The Press: Frenchmen at Work

Early one morning last week, a blonde, 25-year-old Parisienne, whose married name is Mme. Jacques Charrier and who works for the movies, was delivered of a healthy, blue-eyed, 7-lb. baby boy. Long before Nicholas Jacques Charrier entered Paris, the French press, excited beyond endurance—and reason—turned his mother's accouchement into the biggest story since the ascendancy of Charles de Gaulle.

Not since last summer, when a reporter spotted a suspicious equatorial rotundity in French Film Star Brigitte Bardot, have the French papers given her approaching term much less than millennium treatment. For a while, confronted with testy denials of her pregnancy, the papers played the story almost as placidly as they did President Eisenhower's tour and the trouble in Algeria. But by mid-December they could contain themselves no more.

Newsmen set up a melee, some 300 at full battle strength, around the Charrier apartment at 71 Avenue Paul-Doumer. Barred from audiences with the expectant mother, the reporters let their fancy roam. She was sneaking out of the back door daily in a wig (France-Dimanche). She was missing, perhaps "hiding at her grandmother's" (Paris-Presse). She was not missing (Paris-Jour).

When the expectant father was drafted by the French army, the press was equally interested—and equally confused. He landed in the infirmary with eye trouble (said Paris-Presse), with nervous trouble (said Le Figaro), with knee trouble (said he). Brigitte herself wrote a letter to Figaro deploring the "bad taste" with which it handled her husband's problem, closing her letter with "Je vous méprise [I despise you]." She changed obstetricians after the first one complained that the press would interfere with his work. One camera-laden photographer was surprised on her roof.

After the big event, the resignation of Finance Minister Antoine Pinay (see FOREIGN NEWS) was bumped into second null to make room for frantic conflicting accounts of the Bardot issue: 'Blue eyes and black hair" (Le Figaro). 'blue eyes and brown hair" (Paris-Presse), 'brown hair and yellow eyes" (Brigitte's secretary). Afterward, as the spent corps converged on the Royal Passy Café near Brigitte's home, where Papa Charrier was serving champagne, two newsmen collapsed from exhaustion and someone poured beer over their heads. With cruel disregard for the photographers who had camped on her doorstep so long, Brigitte waited two days and then handed out four pictures of herself and her son taken by an amateur.

Then, save for one or two disgruntled voices, e.g., Le Monde, which gave the birth a last-page yawn, the French press turned eagerly to the story's next chapter: full-page horoscope readings on Nicholas Jacques. "He'll be tough and aggressive" (Ici). "He'll take up art or literature" (France-Dimanche). "He'll be the first man on the moon" (Paris-Jour).