Hellé Nice

Exotic doesn’t cut it when it comes to describing  this gutsy, fun-loving, vivacious show-off of a beauty who was born to a country postman and his wife on December 15, 1900 in Aunay-sous-Auneau, about 50 miles southwest of Paris. At 16, she broke loose from her provincial shackles and invaded the capital city, where she became a dancer, then a stripper, and after that a racing driver. In the 1930s she was a star, by far the most famous woman in France, who eventually competed in over 70 top class motor races.

Few expected Hélène Delangle to amount to much as she emerged from her dull family home and hit the bright lights of Paris. She was an attractive girl, so the villagers thought malevolently that she would end up on the game; but they were wrong. Big time. OK, under the stage name Hellé Nice she danced in the capital’s music halls, graduated to a solo act with a side line of quasi-nude modelling and stripping, but then she became the well-paid partner of homosexual dancer Robert Lizet. They both cavorted bare-breasted in the scantiest of knickers before the cabaret audiences of Europe and were highly successful. Hellé, who was not above indiscreet affairs with noblemen and other rich good time Charlies, did so well at it that she was able to buy her own home and a yacht! So much for the locals’ gloomy prophecies.