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Deauville, visit of town,its stars Normandy Site Home - What's New?-Feedback - About Jack-Travel/Art Links |
NORMANDY
Deauville-Station of the stars
Pays d'Auge, Calvados, Camembert and Cider
Cote Fleurie
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Hotel Normandie |
DEAUVILLE, with two marinas, is still a smarter place and the showcase : its casino the most glittering, its hotels most grand, its restaurants and cafes most expensive. It is just back from the beach where dinner is expensively served in the pink knicker-rounded boudoir of Ciros' by immaculate, silent waiters.At night the the casino's sumptuous hallas and star-spangled chandeliers are a beacon to the hedonist moths. Check out too, the exquisite little theater, venue for weekend and summer shows, where champagne can be served at the table in the gods. The absolute chic sea resort in Normandy.
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Kirk Douglas |
When people are in Deauville, they are on parade, along the famous boardwalk, the “planches”, or cruisingthe streets in their spotless motors. Deauville became famous thanks to a film by Clause Lelouch “Un homme et une femme. Another reason for its success is the long stretched sand beach.
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Robert Mitchum in hotel Royal |
Certain people would accept to be cursed if it could make them stay a weekend in Deauville, assist
to galas and lose their money in the casino. Deauville became like a Paris
suburb, in an operetta Normandy. Evil tongues call it even the 21th
arrondissement of Paris.
The station was born 1860, under a consortium headed by the duc de Mornay and
advised by Dr.Oliffe, the British ambassador in Paris, and marshes were drained
and an entirely new town, Deauville, was put in place. After a brief decadence,
due to the retiring sae waters, the station
revives out of her ashes with the
building of the casino and two luxury hotels, the Normandy and the Royal. After WWI Deauville really explodes as holiday destination. You can’t
imagine how busy it was: all continents make rendezvous here: Slavonic princes,
Indian Rajahs, kings of American industries, “crooks and embezzlers with white
collars”, all sorts of sportsmen, movie stars, operetta Don Juans, gigolos,
parasites, professional players. A whole mixture!! André
Citroen, who had once an incredible luck at te baccara table ( in one hour time
, he had hundreds of plaques of 100,000 FF in front of him (in 1930!!) offered a
10 HP to all head croupiers, a 5 HP to the simple crouoiers, giving away
generously his gains to some clochards, religious sisters and prostitutes around
the railway station.
The Planches boardwalk, now world famous, is built in 1923 and in 1931 an
airport gives the city its international status, completed by the arrival of
railway. Despite its many financial crisises, Deauville didn't stop to attract
the world's greatest: the Begum, Shah of Iran, Faroukh, Elisabeth II and
Churchill, impressionist painters, Rubinstein and Rostropovitch. Movie stars as
Robert de Niro, Tony Curtis, Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth, Charlton Heston,
Kirk Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Roger Moore, Yves Montand etc...
Bibliography
A holiday history of France, by Ronald Hamilton (London-Hogarth press), Region Normandie, ses merveilles, ses cicatrices, by Louis Letellier (ed. Cloison, Rouen 1995, La France des petits chemins: Normandie, by J. de la Valléé (ed. Cité presse, Paris 1998), Identity of France, by Fernand Braudel (London, Fontana Press), The French, by Theodore Zeldin (New York-Random House)