Homme Fatal

Official Montreal really put on the dog for its distinguished visitor. Excitable Mayor Camillien Houde was absolutely epate as the visitor signed his name below Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery's in the city's Gold Book. Then came a civic reception, and that afternoon the visitor was whisked out to the Blue Bonnets racetrack for the running of the big sixth race, renamed in his honor. The winning jockey was a namesake (but no kin) of Maurice Chevalier, which was fitting, because the man who handed him the winner's plaque was the latest homme fatal from France, 40-year-old Troubadour Jean Sablon.

To Sablon, last week's business at Montreal was old hat. Since March, he had kicked up a fuss in Hollywood, New York, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City.

Much of Sablon's climb to success had been made on the ladder of love. He got his first job in show business--as a chorus boy--through a mademoiselle who was smitten with his charms when she saw him on a train. Then Mistinguett, who at 70-odd still boasts "la plus belle jambe de France," took a shine to him, made him her leading man. In the U.S., his press-agents call him "the French Frank Sinatra," adding archly, "who appeals to the nylon-soxers."

Like Frankie, Jean latches on to a microphone as if it had gender. There the resemblance ends. Jean is middling tall, broad-shouldered, has a mechanical grin and a thick shrub of mustache, through which he filters a vibrant baritone like the late Russ Columbo's.

To fortify his position with the U.S. public, Sablon began over CBS this week (Sun., 5:30 p.m., E.D.S.T.) a series of 15-minute chanson-and-chatter programs. For the first time a coast-to-coast audience could savor the bilingual ambiguities of such Sablon songs as Le Fiacre, the success story of a married woman and her lover. As they are driving about, their coach accidentally runs over the husband, who has been secretly tailing them. The wife looks out, observes: "Splendid, Leon, it's my husband. . . . Give 100 sous to the coachman."

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