article · Issue No. 9, September 1956 · p. 40 p. 41

The World of Cinema: Françoise Sagan Chooses the Heroine of Her Story "Bonjour Tristesse"

عالم السينما: فرنسواز ساغان تختار بطلة قصتها «مرحباً أيها الحزن»

Readers doubtless know of the wide fame won by the rising French writer Françoise Sagan upon the appearance of her book "Bonjour Tristesse," which took the first prize for the novel and was translated into a number of the world's languages.

Today the motion-picture companies of the world are seeking to bring the story to the screen... The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company has succeeded in contracting with the authoress to produce the story on the screen, and has dispatched one of its directors, Otto Preminger, to France to discover the "face" that fits the leading role in this film.

Otto Preminger came to France and published, in the pages of the French magazine "Elle," an appeal to girls who find in themselves the artistic and physical qualifications to play the lead, to send their photographs, with certain particulars, to the magazine. More replies poured in to the management than had ever been reckoned... (15,000) from all parts of France, and a jury was appointed to examine these replies and photographs and to choose the suitable face... In view of the difficulty of the task entrusted to this committee, fifteen photographs were selected, from among which the final face is to be chosen...

It remains for the authoress, Françoise Sagan, to choose for herself the girl she prefers and finds the most suitable of all... So who will be the owner of the happy fortune, and win the final round?

Otto Preminger says that the girl who wins the role will be entrusted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with the part of Bernard Shaw's "Joan of Arc" — and so all eyes in France today are turned toward this important cinematic question. Below are some of the faces nominated for the leading role in "Bonjour Tristesse."

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