Julie Luce
Born to a middle-class Martiniquan family, Julie Luce was educated by nuns. She went to Paris at age 12, a refugee from the city of Saint Pierre, which was destroyed by the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée in Martinique. For several years she sat as a model for artists, notably for Jules Pascin. She then went on to perform on stage and begin a career best traced through the photographs autographed to her by various music hall associates. A handful of them were “colored” artists: There is a portrait of Daisy Tcharnes dated September 1916; one of “La petite Hélène,” a Martiniquan girl who danced in the show La Joie de Paris, starring Josephine Baker, at the Casino de Paris in 1928. There is even a portrait signed by Baker herself. Other inscribed portraits inform us that Julie performed at the Théâtre des Variétés in March 1922. She met Ethyl W. Morris in July 1924. Five years later, she performed both in Nice and at the Palace Theatre in Paris, and then again at the Palace in 1931.
In Montparnasse in the 1930s one could often see Julie Luce, a mature but still beautiful woman who performed in one important part for several years as a legitimate actress. She acted as the Nègresse in Le Train de 8 h 47, a comedy by Georges Courteline that toured France. Julie also appeared in Femmes, an American play adapted by Jacques Duval. It was again André Salmon who asserted in 1931, “The best selection of Negro females at Vincennes (i.e., at the Colonial Exhibition) would grow pale indeed if Madame Julie came and joined their dances. At once time light-footed and statuesque, she would be a living Palace of Information about anything one can think of concerning the Black Venus.”
Julie Luce was photographed together with black actors in African warrior costumes in the hall of the Comédie Française, where she probably performed in 1932. She then appeared at the Casino de Paris, where in 1933 she met Floyd Dupont, the American ballet master. She next joined with Nora and Jay, diseuses classiques et excentriques, as well as the dancer Gypsy Rounia, in August 1938. Julie was still dancing in May 1952 and running the Martiniquan rum booth at the Foire de Paris. She retired ten years later.
