting that Robie is “likely to see one of the most exquisite sites on the Riviera…I’m talking about my necklace, of course.” perpetuate, Kelly’s ‘regal’ persona. 565 The year she met Rainier, for example, Kelly played a princess – who marries for position rather than love, aided by a matchmaking friar - in Charles Vidor’s The Swan. By contrast, when Marilyn Monroe rubbed shoulders with fictional royalty onscreen, as she did in her 1957 film with Laurence Olivier, The Prince and the Showgirl, she was not granted such equal footing. Fig. 4.2. (L) Grace Kelly and Alec Guinness in a still from The Swan (MGM, 1955) and (R) Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier in their official wedding portrait, 1956. The first meeting between Kelly and Rainier was itself a staged media event. Pierre Gallante, the director of Paris Match, suggested to Kelly, returning to the Riviera in 1955 at the invitation of the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival, that a meeting between her and the Prince would provide an excellent photo opportunity. Following the encounter, Father Tucker, an Irish Catholic like Kelly, worked as a matchmaker behind the scenes, thanking the actress “for showing the Prince what an American Catholic girl can be, and for the deep impression this has left on him.” 566 In an era when a political candidate’s Catholicism could be a major talking point for his detractors, Grace Kelly was still in some ways an outsider in relation to America’s Protestant elite. Monaco, by contrast, was an almost exclusively Catholic country. While John F. Kennedy was still serving as the junior Senator of Massachusetts, Grace Kelly would by marrying Rainier 215 565 Alfred Hitchcock said that he was attracted to Kelly’s “sexual elegance” when casting To Catch a Thief; as she embodied the director’s stated preference for casting women whom, he believed, exuded a reserved but secretly smoldering sexuality. Hitchcock, in an interview with Francois Truffaut noted that he “deliberately photographed Grace Kelly ice-cold [and] kept cutting to her profile, looking classical, beautiful, and very distant.” Hitchcock contended that the most interesting women, sexually, were English and other northern European women; their exterior reserve made them much more exciting than the more overtly sexual Italian or French women. For Hitchcock, “sex should not be advertised.” François Truffaut, Hitchcock by Truffaut, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985). 566 Father Tucker’s letter quoted in J. Randy Taborelli, Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairytale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier (New York: Warner Books, 2003). become a head of state (however symbolic Rainier and his advisors had hoped that this position would be), no small feat for an American Catholic. While Rainier and his advisors incorporated Grace Kelly’s persona into the “story” they wished to craft about Monaco and its global allure, by doing so they also caused this persona to stop functioning as it had within the Hollywood studio system and its associated media outlets. During the months between the engagement announcement in January of 1956 and the ceremony in April, Rainier and his handlers often worked at cross-purposes with the Hollywood press that had been so vital in shaping the same public image that they now hoped to associate with Monaco. The two camps resembled two authors battling over how their protagonist should act. As the couple met with the press at various intervals in early 1956 it was unclear which side was more in need of the services of the other. American journalists reporting on the engagement and its handling produced relatively harsh portrayals of Monaco and its ruler, revealing broader tensions between the United States and Europe, as the former looked to take the title of leading arbiter on taste, fashion, and social relations from the latter. The media scrum surrounding the couple’s engagement announcement revealed the lack of accord between the interests of the Hollywood press, so accustomed to having access to Kelly, and the people who now sought to control her persona for their own purposes. Rainier’s advisors had planned for the Monegasque Minister of State to announce the engagement from the Grimaldi Palace, while issuing an American press release that would include a stock image of the couple. The Kelly family anticipated that the Hollywood press would not stand for such a paltry offering, and after some firm 216 words from Grace’s father to the Prince, brokered a compromise. The Minister of State announced the engagement in Monaco on the morning of January 6, 1956, while on the same day – though several hours later, due to the time difference – the Kelly family held a morning press conference in their Philadelphia home. 567 Despite the compromise, Hollywood journalists attacked the Grimaldi camp for their supposed breach of etiquette. Kendis Rochlen, writing for Los Angeles’ Mirror-News, suggested that Grace Kelly’s mother, “the socially correct wife of that Philadelphia bricklayer,” had every right to be upset at Rainer and his handlers for beating her to the announcement. 568 Mrs. Kelly may have been the simple wife of a self-made working man, the columnist implied through her choice of words, but her social skills and knowledge of etiquette trumped that of European royalty. Jack Kelly was hardly a “bricklayer,” but rather a wealthy construction magnate who had once been the Democratic nominee for mayor of Philadelphia. The Monegasques had not only pushed Mrs. Kelly out of the picture, they had broken an unwritten Hollywood rule dictating that the studios controlled their stars’ public personae. “Everybody out here knows that according to Hollywood protocol it’s the bride’s studio that makes the announcement,” Rochlen complained, clearly done sympathizing with Mrs. Kelly. 569 The negative reactions to the engagement in the American press stemmed in part from the fact that by marrying a European monarch Kelly seemed to reject the 217 567 Grace remained poised throughout the raucous conference, attended by over one hundred journalists, but Rainier was visibly upset, as reporters asked the couple how many children they would have while photographers stood on the Kelly piano to get a better angle from which to shoot. Milton Bracker, ‘Prince of Monaco to Wed Grace Kelly,’ The New York Times, January 6, 1956. 568 Kendis Rochlen, ‘Here’s Way Grace Should Have Done It’, Mirror News, January 9, 1956. 569 ibid kinds of American dreams of upward mobility that she helped to fuel as a film celebrity. 570 Kelly’s choice of spouse suggested that regardless of how successful an American man who worked for a living might become, in reality only someone with title and “old” money could ever hope to woo someone so desirable. Daily News columnist Phil Santora complained that Rainier was “not good enough” Kelly, who was “too well- bred a girl to marry the silent partner in a gambling parlor.” Santora suggested that Grace, who had “been enshrined as a sort of all-American girl who would someday marry the all-American boy and raise a crop of quarterbacks for Yale or Notre Dame,” had let down her American public. 571 Santora, using the passive verb “enshrined” to underscore that it was journalists such as himself who had helped to make her a celebrity, appears to have felt personally slighted by his subject’s Pinocchio-like rebellion. Kelly’s marriage would figuratively and literally pull her away from her American fans, as well as from columnists such as Santora who depended on film culture to make their living, and her decision thus served as a rejection of the special relationship between star and audience that this culture promoted. To offer one contrasting example of how the news of the engagement was received elsewhere in the world, the Italian press considered the betrothal a good match, as Kelly “came from a wealthy family,” and had a “rigid” Catholic upbringing. 572 La Stampa skewered Rainier on occasion, but seemed less perturbed by his associations with Monaco’s gambling 218 570 Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 510 571 Phil Santora, ‘A Prince for the Girl who Has Everything’, Daily News, January 8, 1956. 572 ‘Il principe di Monaco sposerà l'attrice americana Grace Kelly,’ La Stampa, January 6, 1956. industry than by his “shy” and “melancholy” nature; their main concern appeared to be that the prince did not seem charismatic enough to ‘merit’ such a beautiful woman. 573 Correspondents arriving in Monaco to cover the wedding in the spring of 1956 - many seeing the principality up-close for the first time - were confronted not by glamour, leisure, and beauty, but by the harsh reality of a muddled bureaucracy and an infrastructure too weak to properly meet the demands of the media influx. One American columnist derisively joked that “the chap in charge of the press is an actor, and his second in command is in real life a croupier at the gambling casino…the mention of the Associated Press, Scripps Howard, the Hearst Newspapers, or, for that matter, the London Times brings an expression of polite and frightfully interested surprise to their faces, and it is clear they are hearing these names for the first time.” 574 A Monegasque bartender recalled that the visiting journalists, who spent a great deal of time in the local bars waiting for news to develop, often “became irascible,” and there were several reports of fisticuffs among reporters. 575 Journalists may have found the assignment especially frustrating, not simply because of the lack of real news to report, but also because they expected to find a Monaco that equaled the fantasies presented to them through a century’s worth of mediation but instead saw a resort well past its prime. Though Rainier had personally taken great efforts to prepare Monaco for the influx of journalists, involving himself closely in the process of converting a local school into a modern press center, equipped with new typewriters and private phone booths, many 219 573 ‘Sul volto nitido di Grace Kelly nello scorso aprile scoprì l'amore,’ La Stampa, January 8, 1956. 574 Dorothy Kilgallen, ‘Wedding Coverage Mad Scramble,’ St. Petersburg Times, April 19, 1956. 575 As quoted in Laurent, Le Prince, 309. See also, Elisabeth Toomey, 'Cameramen Battle Monaco Police As Grace and Prince Arrive at Ball,' Washington Post, April 16, 1956. media professionals still found the press infrastructure lacking. 576 Further adding to the stress placed on those assigned to Monaco was the announcement that of the nearly two thousand journalists of them assigned to the story, only two dozen were to be allowed into the cathedral to attend the actual ceremony itself. Correspondents under pressure to produce daily items about what was essentially a non- or pseudo-event proved themselves equal to the task of fulfilling such a demand. The solution was a turn inwards, as journalists produced a bevy of news items that focused on the act of reporting on such a global media event itself. 577 As they recounted the events in Monaco, news agencies simultaneously offered commentary on their evolving practice in the face of technological advances that allowed for increasingly globally-connected reportage. A British MovieTone report featured scenes of reporters eagerly awaiting Kelly’s arrival, beginning with a close up of the many international flags at the entrance of Monaco’s press office, followed by a shot of an official interpreter, and scenes of journalists working hurriedly, conducting interviews, calling their editors, and typing up reports, as the narrator recounted how “every scrap of information was already headline news in anticipation of the big story…every detail must be duly reported.” 578 Other newsreels focused on the tasks of cameramen, featuring shots of photographers and cinematographers from different nations fighting for position; such reports typically offered several close-ups of photographers’ 220 576 Laurent, Le Prince, 308. 577 ‘Voyage to Romance,’ British MovieTone Reel, April 16, 1956, Story number: 66577 (Accessed online via British MovieTone’s digital archive, February 2012); She’s There,’ British Pathé Newsreel, April 1956; ‘Kelly-Rainier Civil Rite,’ British Pathé Newsreel, April, 1956, (Accessed online via British Pathé digital archive, February 2012). 578 See, especially, ‘Voyage to Romance’ newsreel. telephotos lenses and other specialized equipment as they waited for Kelly. 579 In these newsreels the various professionals of the new media age worked in tandem while reflecting upon one another’s roles: the film cameraman captured the magazine photographer at his work, while both were aided by the efforts of the print journalist working ‘on the ground’ conducting interviews and putting words to the story. Only as a collective, such newsreels suggested, can we media professionals provide the kinds of instantaneous ‘coverage’ from every possible angle (figuratively and literally) that you, our globally-connected audiences, now ask of us. 580 Fig. 4.3. Media professionals in Monaco, April 1956. Various stills from British MovieTone Newsreels, British Pathé Newsreels, and un-credited French and American Newsreels reproduced in Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). Reporters in Monaco understood that, as with Queen Elizabeth’s ascension three years earlier, the event would be a landmark moment in the history of media technology. 581 In the weeks leading up to the event, journalists had made much of the fact that the ceremonies were to be watched live simultaneously by so many European viewers: NBC linked Americans to this global story by adding a clock displaying Monaco time to the wall of its Radio City headquarters, which usually displayed only New York, London, and Tokyo time. A month before the wedding, The Guardian ran a feature 221 579 See, especially, ‘She’s There’ and ‘Kelly-Rainier Civil Rite’ newsreels. 580 See FN 51. 581 The European broadcast of the wedding marked the crowning achievement in the nascent Eurovision network that had debuted two years earlier. focused entirely on the B.B.C’s announcement of their broadcast schedule for the event, while the New York Times reported on A.B.C’s schedule for radio coverage. 582 As hundreds of journalists awaited her arrival, Kelly’s own voyage to Monaco, in which the so-called “Hollywood Princess” was “delivered” to her waiting Prince on European soil, marked, as the narrator of an MGM newsreel put it, “another chapter in the storybook romance." 583 On April 4, 1956, Kelly and a large entourage that included MGM’s head publicist Morgan Hudgins, boarded the SS Constitution at New York harbor to cross the ocean that physically and symbolically linked the United States and Europe. Reinforcing the historical ties of the two sister republics of the Atlantic world, the first European stop for the Constitution (the name of the ship further evoking the shared histories of these two democracies) was not in Monaco but in France. 584 The first European to officially welcome Kelly on European soil was not a Monegasque but a Frenchman, and one aligned with the international film industry: the mayor of Cannes. The town had recently rearranged its film festival’s scheduling to accommodate the wedding. 585 When Kelly finally arrived in Monaco on April 12, she was greeted by the cheers of an enormous crowd, while a band played ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and press helicopters and small planes circled overhead. The Constitution, too large to enter Monaco’s harbor, was met by Prince Rainier aboard his yacht. 222 582 ‘Prince Rainier's Wedding: B.B.C. TV Attending, The Manchester Guardian, March 29, 1956; Val Adams ‘A.B.C to Expand Video Offerings,’ The New York Times, March 6, 1956. 583 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, ‘News of the Day,’ April 17, 1956, vol. 27, no. 267, UCLA Film and TV Archive. 584 On the subject of the United States and France as sister republics, see Patrice Higonnet, Sister Republics: The Origin of French and American Republicanism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). 585 ‘Wedding to Delay Film Fete,’ New York Times, March 1, 1956; See also, Schwartz, 92. Fig. 4.4. Press conference aboard the SS Constitution. Stills from British Pathé Newsreel, April 1956. Reproduced in Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). Fig. 4.5: Crowds awaiting Kelly’s arrival in Monaco; un-credited newsreel still from ‘Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco’: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). The look and feel of the religious ceremony that provided the climax to this months-long media story owed much to the influence of Kelly’s studio, MGM, which had dispatched a crew of experts to help stage-manage the lavish event. As one of Kelly’s bridesmaids recalled, “the day, like the bride-to-be herself, was a creation brought to us through the joint production efforts of enormous willpower, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and God.” 586 The studio’s technicians oversaw a dress rehearsal days before the ceremony to ensure proper lighting and sound, while Kelly had traveled on the Constitution with a team of MGM hair and makeup staff. 587 The studio’s cameras were given prime positioning in the Cathedral of Monaco, alongside four newsreel cameras and four live television cameras. 588 The respective crews each placed an additional camera behind the priest, this equipment strategically hidden from the congregation’s view behind intricate flower arrangements. 589 Television crews had never before been permitted to film a wedding ceremony in such close-up detail; viewers would be offered a priest’s eye view of the ritual and extremely close shots of Kelly solemnly crossing herself and of the 223 586 Judith Quine, The Bridesmaids (New York: Grove Press, 1989). 587 MGM also presented Kelly with her costumes from ‘High Society’ as a sort of bridal ‘trousseau.’ 588 INA documentary, op. cit.. 589 The newsreel agencies had all signed agreements that they would not show more than two minutes worth of footage of the religious ceremony. Television crews were allowed to film continually, though there was a one minute outage when the relay experienced technical difficulties. presentation of the rings; the ‘actors’ were positioned to allow for the best angles to bring the intimate event to its international audience. MGM also lent out the use of one of its top costume designers, Helen Rose. While David Cannadine has shown how rulers don specific outfits during “royal rituals” to symbolically align themselves with the past by employing anachronistic forms of dress to enhance the “mystery and magic” of a given “performance,” in Monaco, the royal couple looked forward as much as they looked backwards through their choice of outfits. 590 Kelly’s ivory dress, made up of four hundred and fifty yards of peau de soie, taffeta, silk net, and lace, and with its enormous train, evoked a legacy of “fairy-tale” princesses; yet Rose used relatively simple lines that were quite fashion-forward for a 1956 wedding gown, thus offering an updated version of the fairytale princess. Prince Rainier’s bombastic outfit served as the counterbalance to Kelly’s modern dress. Heavily laden with medals, a sash, ostrich plumes, and a scepter, Rainier’s clothes were oddly militaristic for a Western head of state to be wearing in an era of postwar conciliation. (Monaco’s armed forces, it should be noted, numbered less than seventy men.) Rainier had designed the outfit himself, basing the design on uniforms worn by Napoleon’s marshals. Here in these two costumes, aristocratic luxury mixed with Hollywood glamour, past with future, Old World and New. Fig. 4.6. Prince Rainier and Princesse Grace’s wedding outfits. MP / Leemage, 1956. The ceremony began with Kelly entering the cathedral on the arm of her father, passing by honor guards from British, French, Italian, and American war ships, 224 590 David Canadine, "The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition', c. 1820-1977," from Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger (eds.) The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 106. representatives of Monaco’s two immediate neighbors, its fellow monarchy, and the bride’s home country; tourists and expatriates from these four nations had also long been a major presence in Monaco. 591 The ceremony was presided over by Monsignor Manella, the Papal Legate from Paris, while the Bishop of Monaco, Kelly’s parish priest from Philadelphia, and Father Tucker all looked on. Having the Parisian Legate officiate linked Monaco to Paris, while a personal blessing from Pope Pius XII, read aloud during the ceremony, suggested that the wedding somehow bore significance to the global community of Catholics. Manella conducted the ceremony in French and Latin. Showing how effortlessly she could move between worlds, Kelly delivered her vows in near flawless French, not only the language of Monaco, but one that the French state had long promoted as the universal language of culture and sophistication. 592 Fig. 4.7. Close-up of ring exchange; television broadcast still from ‘Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco’: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). Following the ceremony, the couple took a short procession through the principality in a custom-made cream and black Rolls Royce. Cannadine in his analysis of the monarchical rituals has pointed to the ways in which rulers use outdated forms of transport, such as horses and carriages, to evoke dynastic links to the past and to increase a sense of “romantic splendour.” 593 Rainier and Kelly took their promenade not in a “fairy-tale” horse-and-carriage, but in a gleaming machine that, as the art historian Erwin Panofsky has suggested about the Rolls-Royce brand in general, represented 225 591 For statistic concerning the prevalence of French, Italian, American, and British populations in Monaco, see Chapter One. 592 Concerning the “civilizing mission” and French pretensions to universalism through language, see Vanessa Schwartz, Modern France: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 593 Cannadine, 124. both the wonders of modern engineering and “twelve centuries of Anglo-Saxon preoccupations and aptitudes.” 594 The Rolls-Royce had been nominally presented to the couple as a wedding gift from the people of Monaco, but as the money for such a gift would have come directly from Monaco’s treasury, Rainier and Kelly effectively purchased the car for themselves. In Monaco, with its long legacy of motorsport, the choice of transport would have been a particularly charged one. By selecting a British luxury car, the royal couple symbolically aligned itself with Monaco’s monarchical cousin, rather than with neighbouring France or Italy, who both possessed healthy auto manufacturing industries. At the conclusion of their automobile procession around Monaco, Kelly placed a wreath at the small chapel of Sainte Devote, Monaco’s patron saint. The couple then proceeded to the harbor, where three destroyers (one American, one English, and one Italian) escorted Rainier’s yacht out to the open sea to send of the couple on their honeymoon, cruising around the Mediterranean. 595 The marital ceremony thus ended with a marital display. While state spectacles have often ended with grandiose demonstration of modern military might, the wedding in Monaco likely marks one of the few instances of the firepower being provided exclusively by foreign states. Fig. 4.8 The couple’s post-ceremony procession. MP / Leemage, 1956. 226 594 Erwin Panofsky wrote that the Rolls Royce (or more specifically its radiator) sums up “twelve centuries of Anglo-Saxon preoccupations and aptitudes: it conceals an admirable piece of engineering behind a majestic Palladian temple front; but this palladian temple front is surmounted by the wind-blown “Silver Lady” in whom art nouveau appears infused with spirit of unmitigated “Romanticism.” Erwin Panofsky, ‘The Ideological Antecedents of the Rolls-Royce Radiator.’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , Vol. 107, No. 4 (Aug. 15, 1963), 273-288 (288). 595 Laurent, Le Prince, 317. While Monaco’s leaders had strived to position the Grimaldi as one among the great and storied monarchies of Europe, not a single crowned head attended the ceremony, a collective snubbing that underscored the dynasty’s lowly reputation among its would-be monarchical allies. Queen Elizabeth sent Major-General Sir Guy Salisbury- Jones in her stead. 596 (The deposed King Farouk and the Aga Khan, both regulars at the Monte Carlo casino, did attend, however.) In equally short supply were heads of state from the major Western nations. Perhaps in recognition of how widely the event would be reported in the international media, France sent one of its most photogenic representatives, the young François Mitterrand, then serving as Minister of Justice. Italy sent a minor state undersecretary, while the United States, whose officials may have understood the primarily economic rather than political importance of the event, offered as its emissary the hotelier Conrad Hilton, a key figure in spreading America’s hospitality-industry expertise to other countries. 597 Immediately after the ceremony the footage was relayed by helicopter to a waiting jet provided by the French military which relayed the canisters to New York that evening. A French newsreel shown in the weeks after the ceremony revealed in detail how the very contents of the newsreel viewers were now enjoying had been transported out of the principality, modern military technology and modern movie technology working in synchronicity to bring a local performance to an international audience. 598 A Hearst newsreel looking back on the ceremony similarly highlighted the international 227 596 ‘To Represent the Queen at Prince's Wedding,’ The Manchester Guardian, March 31, 1956. 597 Several Hollywood figures such as Ava Gardner, Gloria Swanson, Jack Warner and publicity agent Rupert Allan attended. 598 ‘Le Mariage du Prince Rainier et de Grace Kelly,’ Newsreel from May 9 1956, INA scope of the event’s dissemination, noting how "TV stations all over Europe covered the wedding,” as the reel showed footage of crowds of viewers in Denmark watching the live ceremony. 599 A few weeks after the ceremony MGM screened its documentary of the event, which poster advertisements touted as “historic.” The couple had negotiated to grant the studio the exclusive right to produce the half-hour documentary in exchange for Kelly being allowed to break her contract. In keeping with the international nature of the production, MGM hired top French talent for the project: Jean Masson directed the documentary, assisted by a young Jacques Demy. 600 Released in America as The Wedding in Monaco and in France as Mariage à Monaco, the film bolstered Monaco’s claims to international cultural relevance; a tiny place that had managed to bring the Pope, various military forces, top directors, film stars, technicians, and a major Hollywood studio under its umbrella, if only temporarily. Fig. 4.9. Film canisters being transported out of the principality; ‘Le Mariage du Prince Rainier et de Grace Kelly,’ French newsreel, May 9 1956, INA. The wedding attracted such tremendous attention that, only days after the ceremony, some journalists began to publicly disavow the roles that they had played in perpetuating its accompanying media circus. Reporters appeared to be ashamed that they and their peers had gotten so carried away, and several of them expressed regret about having been duped into helping Rainier and his advisors achieve their obviously financially-motivated goals. Washington Post columnist George Sokolsky chided his fellow reporters for stretching the limits of truth in order to meet the overwhelming 228 599 ‘Kelly-Rainier wedding on TV - Copenhagen,’ Hearst News Reel 28.236, April 1956, UCLA Film and Television Library, Hearst Vault Material. 600 Kelly and Rainier would receive a portion of the receipts. demand for stories, suggesting that “as photographers lost cameras, and guests lost jewels, some reporters lost their sense of proportion. Some extreme statements were made by those who felt impelled to treat a sacrament as though it were an opening night in Hollywood.” 601 Audiences were equally adamant in their displeasure over the level of media overkill. Even before the ceremony took place there had been reports of French cinema audiences booing and hissing whenever a newsreel about the wedding appeared on screen. 602 ““We’ve had enough,” said one French woman interviewed about such reactions, “Miss Kelly looks charming, but we really have had too much by now.” 603 “We’ve had it up to here with ‘The Wedding of the Year!” went a line from ‘Wedding-of-the-Year Blues,’ featured in Happy Hunting, a 1956 Ethel Merman musical about a wealthy widow from Philadelphia’s Main Line who goes to Monaco to attend the Rainier-Kelly wedding while searching for a royal husband for her daughter. Whatever the motivations behind the wedding in Monaco, and however much certain people voiced their displeasure concerning its heavy mediation, the decision to broadcast the ceremony was undeniably effective in providing a much needed boost to the principality’s tourist industry. An estimated one hundred thousand tourists came to Monaco in the week leading up to the ceremony, and millions more around the globe saw the Mediterranean resort looking its most polished in the April sun. 604 “The wedding of Prince Rainier II and Miss Grace Kelly did Monte Carlo a lot of good,” wrote a British reporter looking back on the ceremony, a week later. “This old citadel of Victorian gaiety 229 601 George Sokolsky, ‘These Days: Kelly Post-Mortem,’ The Washington Post, April 21, 1956. 602 ‘Mancunian In Monaco: Rain and Yet More Rain.’ The Manchester Guardian, April 17, 1956. 603 Ibid. 604 Estimate of tourist numbers provided by Laurent, Le Prince, 312 lost the atmosphere it usually has nowadays of tired and faintly hollow splendour.” 605 If in the early 1950s Monaco’s tourism industry had suffered because it appeared to be locked in a historical embrace and because people associated it too strongly with its former “Victorian” heyday, now, through the figure of Grace Kelly, trendsetting “Belle Américaine” and symbol of modernization, global audiences might begin to think of the resort itself as modern. 606 Two years after the wedding, a record six hundred and fifty thousand visitors came to the principality and casino receipts more than doubled the previous year’s return. 607 Fig. 4.10 Meeting with President Eisenhower; un-credited American television broadcast stills from ‘Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco’: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). The revitalization of Monaco’s tourist industry was helped in large part by an influx of American tourists. 608 A few months after the wedding, in a first for a Monegasque ruler, Prince Rainier and Kelly were received at the White House (during their meeting with Eisenhower, Kelly sat closest to the President, with Rainier relegated to the outside). Three years later, Muriel Brown, a columnist for The Washington Post reported on how popular the resort had become with Americans. “Here on the English- speaking edge of France,” wrote Brown, “in a space not a whole lot bigger than Rock Creek Park, United States-tagged automobiles are stacked along the sidewalk fender to 230 605 John Gale, ‘The Mystique of Monte Carlo,’ The Observer, April 22, 1956. 606 See Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, especially her chapter, ‘La Belle Américaine,’ 15-70. See 1961 film. Kelly herself was a modernizing force in Monaco, insisting, for instance, that the SBM cease using live birds for their Pigeon Shoot, and instead use clay pigeons. 607 Fielding, The Money Spinner, 136. 608 Ibid. fender.” 609 That Brown conflated Monaco with France was not exceptional (many journalist at the time made this error) but that she referred to the principality as “English- speaking” shows how comfortable American visitors were starting to feel in Monaco now that Kelly was its princess. The journalist quoted the manager of the Hôtel de Paris as saying, concerning the influx of American tourists: “It’s been like that in Monaco ever since [the wedding]. Mooring yachts used to be the problem, now it’s finding space for all the American-sized cars.” 610 Yet, Brown, in relaying how busy Monaco’s hotels and restaurants had become since the wedding, highlighted not only the presence of “oodles of Americans,” but of wealthy visitors from all over the globe, writing: “Who’s here? Just about everybody. Former crowned heads, Italian princesses, Indian maharajahs and their ladies, and British nobility.” 611 The Washington Post columnist could not have better summed up a century’s worth of attempts by Monaco’s main stakeholders to present their resort as both open and exclusive, a place where “just about everybody” came, but where “everybody” was necessarily understood as meaning only “everybody who is wealthy or famous.” Prior to Kelly’s arrival, Monaco had only achieved the distinction of a cover story in Paris Match, France's best-selling illustrated magazine, once, in 1949 when Rainier was crowned. Between 1956 and 1985, the magazine featured a member of the 231 609 Muriel Bowen, “Life is Gay in Monte Carlo,” The Washington Post, August 23, 1959. 610 Ibid. 611 Ibid. Grimaldi family on its cover sixty nine times. 612 Asked why the magazine featured the Grimaldi family so often, the head of the news desk at Paris Match replied: “Readers need dreams and myths.” 613 But if by marrying the Prince of Monaco, Kelly symbolically fulfilled some people’s dreams of upward mobility and aristocratic leisure, she also lived out a version of one of the most-repeated narratives offered by fiction-writers and filmmakers who set their works in Monaco: that of the cross-class love affair. Several films set in Monaco, such as William Humphrey’s The Black Spider (1920), Lewis Milestone’s Garden of Eden (1928), Ernest Lubitsch’s Monte Carlo (1930), and Hanns Schwarz’s, Bomben Auf Monte Carlo (1931) concerned aristocrats and royals posing as commoners to woo working class men and women, and vice versa. These films often involved cases of mistaken identity or the temporary adoption of false airs. The protagonists of these films, often hailing from different countries, ultimately find love despite differences in class and national origin, reflective of a popular cinematic trope that the historian Steven J. Ross has identified as the “cross-class fantasy film.” 614 While such films tend to end with the lovers united, either to begin a romantic relationship or to embark on a marriage, they invariably leave unanswered the question of how these couples will manage to transcend their differences of class and national 232 612 Paris Match figures quoted in Michael Dobbs, ‘Monaco Prospers Selling Prestige and Romantic Fantasies,’ The Washington Post, April 17, 1985. The Paris Match web site offers a slide show documenting their long relationship with the Grimaldi, told through cover images from several issues. www.parismatch.com/Royal-Blog/Monaco/Photos/Match-Monaco-une-histoire/Grace-Rainier-308263/. 613 As quoted in Dobbs. 614 See Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton University Press, 1998). Erich Von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives (1922) is the anti-cross class fantasy film. Count Karamzin presents himself as a nobleman but it is ultimately revealed that he is no gentleman. origin for the duration of their relationship. For in reality, once Kelly had “married up,” she was made to disavow her former life and supposedly humbler origins; no matter how elevated her standing as a film actress may have been. Once she had become the Princess of Monaco, Kelly’s chosen vocation failed to serve the larger Monaco narrative. During the press conference for their engagement announcement, Kelly had said in response to a question about her post-marriage career plans, “I still have a contract with MGM, and I have to do two more pictures. Of course I’m going to continue with my work – I’m never going to stop acting.” 615 But Rainier at that point interjected: “I think it would be better if she did not attempt to continue in films…I have to live in Monaco, and she will live there. That wouldn’t work out…She will have enough to do as Princess. But she will not be involved in the administration of Monaco.” 616 After her marriage, despite repeated requests from directors such as Hitchcock, Kelly, an Oscar- winner in 1954, and once one of the world’s highest paid actresses, never worked in film again. 617 As Rainier and his advisors no doubt recognized, it is very difficult to play two roles at once, no matter how similar; the results tend to feel forced and make it difficult for audiences, seeing too much of the actor’s labor, to suspend disbelief and associate fully with any one character. If the Grace Kelly persona was put into the service of a larger Monaco narrative, then Kelly’s death by automobile accident on September 13, 1982 just outside of the principality provided an appropriately fictive end to her life. If in marriage Kelly had 233 615 As quoted in Spoto, 227 616 Ibid. 617 By 1954 her annual income was roughly $150,000, or $1,200,000 in today’s currency. See Jackson, Inside, 202. provided a fitting end to the comic version of the Monaco narrative, with death she provided the necessary ending for the tragic version of this same story. If Monaco’s boosters claimed that their resort was the center of a certain kind of “fast life,” then the untimely death of their Princess in a luxury automobile, charged symbol of modernity, individualism, and mobility, heightened the danger, and thus for some people the allure, of such lifestyles. That her death occurred on the Moyenne Corniche road entering Monaco, the same road in which she had driven alongside Carey Grant in the famous chase scene in To Catch a Thief (though their parts were in fact filmed in a studio rather than on location) was appropriately cinematic, and helped to bring even more attention to Monaco by feeding the public’s dark fascination with celebrity car crash culture. 618 Kelly’s death also replayed the well-known Riviera story involving the death of another celebrity, Isadora Duncan, who in 1927 accidentally strangled herself when her scarf became caught in the wheel of her car as she sped along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice – one of the earliest iterations of the celebrity automobile death. 619 Fig. 4.11. Monte Carlo vista; still from To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955) In the decades since Kelly’s death, the directors of Monaco’s tourism industry often use her image – especially in photographs from the 1950s - in their promotional materials, continuing to employ her public persona as a symbol of all that the principality 234 618 People continue to speculate and trade rumors about the exact details of Kelly’s death. See Brottman, Car Crash Culture, xvii. Kristin Ross discusses car crash culture in France, citing, for instance, the death of Albert Camus, in Fast Cars, 27. The 1927 automobile death of Isadora Duncan offered an early example of a celebrity automobile death along the Cote d’Azur. 619 See Brottman, xvi. See also, Silver, Paradise, 83. hopes to represent to the outside world. 620 In 2007 the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco launched ‘Les Années Grace Kelly: Princesse de Monaco,’ an exhibition curated by the former French cultural minister Frédéric Mitterrand, who worked closely with Prince Albert and the Grimaldi Palace, which sponsored the exhibit alongside the SBM. The exhibition then traveled to the Hotel de Ville in Paris for a sold out run. In 2010 ‘Grace Kelly: Style Icon,” organized jointly by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, again sponsored in part by the Grimaldi dynasty and the SBM, debuted in London and has since traveled to Toronto, Sao Paulo, and Bendigo, Australia. The curators of these shows have freely intermingled images, outfits, and other paraphernalia from Kelly’s roles as a film star and as a representative of the house of Grimaldi; she is shown mixing effortlessly with heads of state and international celebrities inside and outside the principality, the embodiment of the culturally-mobile individual. While these large-scale exhibits have brought images of Kelly and Monaco to mass audiences in several large cities, in Monaco itself, reminders of the cosmopolitan Princess confront visitors and locals at every turn. Today in the principality’s McDonalds restaurant, located not in Monte Carlo but in a more recently developed business center, la Condamine, where several international financial services firms are headquartered, one finds a small shrine to Kelly in the crowded area in front of the tills. Photographs of Kelly, placed alongside representations of two other icons of Monaco, the Monte Carlo casino and a Formula One race car, confront customers as they file past to order their burgers and Cokes. 235 620 See also, Henry-Jean Sauvat’s La Légende du Cinéma à Monaco (Monaco: Editions du Rocher, 2007), featuring a still from To Catch a Thief on its cover, which was produced by the principality’s local press, Editions du Rocher, and is endorsed with an introduction written by Prince Albert. Fig. 4.12. Grace Kelly ‘shrine’ at McDonald’s restaurant, Monte Carlo, 2009, by the author; and Prince Albert and an unidentified woman at the Grace Kelly exhibit in Sao Paulo, www.grimaldiforum.mc. 236 Epilogue “A sunny place for shady people.” - W. Somerset Maugham’s description of Monaco, in his memoir Strictly Personal (1941). The economy of Monaco – which produces the second highest level of Gross Domestic Profit per capita in the world despite the principality’s complete lack of arable land - now relies far more heavily on its financial services sector than it does on its gambling and tourism industries. 621 According to a recent report by the Central Intelligence Agency, Monaco, yielding six billion dollars in annual GDP, functions as “a tax haven both for individuals who have established residence and for foreign companies that have set up businesses and offices.” 622 A French government inquiry into the ties between Monaco’s banking industry and international money laundering found that there were roughly ten bank accounts for every one resident, with the bulk of these accounts held by absentees. 623 In the report stemming from the French state’s inquiry into Monaco’s ties to money laundering, the principality’s top foreign relations official was quoted as saying that in Monaco “a certain equilibrium must be respected. 237 621 Vincent Peillon and Arnaud Montebourg, Monaco et le Blanchiment: un territoire complaisant sous proctection française; Mission de l’Assemblée nationale sur la déliquance financière (Paris: Assemblée nationale / Edition 1, 2000), 39. 622 CIA World Factbook: Monaco. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ mn.html. Accessed April 2013. 623 Peillon and Montebourg, 41. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of frightening people. Launching a fiscal inquisition of dubious merit would be very badly received…because the majority of foreigners here have made their mea culpae in their countries of origin and come here in peace.” 624 Thus, while a journalist describing Monaco’s real estate market in the Wall Street Journal recently noted that tax exiles buying property in the principality do so in part because they have been attracted by the resort’s “mild Mediterranean climate, fabulous boutiques and restaurants, and the timeless, iconic allure of Princess Grace,” we must also consider how tax exiles choosing to take residency in Monaco, rather than in any other “offshore” haven, value the principality far less for its spectacular distractions than for the privacy provided by its clandestine banking industry. 625 Offshore tax evasion presents an especially insidious example of our “out of sight, out of mind” mentality about how our financial systems operate at the highest levels. As international banking has become an increasingly mystical and mystifying process, we have lost sight of how what one individual does with his or her income— say, moving it to Monaco—directly influences our own lives. As markets become increasingly interconnected, allowing vast sums of money to move about the globe in real time, there are ever more complicated schemes through which individuals can secret money away from their home nations. When all of those individual offshore accounts are considered as a whole, they present a resoundingly clear and alarming picture. All of that potentially taxable income sitting in tax havens amounts to billions— some estimates say trillions—of dollars lost from national tax pools. 626 For local 238 624 Peillon and Montebourg, 34. 625 Ruth Bloomfield, “Monaco turns a corner.” Wall Street Journal. March 7, 2013 626 See Palen et al. op cit. communities, this translates into a host of government services and programs that will not be launched because the revenue that would have funded them has been lost forever. 627 If this history of Monaco has traced how the managers of the SBM worked with the Grimaldi princes to grow the principality’s economy by trading on various forms of spectacle between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, further study is required to understand the specific ways in which the principality’s economy has more recently functioned in relation to this long legacy of trading on the power of appealing images. Monaco has spun full circle from remote and sparsely populated backwater to bustling casino-resort, and back again to an “empty” space, with hollow skyscrapers headquartering paper corporations and the mostly unused residences of an itinerant global elite. In Monaco, political and economic leaders no longer profit from drawing the world’s attention their principality but by keeping themselves and their clients largely out of sight. If Guy Debord in 1967 defined the spectacle as “capital accumulated until it becomes an image,” we might in turn understand the half-century since Debord’s critique as the period in which capital could be accumulated until it became invisible. 628 239 627 Here I paraphrase some of the language I used in my piece, “Romney’s Panama Misadventures Open Our Eyes to Offshore Tax Evasion,” The Daily Beast, July 25, 2012. 628 Guy Debord, La Société du spectacle (Paris: 1967), 24. Bibliography ARCHIVAL SOURCES MONACO Archives of the Société des Bains de Mer et du Cercle des Etrangers (SBM) Folders: 1838 – 1943 (Each folder contains all available archival data for a given year). Correspondence, Budgets, Company Statutes, Contracts, Bills of Sale/Receipts, Minutes of Shareholder Meetings, Hiring and Human Resources Documents, Security Intelligence, Operations reports, Press Clippings, Guidebooks. SBM Image Collection Folders: Casino, Café de Paris, Hôtel de Paris, Hôtels de Monaco, Sporting d’Hiver, Sporting d’Été, Monte-Carlo Beach, Opéra, Cartes Postales. Photographs, Press Clippings, Illustrations, Architectural Blueprints and Sketches, Postcards, Promotional Materials, Posters, Newspaper Advertisements, Reproductions of Paintings inside the Monte-Carlo Casino, Reproductions of Betting Chips, Stamps, Maps, Ballet, Theatrical, and Musical Programmes,. Automobile Club de Monaco Bibliothèque Louis Notari Exhibition of His Serene Highness The Prince of Monaco’s Vintage Car Collection The Museum of Stamps and Coins of Monaco The Museum of Vieux Monaco The Oceanographic Museum of Monaco The Museum of Napoleonic Souvenirs and Collections of the Historical Archives of the Palace Note: This is a museum inside the Grimaldi Palace displaying certain pieces from their archives. I was not granted access to the Archives of the Palace themselves. 240 NICE Archives Départementales des Alpes-Maritimes (ADAM) Fonds de la préfécture: Accords / Monaco; Consulats étrangers; Coupures de journaux illustrés, 1856 -1947; Coupures de presse locales: Monaco.- Administration, constitution, 1948-1960; Evacuation de la Principauté de Monaco; Dossiers individuels des étrangers expulses; Lutte contre le régime fasciste; Monaco, mouvements révolutionnaires de 1910 – 1911; Relations avec la Principauté de Monaco, 1856 – 1913; Police des Ports; Relations Avec Monaco WW2; Spectacles et Jeux; Surveillance de la presse, 1886 -1900; Surveillance de la vie politique italienne; Vie politique et économique monégasque, 1902 – 1924; 1931-1939. Fonds Virgile Barel: Monaco.- Situation des Français vivant à Monaco (1946-1964). Fonds Donadeï - Martinez – Szkolnikoff Fonds Gassin Documents isolés: Brochures publicitaires sur communes des Alpes-Maritimes et Monaco PARIS Bibliothèque nationale de France (Mitterand and Richelieu) Bibliothèque nationale de France Opéra Fonds Kochno Bibliothèque Historique de la ville de Paris (BHVP) Bibliothèque d'Apollinaire Fonds Cocteau Fonds Touring Club de France Bibliothèque Forney Forum des Images COLLEGE PARK National Archives, College Park Records of the Office of Strategic Services Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State Records of the Federal Reserve System 241 OSS Records Pertaining to Safehaven Operations and Related Matters, COI/OSS Central Files Records Relating to Resistance History Records Of The Foreign Exchange Depository Group Of The Office Of The Finance Adviser Records of the Office of Alien Property Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs CIA Select Documents of the OSS OSS Washington Secret Intelligence/Special Funds Records LOS ANGELES Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences To Catch a Thief Production Files University of California Los Angeles, Film, Television, and Theatre Archival Collection Herbert Baker Papers; Hearst Image Vault University of Southern California, Cinematic Arts Library NEW YORK Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library Rene Blum Papers Sergei Denham Papers Serge Diaghilev Papers David Libidins Papers PERIODICALS Action Française Americans on the Cote d’Azur L’Ami des arts L’Assiette au Beurre Avenir de Beaulieu The Baltimore Sun The Berkeley Daily Gazette The Chicago Tribune The Citizen News 242 The Daily News Continental Life The Daily Mail Democratie de Jura Les Échos Mondains de Monte-Carlo Les Échos Monegasques L’Éclaireur Le Figaro La Fin de Monte Carlo La Gazette des Tribunaux Le Gil Blas The Graphic The Guardian The Hartford Courant Ho He! L’Illustration Le Journal De Nice Le Journal de Monaco Littoral Mondain The Los Angeles Examiner La Saison d’été sur la Rivière The Los Angeles Times Life Magazine Look Magazine The Milwaukee Journal Mirror-News Le Magasin Pittoresque Méphisto Le Monaco The New York Times Nice-Matin L’Observateur de Nice et Monaco The Observer Le Petit Niçois Le Petit Journal La Saison Estivale La Stampa Time Magazine The Times of India The Times of London 243 Tout Va L’Universelle The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal ONLINE Fairmont Hotel Image Collection Yad Vashem (names of Holocaust Victims from Monaco) PRIMARY SOURCES ‘A.L.’, Monaco. Trucs et ruses dévoilés de la roulette à Monte-Carlo (Dijon, 1896). ‘Americanus,’ Monte-Carlo. Rules of Trente et Quarante and of Roulette (Nice: Degand, 1890). Honoré de Balzac, Le Peau de chagrin (1831). ‘Bertall’, La Vie hors de chez soi (Paris: E. Plon, 1876). Jules Bessi, Monaco et Monte-Carlo Causerie (Nice: S.C Cauvin, 1874). 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Tania Anne Woloshyn, ‘La Côte d’Azur: The terre privilégié of Invalids and Artists, c. 1860--1900.’ French Cultural Studies (Vol.20, No. 4, Nov. 2009) 383-402. Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 262 Appendix: Figures Figs. 1.1. and 1.2. Photographs of the front entrance of the Monte Carlo casino. Both images dated 1863. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ 263 Fig. 1.3. Postcard depicting the casino entrance. No credit or date provided. Author’s Collection; purchased in Parisian flea market. 264 Fig. 1.4. Illustration depicting the terraces. No artist credit, 1872. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ 265 Fig. 1.5. Lithograph of the entrance of the Monte Carlo casino and the adjacent Hôtel de Paris, circa 1865. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ 266 Fig. 1.6. Photograph of the Terrace and Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. No date or credit provided. 267 Fig. 1.7. View (from top to bottom) of the Salle Garnier, Terrace, Trains Station, and Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. No date or credit. 268 Fig. 1.8. Postcard depicting the Terrace and Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. No date or credit. Fig. 1.9. Postcard depicting the Terrace and Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. No date or credit. 269 Fig. 1.10. Postcard depicting the Pigeon Shoot. Fairmont Hotel Image Collection. Postcard dated 1901, no credit provided, but card is stamped ‘Éditeur P.S. & D. Cliché G. Delton-M.’ 270 Fig. 1.11. Architectural drawing of the Salle Garnier as viewed from the east, 1881. (Note inclusion of ‘exotic’ vegetation on the right.) SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ 271 Fig. 1.12. Architectural drawing of the Salle Garnier as viewed from the south. 1881. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ 272 Fig.1.13. Illustration of the Salle Garnier’s exterior. (Note inclusion of ‘exotic’ vegetation in bottom right.) 1897 SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Casino.’ 273 Fig. 1.14. Interior of the Salle Garnier as seen from the stage. Image accessed December 2012 via: www.faconnable.com/en/corporate/blogs/monte-carlos- omnipresent-opera-scene. 274 Fig. 2.1. Cover Image from Méphisto, March 23, 1914. Fig. 2.2. Salle Mauresque, circa 1880. Photographer Unknown. SBM Image Archives, Image Folder ‘Casino.’ 275 276 Figs. 2.3 and 2.4. Monte Carlo’s crowd-pleasing layout, with tables in the center of the gambling rooms. Untitled illustrations depicting the Salle Mauresque, circa 1878 and 1890, respectively. Artists Unknown. SBM Image Archives, Image Folder ‘Casino.’ Fig. 2.5. “Tragique Suicide de M. Andrieux à Monaco.” G. Jeanne and ‘Girard,’ Paris, 1883. 277 Fig. 2.6. The “Muse,” from The Graphic. February 6, 1886. 278 Fig. 3.1. Parking in Front of the Monte Carlo Casino, circa 1913. SBM Image Archives, Folder ‘Casino.’ 279 Fig. 3.2. Jules Alexander Grün, “Monte Carlo Motorboat Poster A,” 1904. SBM Image Collection. 280 Fig. 3.3. Jules Alexander Grün, “Monte Carlo Motorboat Poster B,” 1904. SBM Image Collection. 281 Fig. 3.4. Jules Alexander Grün, “Monte Carlo Aviation Poster,” 1910. SBM Image Collection. 282 Fig. 3.5. Elio Ximenes. “1911 Monte Carlo Rally Poster.” SBM Image Collection. 283 Fig. 3.6. Frankel Egon von Gräf und Stift arriving in Monaco from Vienna. January 23, 1911. Agence Rol. BNF. IFN- 6920205. 284 Fig. 3.7. Two photographs from 1936 depicting a table game in Monte Carlo that appears to be a modified version of roulette, using model airplanes, rather than slots and a ball, to represent numbers. SBM Image Collection. I have been unable to discover any other data pertaining to this “jet-roulette.” 285 Fig. 3.8. Henri Matisse, View from Inside an Automobile, Painted in Antibes, 1925. Private Collection. Fig. 3.9. Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Mediterranean, 1927. Association des Amis de Jacques-Henri Lartigue. Ministère de la Culture-France. 286 Fig. 3.10. Francis Poulenc, “Photograph of the Picassos in front of the Monte Carlo Casino.” 1923. BNF. IFN-55006307. 287 Fig. 3.11. Scene from Le Train Bleu. 1924. BNF. Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, album Kochno. 288 Fig. 3.12. Photograph of Lydia Sokolova (Perlouse); Anton Dolin (Beau Gosse); Bronislava Nijinska (Tennis Champion); Léon Woizikovsky (The Golfer), 1924. BNF. Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, album Kochno. 289 Fig. 3.13. Photograph of Pablo Picasso’s Le Train Bleu Curtain at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Getty Images, 2010. 290 Fig.3.14. Photographs of the Monte Carlo Beach Hotel. SBM Image Collection. Folder ‘Hotels’. Undated. 291 Fig. 3.15. ‘Sem’ (Georges Gourat) “Monte Carlo Beach: Le Paradis Retrouvé,” 1932. SBM Image Collection. 292 Fig. 3.16. The 1929 Monaco Grand Prix Circuit. Archives of the Automobile Club de Monaco. 293 Fig. 3.17. Drivers passing by the harbor, 1929. Archives of the Automobile Club de Monaco. Fig. 3.18. The Church of Sainte Devote with Gitanes Banner. Agence DPPI. No Date 294 . Fig. 3.19. Drivers in the 1932 Monaco Grand Prix, turning with train station out of frame on left. Agence Meurisse, 1932. BNF. MEU 85924 A-93453 A. Fig. 3.20. Starting / Finish Line of Monaco Grand Prix, 1930. Agence Meurisse, 1930. BNF. MEU 71650 A-78585 A. 295 Fig. 3.21. Driver passing by the Monte Carlo Casino in the 1930 Monaco Grand Prix. Agence Meurisse, 1930. MEU 85924 A-93453 A. 296 Fig. 3.22. Driver finishing the 1932 Monaco Grand Prix de Monte-Carlo. Agence Meurisse. 1932. BNF. MEU 85924 A-93453 A. 297 Fig. 3.23. Poster for 1929 Grand Prix. Artist Unknown. SBM Image Collection. 298 Fig. 3.24. Géo Ham, Monaco Grand Prix 1933. Imprimerie Monégasque, 1933. The driver appears to be passing through the tunnel beneath the Tir aux Pigeons. 299 Fig. 3.25. Géo Ham, Monaco Grand Prix 1934. Imprimerie Monégasque, 1934. The Monte Carlo casino features in the background. 300 Fig. 3.26. Géo Ham, Monaco Grand Prix 1935-1937. Imprimerie Monégasque. 301 Fig. 4.1. Rowland Emett, ‘Monaco Mania.’ Life Magazine, April 23, 1956. 302 Fig. 4.2. (L) Grace Kelly and Alec Guinness in a still from The Swan (MGM, 1955) and (R) Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier in their official wedding portrait, 1956. 303 304 Fig. 4.3. Media professionals in Monaco, April 1956. Various stills from British MovieTone Newsreels, British Pathé Newsreels, and un-credited French and American Newsreels reproduced in Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). 305 Fig. 4.4. Press conference aboard the SS Constitution. Stills from British Pathé Newsreel, April 1956. Reproduced in Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). 306 Fig. 4.5: Crowds awaiting Kelly’s arrival in Monaco; un-credited newsreel still from ‘Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco’: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). 307 Fig. 4.6. Prince Rainier and Princesse Grace’s wedding outfits. MP / Leemage, 1956. 308 Fig. 4.7. Close-up of ring exchange; television broadcast still from ‘Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco’: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). 309 Fig. 4.8. The couple’s post-ceremony procession. MP / Leemage, 1956. 310 Fig. 4.9. Film canisters being transported out of the principality; ‘Le Mariage du Prince Rainier et de Grace Kelly,’ French newsreel, May 9 1956, INA. Fig. 4.10. Meeting with President Eisenhower; un-credited American television broadcast stills from ‘Mariage de Grace Kelly avec Rainier de Monaco’: Mystères d’archives (Serge Viallet, INA, 2010). 311 Fig. 4.11. Monte Carlo vista; still from To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955). 312 313 Fig. 4.12. Grace Kelly ‘shrine’ at McDonald’s restaurant, Monte Carlo, 2009, by the author; and Prince Albert and an unidentified woman at the Grace Kelly exhibit in Sao Paulo, www.grimaldiforum.mc. 314

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation examines the transformation of Monaco from an isolated and nearly bankrupt principality into a nexus of international recreation and investment in the period spanning the legalization of gambling in the principality in 1855 and the wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier just over a century later, in 1956. This study analyzes Monaco's institutions, built environment, social life, and media representations to trace the connections between the international capital that circulated in its Monte Carlo casino-resort and the subsequent culture of spectacle that emerged throughout the principality. While considering how Monaco and its Monte Carlo casino-resort functioned as a node within broader networks of international capitalism, this dissertation is primarily concerned with the ways in which the principality and its resort were built, operated, and advertised as a nexus of cosmopolitan sociability. The history of Monaco reminds us that while the modern era saw the vast swath of humanity placed under the control of some form of national power structure, the same forces that led to the creation of modern nation-states also paved the way for the emergence of territories that profited by allowing people to escape political, economic, and legal control in ways that they never had before.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Braude, Mark (author)

Core Title Spinning wheels: cosmopolitanism, mobility, and media in Monaco, 1855-1956

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Publication Date 07/02/2015

Defense Date 05/15/2013

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Gambling,Monaco,Monte Carlo,OAI-PMH Harvest,transnational,Urban,visual culture

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Advisor Schwartz, Vanessa R. (committee chair), Accampo, Elinor A. (committee member), Ethington, Philip J. (committee member), Troy, Nancy J. (committee member)

Creator Email braude@usc.edu,mark@markbraude.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-284050

Unique identifier UC11293534

Identifier etd-BraudeMark-1728.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-284050 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-BraudeMark-1728.pdf

Dmrecord 284050

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Braude, Mark

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA