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by
They call her the Sex Kitten, BB, La Irresistible
and a number of other things! But they all
refer to the same person, a pouting, sensuous 24-year-old
actress, Brigitte Bardot.
In Paris and Los Angeles, in Indianapolis and
Manila, in practically every corner of the world,
people have seen or heard of the girl who has
become a national financial asset because she
brings more money into France through her
government-subsidized films than any other artist.
Curiously enough, except for her measurements,
her tantrums, and her earthy film roles, very
little is known about Brigitte. 1
Why? I found that out wheA I first attempted
to interview her in Paris a few weeks ago.
' There was no problem walking onto the set
where she was costarring with an even more
temperamental Spanish actor; he was near tears
when the director demanded a 21st retake of a
scene because he didn't get sufficiently upset when
Brigitte slammed a door in his face. After the
scene, before I even had a chance to say "Bon
jour," Brigitte had rushed past me and headed
upstairs. A thousand francs handed to an extra
showed me the way to her dressing room.
I knocked on the door, which was opened a
crack by Brigitte's stand-in. "What do you
want?" she chirped in French.
"I would like to see Mademoiselle Bardot. I am
a writer," I replied in my very best French.
That's as far as I got before the door was
slammed in my face.
Patiently I waited at the foot of the stairs for
La Bardot to make an appearance. When she did,
I approached her again.
"Pas!" she hissed as she swished past me.
Not a word more in English, French, or any
other language. .
"Pas!" she hissed again when I approached her
during intermission, and again when she finished
her day. I couldn't get another word out of her.
"And you probably won't unless I intercede for
you," insisted Raoul Levy who produced her
first big hit, "And God Created Woman" over
breakfast a few days later. After learning that
other reporters had had exactly the same diffi
culties with Brigitte, I requested his help.
Yet she gave me all the time I wanted on my
return to Paris after Levy had assured her that,
unlike some publications, Family Weekly was
interested in more than her measurements, love
affairs, and tantrums. I had told him we wanted
answers to questions that had never been
asked before.
Is Brigitte a sensitive girl? An introvert, as
claimed by some, or an extrovert, as others
insist? What is she afraid of? Can she picture
herself as a wife and mother? Has she ever
cooked anything? How does she live? What are
Peer J. Oppenheimer
her chances for marital happiness with Sascha
Distel? Did she really propose to him, as I was
told by a friend of hers?
It was a far more subdued Brigitte who amazed
me by confessing that while the world considers
her the epitome of sensuality and desirability
she thinks she's ugly.
"When I was a leetle girl," she told me, "I
wanted to become a ballet dancere. I worked
harder on eet than acteeng or anytheeng een my
life. But I feeneeshed only sevense in the onlee
nationale competitione I ever parteecipated een.
And I was a good dancere. So eet must have
been that zee other girls were prettier."
This ingenuous point of view threw some light
on a statement made by her close friend Gustavo
Rojo: "Brigitte is the most sensitive girl I know.
Full of fears and complexes. When she first started
out, Roger Vadim the director who was also her
first husband assured her the more she exposed
herself, the more footage she'd get on the screen.
Apparently she felt she had little else to offer. I
think she's wrong, but Brigitte doesn't."
Rojo had also told me that accounts of Brigitte's
"romances" had been vastly exaggerated. One such
case, he claimed, involved Brigitte and Stephen
Boyd, her costar in the film, "The Night Heaven
Fell." "Take my word for it, there was never
anything between' them!" Gustavo insisted.
Amazingly, for a girl who demands more money
per picture than any French star has ever
been able to get $300,000 is her current price
most of her worries are financial.
While Brigitte never suffered any privations,
her parents' wealth has been greatly exaggerated.
Her official biography lists her father as "a well-to-do
manufacturer." Actually, he is a chemical
engineer with sufficient income to provide his
family with necessities, but not luxuries.
Brigitte herself has long yearned to be financially
independent, "for when I can no longer be een
peectures." She has invested most of her savings
in real estate, but in spite of her colossal earnings,
she hasn't managed to put much aside because her
living expenses are fantastically high.
She occupies the two top stories of an expensive
apartment in Paris' exclusive Trocadero district,
not far from the Eiffel Tower. She employs a cook,
a maid, a chauffeur, and a male secretary. But
mostly her money goes for parties, with guests
taking advantage of her hospitality to the extent
of ordering things by phone from her house and
charging them to her. While she knows what's
going on, she has never put a stop to it.
Her whole manner of living suggests a set of
curious contradictions.
In Paris, for instance, she sometimes invites a
hundred people to her house on a moment's
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Sascha Distel, Brigitte's No. I fan,
met her at a recording session.
notice. Her other home, in San Tropez, doesn't
even have a phone, because she wants privacy.
One day she will dance the Flamenco in a night
club, barefooted and atop a bar for everyone to
watch; the next day she won't talk to anyone.
"Eet deepends how I feel," she told me. "Eef I
theenk people like me, I feel at eeze. I dance. I
seeng. Eef I theenk they laugh at me, I shot op."
Her agent Olga Orstig, Raoul Levy, and others I
talked to acknowledged that Brigitte is alter
nately an exhibitionist and an introvert. But they
don't necessarily agree that it depends on the
people around her. As her production manager
put it, "It depends entirely on her moods. In fact,
everything does. And usually the moods depend
on the picture she's in. The last time she made a
film with a Spanish background, she ate nothing
but Spanish food for a week!"
He agreed, however, that Brigitte is afraid of
people. "I know she doesn't care whether or not
they approve of her. But she's awfully sensitive
about whether or not they like her. And she'll
go out of her way to oblige at times."
Curiously, the same girl, who is so brusque
and temperamental with reporters and so self
centered and calculating with almost anyone else
that one of her directors described her as "the
egotist of the century," can make a complete
about-face with people who are of no help to her
whatever. I saw her get up and offer her chair
to an old wardrobe woman who was tired from
the heat. And I was told by a "grip" that Brigitte
had given him 20,000 francs when his wife had a
baby and he had difficulty meeting his bills. Her
only condition was that he keep it quiet. Telling it
to an American, he felt, was all right
While she may be scared of people at times,
Brigitte certainly isn't scared of anything else.
When she made "La Parisienne" with Charles
Boyer, one scene called for her to get into a fist
Family Weekly, December 28, 195S
5