The Theater: Paris in the Spring

Not since long before the war had Paris had so brisk and booming a theater season. Fifty-two legitimate plays, most of them sellouts, were nightly on the boards, and there was a rash of musicals. Cracked Les Lettres Françaises: "The number of theaters will soon exceed les bars americains."

Amid all this bustle, it remained for a 23-year-old U.S. musicomedy to attract, fortnight ago, the season's glossiest first-night audience and its loudest cheers. Tout Paris—Marlene Dietrich, Mistinguett, Jean Gabin, Lucien Lelong, many another—swarmed to No, No, Nanette, stayed on for 18 curtain calls.

By last week Nanette was the smash hit of the...