Monday, October 29, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Thirty-Six

LEGENDARY SIN CITIES
A Canadian Broadcast Corporation documentary, summary from the CBC website

Of all the remarkable events of this century perhaps the most fascinating has been the spontaneous growth, flowering and then decay of a handful of great cities. These cities were places where art, culture and political liberties co-mingled with corruption, brutality and decadence. Everything and just about anyone could be bought and sold. The immigrant would struggle beside the artist. Gamblers, thieves and prostitutes co-habited with soul-savers, the rich and the powerful.

The exhilarating combination of the seamy with the sublime made these places a magnet for all the lost souls and refugees of the world. Pushing the limits of tolerance and freedom, they defined the social, political and sexual culture of the 20 th century. Their names ring out: Paris of the ‘20s, Berlin of the ‘20s and ‘30s and Shanghai of the ‘30s. In the period between the wars, these were the LEGENDARY SIN CITIES of the world.

Contemporary footage mixed with rare and richly evocative archival films, stock shots and stills give resonance to the stories of an extraordinary cast of characters: novelists and artists, musicians and journalists, rogues and sinners. Added to the mix are excerpts from feature films, married with the music of those remarkable times. What results is a richly drawn portrait of a time and place that helped define our century.

--

PARIS: THE CRAZY YEARS

As Paris emerged from the hardship of the Great War, a wave of hedonism swept through the city. In the wake of deprivation, decadence flourished as Paris once again became the centre of modernity and creativity.

The French call the interwar years “Les annees folles”, the crazy years, and for those who could afford it, it was indeed a wild party. Censorship was minimal, women’s bare breasts were an accepted part of an evening’s entertainment and brothels were legal. The American dollar was much stronger than the Franc, and American expatriates indulged in all that the city had to offer. Back home prohibition and narrow mindedness reigned, but in Paris, champagne and ideas flowed.

Kiki, of Montparnasse (also photographed above)

Some of the greatest artistic collaborations of the century fermented in Paris. It was in a Parisian café that the surrealist photographer Man Ray, met his muse, Kiki of Montparnasse. Here Ernest Hemmingway boxed with Morley Callaghan and F.Scott Fitzgerald kept the time. Across the Seine in Montmartre, Cole Porter would stay up all night at Bricktop’s nightclub and wake up to compose some of his greatest tunes.

While the legitimate arts thrived, so too did the city’s seedy underbelly. It was here that pornographic films and electronic vibrators emerged and student parties turned into marathon orgies. The Grand Guignol theatre walked the line between art and pornography nightly with its feigned mutilations, graphic sex scenes, and private balcony with a double bed.

Foreigners in Paris found a new tolerance for lifestyles that were taboo at home. From the rampant libido of Natalie Barney to the more staid partnerships exemplified by Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, lesbians were chic in Paris. Male homosexuality was more covert but sympathetic friends and casual partnerships were easy to find.

Jazz legend Cole Porter moved to Paris where he hosted lavish parties and explored his bi-sexuality.

The soundtrack to “les annees folles” was unquestionably the syncopated import from Harlem: jazz. Paris had a long of tradition of welcoming foreign musicians, and jazz clubs sprang up in the Montmartre district. When Josephine Baker debuted on a Parisian stage, carried in by a half-naked black man, she sent a message across the city, black was beautiful. She became an instant celebrity and a potent sex symbol, all before her 20th birthday.

As the 1920’s came to a close, the staggering numbers of boisterous tourists in search of booze and entertainment began to enrage the French. But it was not the growing animosity towards foreigners that finally ended the great migration. As Black Tuesday toppled the stock market in October 1929, the stream of money that had supported the Americans abroad ran dry. For those who stayed, Paris remained, as Hemmingway described, “A Moveable Feast”, but it became less exuberant, less exciting, perhaps even less sinful.

Josephine Baker became a huge star after she performed an erotic dance, ‘the danse sauvage’ on stage. A teenager from St. Louis she transformed herself into a symbol of liberation and sex.  “She devoured men like crazy. She had lots of lovers. The French like to wink at that but she flaunted it and slept with men of the best circles of society as well as men in not so nice parts of society. She also slept with women.”

Many of the creative, successful women in Paris were lesbian. Their weekly salons became famous as the place to mingle with the creme de la creme of the literary and artistic worlds.  Famous lesbians like Gertrude Stein and Natalie Barney lived their lifestyle openly in Paris.

Organized by the arts students of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, the Bal of the Quatz Arts was held every spring. It was a huge party that spilled into the streets in a bacchanalian orgy of alcohol and sex.  “You were expected to go naked and very elaborated painted or otherwise decorated and things would deteriorate in the course of the evening and these turned into massive sexual encounters.”

--

BERLIN: METROPOLIS OF VICE

An Otto Dix painting of the decadent film star Anita Berber. Some called her the ‘Scarlett whore of Berlin.’

As Allied Europe recovered from the First World War, the turmoil in Germany was still raging. In the wake of defeat, extremist political groups sprang up and city streets became battle zones as the Left clashed with the Right. Out of this struggle emerged a new democratic state - The Weimar Republic.

Censorship fell with the Kaiser and in the aftermath of war, Berlin shed its conservative past to become the “Babylon of the 20’s”. On the city stages, Anita Berber flaunted her body, bisexuality and drug addictions. In the city-centre the world’s first institute for sexual science boasted the world’s biggest library on sexual matters and pornography. And at nightclubs such as the Residenz-Casino, you could send attractive patrons bottles of cocaine through pneumatic tubes.

Decadence thrived alongside desperation in post-war Berlin as inflation soared out of control. For the impoverished middle class, crow and turnip soup became luxury items but for anyone with foreign currency, the city was a never-ending party. Desperate for hard currency, Berliners catered to tourists’ every appetite, from four-course meals to mother daughter teams in family-run brothels.

But there was more to Berlin than sin. With its superb orchestras, hundreds of newspapers, theatres and cabarets, Berlin was the place for anyone with ambition, talent or hustle. It was here that Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill collaborated on The Threepenny Opera, and where Marlene Deitrich’s legs stole the show in Germany’s first talking picture, The Blue Angel.

With most of Europe still closeted, the love that dare not speak its name was shouted out all across Berlin. Homosexual artists such as W.H Auden and Christopher Isherwood flocked to this centre of sexual liberation. Isherwood later turned his experiences in Berlin into a novel, which became the stage play and movie Cabaret.

As Germany’s politics remained splintered, one of Berlin’s most famous artist, George Grosz, took special pleasure in satirizing a little known demagogue making noise in Munich - Adolf Hitler.

With its frenetic pace and insatiable libido, Berlin had been a hard nut for the Nazis to crack. The city did fall, however, partly due to the influence of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich minister of propaganda. As much as he hated the city, he understood it and used scandal, sensation and sheer brutality to bring the city into step. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the Nazis set up headquarters in the old transvestite haunt, the Eldorado, raided the institute of sexual science and started a campaign of brutality that climaxed in WWII. As the Shangrila on the Spree faded, new sin cities emerged in the East.

There were approximately 160 completely different lesbian and gay male nightclubs and lounges in Berlin.  The home of some of the most famous transvestites in the city was the Eldorado. Everybody, the hat check girls, the waitresses, the barmaids, were all men. The top female impersonators performed there.  In the thirties the Eldorado was taken over and turned into a Nazi headquarters.

Anita Berber was one of the earliest stars of German cinema and the first to dance naked onstage. Her performances were notorious for their eroticism and sexuality.  Off the stage she flaunted her bisexuality and her love of drugs and alcohol.  She died, at 29, surrounded by statues of the virgin mary and empty morphine syringes.

--

SHANGHAI: PARADISE FOR ADVENTURERS

In the Twentieth Century, a handful of cities became legendary- and for a time in the twenties and thirties, there was one place known as the wickedest city in the world- it was Shanghai.

For the Chinese, Shanghai meant openness and modernity - the Paris of Asia. For tourists, Shanghai was the whore of the East. The city became a standard port of call for adventurers from around the world and its star grew as a city of vice with everything for sale.

In this Sin City, perhaps the only elusive commodity for the Chinese was power. Shanghai had been carved up into foreign concessions after China’s defeat in the Opium wars of the 1800s and the British, with their posh clubs and colonial attitude were by far the most powerful group in the city, followed closely by the French. The foreigners brought with them their own military, courts, police and even their own architecture. Insulated as they were, the Shanghailanders built up immunity to the poverty around them, ignoring all that they saw as ugly and squalid.

Enterprise ruled Shanghai, whether legitimate or not. In this city of 4 million, there were an estimated 100,000 prostitutes plying their trade from streetwalkers to courtesans. Gangs proliferated, mostly under the control of Big Ears Du and Pock Marked Huang who doubled as gang lords and police detectives. With their ties to the French officials, they supplied the concession with opium, ran the gambling houses and inflicted severe punishments on their enemies. One gruesome punishment involved cutting every tendon of the victim’s body, including the Achilles and the tongue.

With abductions a daily occurrence, home security was a priority for both foreign and Chinese magnates. One nationality had cornered the market on protection- the White Russians. Once well-to-do pillars of Old Russia, they found themselves exiled after the revolution. The men worked as guards or chauffeurs but many of the women ended up in the entertainment industry or prostitution. For both the Europeans and the Chinese, a White Russian mistress became a common accessory.

Among the foreigners, few cut a more arresting figure than cigar-smoking journalist Emily Hahn. She traveled with her pet gibbon perched on her shoulder, lived in a renovated bordello and had affairs with Shanghai’s most fascinating men - Chinese Poet Sinmay Zau and aristocrat Sir Victor Sassoon. An acknowledged playboy, Sir Victor had revitalized the family dynasty, which had its roots in the opium trade, by building the luxurious Cathay Hotel, where he hosted the city’s most lavish costume parties.

There were many classes of prostitutes - at the top were the ‘sing-song’ girls.

The party, however, was over when in 1937, Japan invaded China. By the end of the summer, the Chinese sections of the city had turned into a lawless badlands where abductions, torture and death became commonplace. The international settlements dispersed, with women and children sent home first. As many Shanghailanders said their last goodbyes, however, another group of refugees flooded into the city - European Jews, escaping Hitler to one of the only places in the world still open to them.

The Shanghai that had flourished in this uneasy mix of Chinese and foreigners, of corruption and religious rectitude, of poets and revolutionaries was coming to an end. But it left an indelible mark: for the Chinese, Shanghai’s creative energy and political ferment was a crucible of change; for the Shanghailanders, the city became the stuff of legend.

--

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Next entry: Number One-Hundred-Thirty-Seven Previous entry: Number One-Hundred-Thirty-Five