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THE HOTEL ON PLACE VENDÔME LIFE, DEATH AND BETRAYAL AT THE HÔTEL RITZ IN PARIS
The Ritz Hotel has always been an international symbol of luxury and glamour, home to film stars, celebrity writers, American heiresses, risqué flappers, playboys and princes. When France fell to the Nazi Occupation in 1940, the Hôtel Ritz was ordered to be the only luxury hotel of its kind in occupied Paris - half of it home to the highest-ranking German officers; the other half home to the rich and famous civilians (and the spies among them) who stayed on in Paris during the Nazi Period.
Sacha Guitry, the Playwright/screenwriter, Serge Lifar the lithe Russian ballet-star and the drug-addled Jean Cocteau and his handsome boyfriend could be found on any given night at Coco Chanel's table in the Hôtel Ritz dining room.
The Rubenesque comic actress Beatrice Bretty and Georges Mandel's mistress would be found sharing cocktails and good times with France's most acclaimed film star known simply as 'Arletty'.
Then there was the Lost Generation - F.Scott Fitzgerald, for whom the Hôtel Ritz bar was a favourite watering hole, and Ernest Hemingway who later, along with his rogue band of "irregulars";, liberated the Hotel Ritz and many bottles of vintage wine from its cellars in the last hours of the occupation.
As the war drew to an agonizing close in the Spring of 1944, these stories all came to a dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking conclusion. Those who had passed the war in opulence at the palace hotel were, at long last, coming to terms with the consequence of luxury and celebrity. And some entered last-minute crises of conscience that would lead them to confront the inhumanity of their own actions and inactions. The result is the story of The Ritz at War - a singular season at the world class hotel, an intimate portrait of the last days of the Second World War.
Sacha Guitry, the Playwright/screenwriter, Serge Lifar the lithe Russian ballet-star and the drug-addled Jean Cocteau and his handsome boyfriend could be found on any given night at Coco Chanel's table in the Hôtel Ritz dining room.
The Rubenesque comic actress Beatrice Bretty and Georges Mandel's mistress would be found sharing cocktails and good times with France's most acclaimed film star known simply as 'Arletty'.
Then there was the Lost Generation - F.Scott Fitzgerald, for whom the Hôtel Ritz bar was a favourite watering hole, and Ernest Hemingway who later, along with his rogue band of "irregulars";, liberated the Hotel Ritz and many bottles of vintage wine from its cellars in the last hours of the occupation.
As the war drew to an agonizing close in the Spring of 1944, these stories all came to a dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking conclusion. Those who had passed the war in opulence at the palace hotel were, at long last, coming to terms with the consequence of luxury and celebrity. And some entered last-minute crises of conscience that would lead them to confront the inhumanity of their own actions and inactions. The result is the story of The Ritz at War - a singular season at the world class hotel, an intimate portrait of the last days of the Second World War.
Submitted on January 15, 2014 in By David.
