APRIL IN A RAINY PARIS

NEVER TRUST A LOVE SONG.

People often ask  "What's the best time to come to Paris?"  Before I moved here, I would have guessed "April",  simply because the song April in Paris  is so ubiquitous.  From the first line,  it sets out those characteristics likely to appeal to a world weary of winter and bored with banality.  "April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom, holiday tables under the trees…." One could almost hear the accordion of the street musicians, smell the fresh baguettes, admire the swirl of a New Look skirt by Christian Dior…

So how is it that, earlier this week, I could look out the window at a downpour so comprehensive that even the spire of Notre Dame, barely a kilometre away, was invisible?  In the cafes at the foot of rue de l’Odéon, waiters at the Hibou and  Les Editeurs, our two largest bistros, sheltered under their awnings. Across the road, at the Comptoir, the tables outside, despite blankets folded temptingly on every chair, were empty. And “chestnuts in blossom”? I didn’t need to walk up to the Luxembourg to assure myself that the marronniers were bare.

         For a real sense of what April in Paris is really like in April, look no further than the 1952 film April in Paris, a film released that year. Its writers, Jack Rose and Melville Shavelson, obviously know the city, since they mock the whole idea of Paris as a spring holiday destination. Doris Day, a new arrival in France and eager to experience its widely advertised warmth, gaiety and romance, convinces her leading man, Claude Dauphin, to sit outside at a café, even when a waiter, teeth chattering, begs them to move inside.

How did such a misleading song ever become so popular? I had to find out from Wikipedia that it comes from an obscure 1932 Broadway show, Walk a Little Faster. The composer was Vladimir Dukelsky,  who, wisely, chose to work as “Vernon Duke”. The lyrics were by E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, responsible for Over the Rainbow  but also Lydia, the Tattooed Lady, with its catalogue of body art made memorable by Groucho Marx:  "Here is Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon/Here's Godiva but with her pyjamas on,"  not to mention "Here's Nijinsky, doing the rumba./Here's her social security number."

           Dukelsky knew Paris. He lived here for years, even wrote a ballet for Diaghilev. Why would he put his name to a song that so poorly described a city he must have known intimately?

           One story suggests it may all have been the fault of writer Dorothy Parker, a friend of lyricist Harburg.  A cynic's cynic, and a mistress of acid word-play, Parker was a poetess of the glass-half-empty persuasion. Life to her was one long disappointment, its pain assuaged by liberal applications of gin and sex.

           Parker was within earshot when Vernon Duke suggested Robert Browning's  Home Thoughts From Abroad as a theme for a song.  Was there a tune to be had from this dithyramb to the English spring, with its famous first lines  "Oh, to be in England/Now that April's there" ?        

           Through her tenth martini, darkly, Parker saw nothing appealing about England in April. The fogs, the rain, and, my dear, the people!  

           But France... that was something else. "Oh, to be in Paris," she murmured, "now that April's there." 

           And from this bitter soil a song germinated?  Isn't it pretty to think so?