Above: Vicompte Charles d'Alauzier (detail) from the frontispiece of his book Toute Nue! (Completely Naked!) Paris, Editions Mécène, 1928). The title refers not to Martha Gaiatry's lack of costume but to the naked truth: the book was an exposé of abuses in the French colonial army.
Source: Leboncoin (bookseller). Photo credit: G. L. Manuel frères.
Above: Martha Gaiatry on the cover of Eve, March 18, 1928.
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France via Gallica.
7. Paris-Cannes, 1928 (continued)
Of the five women who turned out for the start of the race the reputedly sixteen-year-old Martha Gaiatry was, in Armand Massard's word, the "highlight" of the field. Martha's "enigmatic" manager, Viscount Charles d'Alauzier, was a member of one of France's oldest aristocratic families as well as being a lieutenant in the Spahis, a regiment of light cavalry units that served in colonial North Africa. The troopers were recruited from among local Arabs and Berbers.
According to the Viscount "From the time she was four years old... [Martha] lived in her country on the backs of purebred wild horses that only know how to gallop.... and she's so light! Think of it, only 43 kilos! She's not going to wear out her horse."
But according to another report Martha's equestrian experience was much more recent and totalled only two days of learning how to sit on a horse. This mattered little to Massard and Hallaure. They were more interested in Martha's other qualifications.
Martha had already skyrocketed to fame as an exotic dancer at the Moulin Rouge, thanks largely to advance publicity organized by the Viscount and consisting of "petits annonces" and even display ads in several Paris newspapers:
"Friday evening will debut, in the Revue du Moulin-Rouge, the young hindoue dancer that Mr. Pierre Foucret has just hired. This artist performs a series of sacred dances that are both mystical and frenzied, and whose religious nature is all the more curious given that her costume is reduced to its simplest form. She speaks in a kind of dialect that only her manager can understand, which makes rehearsals particularly difficult." (L'Homme Libre)
"Mr. Pierre Foucret has just hired a young hindoue dancer, Mlle. Gaiatry, who will debut next Friday in the Revue du Moulin-Rouge, and will interpret sacred dances in the simple costume of her country." (L'Intransigeant).
Martha's "simple costume," apart from a rose or two that she wore in her hair, turned out to be no costume at all. Needless to say she was a big hit.
Martha's exotic "Hindu" origin gave her a marketing edge over the parade of topless or nude dancers that populated Paris music hall stages in the 1920s. Adding to the mystery, her inability to communicate in anything other than her strange "dialect" kept reporters from asking her questions except through the Viscount.
The Viscount was only too willing to provide picturesque details about Martha, including her violent temper – another reason for inquisitive reporters to keep their distance.
"I'll follow her to take care of her at each stopover because she's a little tigress. One time, at the Moulin Rouge where she was dancing alone on the stage, on a carpet costing 50,000 francs so as not to hurt her adorable little feet, with her only costume some 60,000 francs worth of fox tails, an electrician gently pushed her out of the way of a lowering curtain. She spun around and bing! she nearly clawed out one of his eyes. I'm afraid of the cold too. As soon as we arrive at a stopover we'll roll her up in coats and take good care of her horse."
The rules of the race allowed each rider to be followed by an attendant to help with caring for the horse or provide other assistance. Only Marie Féraud undertook the race singlehanded, without the benefit of this support.
The Viscount had ambitious plans for Martha's career. He had no intention of turning Martha into "cabaret trash." He planned "to make her a great artist, a Mistinguett, a Josephine Baker" or (oddly, given Martha's language limitations) a novelist like the Countess of Ségur.
All in all, the Viscount's arrangement with Massard and Hallaure was a marriage made in heaven, the publicity benefiting both the Paris-Cannes race and the Viscount's ambitions for Martha.