La Belle Otero

Carolina "La Belle" Otero
La Belle Otero, by Léopold-Émile Reutlinger
Born Augustina del Carmen Otero Iglesias [1]
(1868-11-04)4 November 1868
Valga, Galicia, Spain
Died 12 April 1965(1965-04-12) (aged 96)
Nice, France
Occupation Dancer, actress, courtesan
Parent(s) Carasson (father)
Carmen Otero Iglesias (mother)

Carolina "La Belle" Otero (b. 4 November 1868 Valga, Galicia – d. 12 April 1965 Nice) was a Spanish actress, dancer and courtesan.

Biography

Early years

Born Augustina del Carmen Otero Iglesias in Valga, Pontevedra, Galicia (Spain), daughter of a Spanish single mother, Carmen Otero Iglesias (1844-1903), and a Greek army officer, named Carasson.[2] Her family was impoverished, and as a child she moved to Santiago de Compostela working as a maid.[3] At ten she was raped, and at fourteen she left home with her boyfriend and dancing partner, Paco, and began working as a singer/dancer in Lisbon.

Career as artiste and courtesan

In 1888 she found a sponsor in Barcelona who moved with her to Marseilles in order to promote her dancing career in France. She soon left him and created the character of La Belle Otero, fancying herself an Andalusian gypsy.[3] She was pretty, confident, intelligent, with an attractive figure. It was once said of her that her extraordinarily dark black eyes were so captivating that they were "of such intensity that it was impossible not to be detained before them".[4]

She wound up as the star of Folies Bèrgere productions in Paris.[3] One of her most famous costumes featured her voluptuous bosom partially covered with glued-on precious gems, and the twin cupolas of the Hotel Carlton built in 1912 in Cannes are popularly said to have been modeled upon her breasts.[3][5][6]

Within a short number of years, Otero grew to be the most sought after woman in all of Europe. She was serving, by this time, as a courtesan to wealthy and powerful men of the day, and she chose her lovers carefully. She associated herself with the likes of Kaiser Wilhelm II,[7] Prince Albert I of Monaco, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, Kings of Serbia, and Kings of Spain as well as Russian Grand Dukes Peter and Nicholas, the Duke of Westminster and writer Gabriele D'Annunzio. Her love affairs made her infamous, and the envy of many other notable female personalities of the day. Six men reportedly committed suicide after their love affairs with Otero ended, although this has never been substantiated beyond a doubt. It is a fact, however, that two men did fight a duel over her.[3]

Early film

In August 1898, in St-Petersburg, the French film operator Félix Mesguich (an employee of the Lumière company) shot a one-minute reel of Otero performing the famous "Valse Brillante." The screening of the film at the Aquarium music-hall provoked such a scandal (because an officer of the Tsar's army appeared in this frivolous scene) that Mesguich was expelled from Russia.[8]

Later life

Otero retired after World War I, purchasing a mansion and property at a cost of the equivalent of US$15 million.[3] She had accumulated a massive fortune over the years, about US$25 million, but she gambled much of it away over the remainder of her lifetime, enjoying a lavish lifestyle, and visiting the casinos of Monte Carlo often. She lived out her life in a more and more pronounced state of poverty until she died of a heart attack in 1965 in her one-room apartment at the Hotel Novelty in Nice, France.

Of her heyday and career, Otero once said, "Women have one mission in life: to be beautiful. When one gets old, one must learn how to break mirrors. I am very gently expecting to die."[9]

Notable published works

  • Les Souvenirs et la Vie Intime de la Belle Otero (1926).[2] ISBN 9782402042819

In film and literature

  • In 1954 film La Belle Otero starring Mexican actress María Félix.
  • La Belle Otero is featured as a background figure in the Monte Carlo segment of Rosalind Laker (Barbara Ovstedal)'s The Jeweled Path (1983).
  • There is a charming portrait of "Madame Otero" in Colette's My Apprenticeships.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Carolina Otero
  2. 1 2 Place des Libraires
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Caroline "La Belle" Otero by Lockkeeper. Lockkeeper.com. Retrieved on 2010-11-16.
  4. ↑ La Belle Otero
  5. ↑ Icqurimage Electronic magazine: A brief history of the Courtesan Archived 2006-03-19 at the Wayback Machine.. Icqurimage.com. Retrieved on 2010-11-16.
  6. ↑ la belle Otero Archived 2010-01-11 at the Wayback Machine.. Membres.multimania.fr. Retrieved on 2010-11-16.
  7. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130110154514/http://www.bild.de/unterhaltung/tv/serien/der-kaiser-hatte-wirklich-sex-im-adlon-28011514.bild.html
  8. ↑ Jacques Rittaud-Hutinet (1990). Le cinéma des origines: Les frères Lumière et leurs opérateurs, pp.176–177. ISBN 2-903528-43-8 (in french)
  9. ↑ World: Suivez-Moi, Jeune Homme. TIME (1965-04-23). Retrieved on 2010-11-16.

Further reading

  • Arruíname pero no me abandones. La Bella Otero y la Belle Époque. De Marie-Helène Carbonel i Javier Figuero. Ed. Espasa Calpe, 2003. In Spanish
  • A Bela Otero, pioneira do cine, Miguel Anxo Fernández In Galician
  • La passion de Carolina Otero Ramón Chao, 2001. French novel about the fictional life of the dancer.
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