Americans and the Making of the Riviera
by Michael Nelson
Summary
Led by Cole Porter in the 1920s, Americans demonstrated that the best season to visit the French Riviera was not the winter, as had been the practice, but the summer. With this shift, Americans became the dominant shapers of tourism on the Riviera in the 20th century, yet the American achievement in revolutionizing the economy of the South of France is largely unsung.
This insightful history details the American influence on the Riviera and the contributions of several individuals. It pays particular attention to such writers and artists as Edith Wharton, Gerald Murphy, Henry Clews, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, whose work drew energy from their stays in the Riviera and in turn helped to cement an idyllic image of the Riviera in the American popular consciousness.
Excerpt
Preface
I had just finished my book Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera in the year 2000 and, strolling through the Riviera seaside resort of
Juan-les-Pins, came across the Sidney Bechet square, dominated by a large statue of the American jazz musician. I walked down to the sea through a
square named after another American, Frank Jay Gould, heir to the railroad fortune, and a few yards along the front was the Franklin Roosevelt square.
Clearly I had found my next book. If the nineteenth century was the age of the British on the Riviera, the twentieth was that of the Americans. In fact the first American of note to visit the Riviera was Thomas Jefferson in the eighteenth century when he was minister in Paris. He took with him a portable copying machine, so I found a wealth of information from the copies of the letters he wrote, which are in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson edited by Julian P. Boyd and others and published by the Princeton University Press in 29 volumes to date.
Many Americans visited the Riviera in the nineteenth century, including the eccentric James Gordon Bennett Jr., founder of the Paris Herald, but only in the winter. The revolution was wrought by Cole Porter and his wife Linda in 1921 when they came in the summer. Writers like Scott Fitzgerald followed in his footsteps and his novel Tender Is the Night is one of the most important sources for life on the Riviera in the twenties. But, as I worked on my book in the villa my wife and I have in the Riviera village of Opio, I discovered many other important novels about the region by such as Willa Cather, Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway. The letters of Gerald and Sara Murphy, who were the center of American artistic life, were an important source.
My greatest find in the archives in Nice was the now yellowed Paris Chicago Tribune Riviera Supplement which James Thurber and his wife worked on in the twenties. That they made up many of the stories added to the delight.
Author's Biography
Michael Nelson, formerly general manager of Reuters, lives in London.