Issue No. 13

There's something wild about you child
That's so contagious
Let's be outrageous
Let's misbehave!!!
Those frivolous lyrics from Cole Porter’s
Let’s Misbehave might very well have
epitomized the mood on the Côte d’Azur
when the song was published in 1927.
Not only was he penning the song, but
quite possibly Porter was working
through it while he hung out with Zelda
and F. Scott Fitzgerald at their rented
Villa Saint-Louis on the shore of a scenic
cove on the west side of the iconic Cap
d’Antibes.
The Fitzgeralds loved partying with their
Jazz Age friends. The semi-Bohemian
crowd included wealthy Americans and
visiting artists, writers and hangers-on.
Picasso, Hemingway, Cocteau, John Dos
Passos, Gertrude Stein and Dorothy
Parker were just a few of the regulars.
Porter was a fixture at the piano in the
music room of Villa Saint-Louis,
overlooking the shimmering
Mediterranean.
From all accounts, notably captured in
Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, along
with letters, journal entries and recorded
memories by others in the Roaring
Twenties, the French Riviera was rather a
wild place to be. It was also, and
continues to be, a fabled coastline of
incomparable beauty and light that
inspires artists to settle there and create.
Since 1929 the privately-owned Villa
Saint-Louis has been known as Hôtel
Belles Rives. At the time it was the only
hotel on the water along the Côte d’Azur.
And since 2001, the gracious thirdgeneration
owner, Marianne Estène-
Chauvin has guided her beloved 5-star,
43-room gem with a clear desire to keep
the best of the Fitzgerald years alive.
Credit Hotel Belles Rives
The atmosphere becomes electric the instant
one steps into the elegant and welcoming
lobby of this gracious Art Deco mansion with
its unique ornate elevator.
Black and white photos of Fitzgerald, his
tormented wife Zelda, and their daughter
Scottie, holidaying here, hang on the walls. A
predominately placed marble plaque quotes
a letter he wrote to Hemingway:
“With our being back in a nice villa on my beloved
Riviera (between Nice and Cannes) I’m happier than
I’ve been for years. It’s one of those strange precious
and all too transitory moments when everything in
one’s life seems to be going well.”