Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione
110 Rue Amelot, 75011 Paris, France

Built in 1852 by architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff, Paris’ Cirque d’Hiver was opened by Emperor Napoleon III on 11th December 1852 as the Cirque Napoléon. The distinctive icosagon landmark has hosted equestrian shows, acrobatics, and later cinema and concerts over the years. During the 1960s the Cirque d’Hiver was the home to the annual Gala de l’Union des Artistes, a high-profile charity gala featuring major French actors and artists, including Josephine Baker, Brigitte Bardot, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Johnny Hallyday. Today the venue is home to the Bouglione family, an Italian circus family who specialised in wild cat acts and later wild west shows. The Cirque d’Hiver is the world’s oldest circus still in activity.

Ludmilla Hols (COMEDIENNES)
141 Rue de Crussol, 75011 Paris, France

Ludmilla Hols made her film debut in the dark, lyrical, and poetic film The Sinners in 1949. The film famously featured a cast of 28 young actresses, many of whom would later achieve great success. Although she didn’t achieve the heights of fellow cast member Juliette Gréco, the young Ludmilla Hols went on to a career playing roles in police procedural dramas, such as Allô Police, and the legendary Les cinq dernières minutes. On the stage she joined the troupe of the Théâtre Hébertot (Paris), where the critics noted her captivating and voluptuous Lucrezia, in Alexandre Métaxas’ Les Demons in 1952. Perhaps her greatest claim to fame is that she was the first actress to play Julie in Le Défunt (Théâtre de Lutèc, 1957). This darkly humorous double-hander was the Parisian stage debut of René de Obaldia, the French playwright. Obaldia would become one of the most performed French playwrights in the world, and one of the most internationally renowned. Later in her career Ludmilla Hols was a stage manager and prompter at the Comédie-Française, from 1974 until her retirement in 1994.

Read more about the film The Sinners (Au royaume des cieux) 1949 HERE

Robert Bauzemont (Poete)
26 Bd Voltaire, 75011 Paris, France

Although you won’t find the published works of Robert Bauzemont on a bookshelf near you, he was a poet at the heart of literary Paris. After WWII, Bauzemont was the literary advisor at the Le Bon Marché Librairie, where he hosted talks by writers, scholars, and artists in the elegant and spacious Bon Marché Tea Room. Since the 19th century, the department store Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche has championed the pleasure of reading, a place where people could discuss and debate the world while catching up on the latest publications. The department store is still there today, with a classy bookshop and the Rose Bakery, a tea room in the English style. During the 1950s Robert Bauzemont also worked on the radio, adapting and directing plays for Radio-Maroc.

Serge Peretti (PROFESSEURS DE DANSE)
26 Bd Voltaire, 75011 Paris, France

Considered the greatest dancer of his time, Serge Peretti was principal dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet, and the first man to receive the title of étoile. He left the Opera in 1946 to devote himself to teaching dance. From 1962 to 1970, he returned to the Opera as a professor of the principal dancers’ class. He is buried in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery nearby.

Eva Miller, c/o Gerard Mouret (CHANTEURS ET CHANTEUSES)
7 Rue du Grand Prieuré, 75011 Paris, France

Just a short distance from Cirque d’Hiver we find the official French address of starlet, singer, showgirl, and consummate circus performer Eva Miller. From a very young age, Eva was trained in circus skills by her father and brother, a film director. In the 1960s she was a specialist in American rodeo (with her lasso tricks and whips) and thrilled crowds with an extraordinary rifle shooting act. She launched her singing career in 1965 with the help of her friend Françoise Hardy, but it was short lived, with only one EP released on the Barclay label. This didn’t hold her back though, she went on to be a lead actress in B-movies, a dazzling performer in revues around the world, and was voted Miss Côte d’Azur in 1972. She will be best remembered for her cowgirl circus act under the big tops of Universal, Mundial, Americano, Williams, Bouglione, Price, Amar, Togni, and Pinder.

Olga Kostromine – DANSEUSES
4 Rue du Grand Prieuré, 75011 Paris, France

Russian-Bulgarian dancer Olga Kostromine was awarded an honorable mention at the Conservatoire in Paris, where she studied in the early 1950s. By the end of the decade she had been ‘discovered’ in Hollywood by the director of the ABC music hall, Leon Ledoux. He coupled her up with the French singer and actor Henri Génès for a variety show at the ABC theatre on Boulevard Poissonnière. She went on to play a minor role in the 1963 film Strip-tease, starring Nico and Dany Saval, but would return to dance, her first love. By the end of the 1960s Olga joined the legendary dance troupe of choreographer Milorad Mišković.

Lucien Layani (DANSEURS)
111 Bd Richard-Lenoir, 75011 Paris, France

Algerian actor Lucien Layani started his professional stage career under the direction of Geneviève Baïlac at the Centre régional d’art dramatique d’Algérie. Layani would follow Baïlac to Paris, where her Pied-Noir play La Famille Hernandez was performed at the Théâtre Gramont in 1963. He would be a recognisable face on TV and cinema screens for another 50 years. Regular readers will be pleased to know that Layani appeared in an episode of Les Cinq Dernières Minutes (episode “Les dessous des cartes“), a badge of honour for all jobbing actors in Paris.

Robert Allan – COMEDIENS
117 Bd Richard-Lenoir, 75011 Paris, France

Primarily a man of the theatre, actor Robert Allan started his career in the Le Pélikan drama troupe, under the directorship Maurice Beuchey. An early success was his performance in the lead role in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the La Comédie de Genève. Allan’s big break was in the 1952 film L’Agonie des aigles, where Noël Roquevert’s Capitaine Doguereau pierces his naked chest with a furious sabre blow.

René Fallet (Poete)
130 Bd Richard-Lenoir, 75011 Paris, France

Born in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, French writer René Fallet moved to Paris after WWII. In 1946, his debut novel Banlieue sud-est became the literary sensation of the season. Described as a slow writer (he published a book every two to three years), Fallet’s novels, short stories, poetry, and song lyrics often celebrate the themes of friendship, wine, music, and working-class Paris. Ten of Fallet’s books have been adapted for film, including Paris in August (1966), where the main character, Plantin, is played by Charles Aznavour.