In the plush, svelte satin-lined cabaret world that is found in the nation’s better hostelries patronized by the upper brackets, a most pleasant institution has blossomed out in our generation known as the chanteuse, To the top- hatted gentry and even the hourglass-shaped dowagers who foot the tab at these swank rooms, the chanteuse is supposed to represent a bit of nostalgia from the old world, a chunk of the continent imported to our shores without benefit of ocean spray.But the gents who keep book in these hotel halls of revelry know better.
Saucy and provocative, Monique prefers shortie nightgowns whether in bed or posing for cheesecake photos. she will be seen in a coming film, "Martin & Lewis in Paris".
To them the word chanteuse can be spelled in three letters: s-e-x. For over the years they have learned that the young ladies from foreign shores who come to coo ballads to our hotel patrons symbolize a basic instinct that adds up to the lowest common denominator in mankind. They can see in the response to these canaries something far different than what happens when our own native brand of vocalist belts out a pop tune.
In French movie, Monique was allowed a lot more of her talents than in Hollywood appearances. She paraded about in "Serie Noire" in bras and towel, got favourable notices for beauty. She appeared in three French movies.
Monique’s star has never been so high as it is today and if she is able to commit herself to a third of the offers which have come to her since her sensational hit at the St. Regis Maisonette, there’s little doubt that she can become the hottest item in show business. She kids her own singing and dancing, but she knows how to acquit herself on a stage or at a mike. Her face is exquisite. Her 40-24-36 architecture is for real. She speaks English, French, Italian, Flemish and German, and can be funny and sexy in all of them.
Her answers to provocative questions are her own, not press agents’: "I love caviar by the spoonful (does that make me a red?) -but only black caviar, and only if it matches my satin bed sheets which must also be black. I can’t stand yellow diamonds, but I enjoy minks in all colours. I used to have the hobby of collecting diamonds, by the way. Kind people gave them to me. Usually very kind people. I called that hobby my Bundles For Belgium campaign.
Monique’s first break in show business came when the late John Murray Anderson, that astute showman, was casting pretty and well-developed girls for his Broadway production of "Almanac" a few seasons back. His attention was riveted to the tall doll from Brussels whose face seemed so flawless and whose figure seemed so impossibly perfect, that he talked with her for only three minutes and then signed her on the spot. It didn’t matter that, her singing voice (which she admitted to Anderson was "very small but very unpleasant") would never threaten the likes of Shore or Stafford, or that her acting talents wouldn’t ever challenge the Misses Hayes or Barry more, Monique was startlingly beautiful. Anderson watched her bring her ‘haughty grandeur across a stage and knew she had an immense future.
He was right. Now-blonde Monique, who until "Almanac" had necked with fame chiefly as the villainess in a Tarzan movie and as a TV foil to Abbott and Costello, is today the darling of newspaper columnists who can always count on candid and provocative quotes from her, and of stage and supper club audiences who feel an immediate rapport with her when she steps before them to sing or clown. Since her Broadway debut her rise has been little short of Monique-terrifique. Her two-week engagement stretched to five at the elegant Maisonette in New York. She had holdover en gagements at the Ritz Carlton in Montreal, Chez Gerard in Quebec City, the Thunderbird in Las Vegas, the Chase’s Starlight Roof in St. Louis, and the Mocambo in Hollywood wherein she buxomly belted out naughty numbers such as "If I Could Tell You In English What I Think Of You In French." She has a soon-due LP record album on the Request label called "Mouique At The Maisonette."
Show business was not Monique’s original ambition. The luscious Monique first came to the United States as an exchange student and studied law at New York University. She had dabbled in theatrics in Europe, having appeared in Brussels’ famed "1900 Re vue" in 1946 at the age of 15, but for the most part ignored the offers of Belgian producers who winced at the thought of all that pulchritude being devoured in Darrowesque leanings.
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