This isn’t a book by Ian Fleming, nor is the film world’s most beloved secret agent its main character. The “James Bond” we’re talking about here is Italian: Alberto Spadolini (Ancona 1907 – Paris 1972). He was sexy and daring like 007, surrounded by fascinating women and celebrities of the international jet set, continually moving between different milieux – showbiz, politics, sophisticated circles and war scenarios....
But the person who really turned the handsome Spado into an international star was Josephine Baker, who was his partner at the Casino de Paris until a tempestuous tour of London which marked the end of their passionate love story. No matter. His adventures included the Folies Bergère, a meeting with the young Jean Marais who introduced him to the film world, and his first film, L’épervier with Princess Natalie Paley, a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II who was romantically attached to Cocteau.
Not to mention his activity in the Resistance, his “generous, dangerous and reckless war” (as Jean-François Crance called it), his mission to Berlin in 1940 on the occasion of Franz Lehar’s 70th birthday and where Spadolini danced before the Führer and his officials.
At the end of the war he returned to Paris in triumph where his never-forgotten love of painting became a prime activity once again. According to Jean Cocteau, Spadolini’s art consisted in “dance paintings with ballerinas and danseurs whirling in the sky as transfigurations of the soul”.
It is possible that his espionage days were behind him, yet his sojourns in Algeria, and later in Vietnam while the battle of Dien-Bien-Phu was raging, are somewhat suspicious. The mystery has never been solved.
We wish you an enjoyable read.
79 pages
