French Want More U. S. Films
The European war has heightened the French public's appetite for news of Hollywood film folk and for American films, reported the Marquise Elisa Della Felisa, French socialite-actress who was in Hollywood today on her first visit to America1.
"They look for Hollywood's brightness through their gloom" she said
The Marquise, wife of Enrico Vittorio Della Fellisa, is known abroad variously as the opera protege of the late Otto Kahn; as the intimate friend of Laval, Renault, Daladier, Herriot; as the sister-in-law of Lucian Rosengart [sic], automobile manufacturer and financier of French movies and as the "French Elsa Maxwell." Her English Is flawless, if very British.
Not a Refugee
Insisting she was "not a refugee from the war," the Frenchwoman said she "hated the suggestion of running sway."
"When I arrived In America, I expected to stay only a few weeks, but I had an accident after I arrived in New York and I’ve spent the last four months in a hospital" she explained.
Immediately on arriving here she went to the corner of Hollywood Blvd and Vine St "to taste the excitement of It” — and was disappointed.
Glamour Missing
“In Paris this corner is pictured as a maze of famous actors and actresses getting married and divorced; of producers signing contracts
pictures being made; unknowns getting breaks, a mad exciting whirl of action” she said laughingly. "Instead, I find a bank, a drug store, a department store and a vacant building on four corners with rather plain looking people milling between."
In Paris the Marquise has starred In the Opera Comique, in the Garbo role in “Grand Hotel," the Merle Oberon role In "These Three" and numerous other plays.
Her operatic career included triumphs in Paris, Vienna and Bucharest, and she was presented as a concert artist in London's Albert Hall.
"I never sing now" she said "not even in the bath. There is so much tragedy everywhere that I have no desire to sing"
- She was born in Ohio.
