SHE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS

Spotlight

Fifty-nine years have passed since Leslie Caron debuted in An American in Paris, handpicked by that movie's star, Gene Kelly, after he spotted her as a teenager in the Ballet des Champs-Elysees. On film, she made an indelible first impression, dancing out six individual vignettes to the Gershwins' "Embraceable You" which demonstrated, respectively, the spiritual, lusty, sweet, adventurous, bookish, and merry sides of her character, Parisian pixie Lise Bouvier. In the decade to follow, as one of the last of the great MGM contract players, Caron took this graceful-French-waif template to the bank, dancing opposite Fred Astaire in the sublime Daddy Long Legs, taking on the role of Cinderella in The Glass Slipper, and playing the title roles of Lili, Gaby, Fanny, and, most celebratedly, Gigi. ("Gigi," sighed Maurice Chevalier, "what you have to look forward to, Zhee-zheel") Caron weathered the declines of both the studio system and the Hollywood musical well, transitioning into dramatic roles (such as the unwed mother-to-be at the center of the British kitchen-sink drama The L-Shaped Room) and falling in with the proto-Easy Riders, Raging Bulls crowd (Warren Beatty, Roman Polanski) in 1960s Los Angeles. Now in her 80th year, Caron is still open to working, having appeared in Lasse Hallstrom's Chocolat in 2000 and winning an Emmy for her surprising 2006 guest appearance as a rape victim on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Alas, one thing you can no longer do is crash at Leslie's place: she recently sold the celebrated gastro-hotel she ran for years out of a converted centuries-old warehouse in Burgundy, L'Auberge la Lucarne aux Chouettes (loosely translated as the Owl's Nest).

DAVID KAMP