Honesty (Plus Crime)

Staffers on France-Soir, the brightest, brassiest and widest-read daily in Paris, are used to the boss's violent temper tantrums. It is a dull day in the grimy, ill-lit building near the Place de la Bourse when only four or five storms blow out of the tiny office where tiny (5 ft. 2 in.) Editor in Chief Pierre Lazareff sits, guarded by two doormen and five secretaries.

But last week was something memorable. "Pierrot" was in almost constant fury. Looking like a bald, wet owl behind his big, black-rimmed spectacles, he squeaked invectives and obscenities at the top of his lung power, slammed telephones, kicked the furniture and insulted the mentalities of his reporters, editors and make-up men. The staffers took it calmly. They knew that five minutes after every squall Lazareff would be rushing around the plant and tenderly calling everybody "mon petit Coco."

By last week most French journalists were ready to agree that 40-year-old Pierre Lazareff is the closest thing to genius in the French press. The weekly Point de Vue dubbed him "Napoleon of Journalists." Lazareff's successes were indeed Napoleonic. In the 30-odd months since he returned to France (after almost four years as a war exile in the U.S., where for a time he headed the French radio section of the Office of War Information), he had put together a more formidable empire than he had before the war.

On the U.S. Model. Lazareff and a talented young (26) Resistance leader named Aristide Blank had moved in on Paris with the puny staff of the underground Defense de la France. They renamed it France-Soir, packed it with straight news for Parisians who got almost everything but news in most of the French press. France-Soir pushed swiftly to France's top circulation (about 600,000 daily). U.S. newsmen credit its success to shrewd application of tried-&-true U.S. tricks: big, crisp headlines, heavy accent on crime, bright feature stories and splashy makeup. Although he dashes off headlines with oldfashioned, wooden pens, Lazareff comes closer than any other French journalist to the "U.S. idea of a star managing editor.

France-Soir is not the only place where Lazareff dips an end-chewed pen. His France-Dimanche, a sexy-sensational weekly, hits 400,000 circulation. He has a weekly sports Record, (circ. 180,000), something for the kiddies called France Soir-Jeudi, a slick monthly, Realites, which he calls "a very modest FORTUNE," and a syndicate called Scoop, which sells France-Soir's features to the hinterland. His wife, Helene Gordon Lazareff, who trained on the New York Times and Harper's Bazaar, now edits Elle, a Parisian women's weekly magazine with New Yorkerish touches.

Vanished Illusions. The reason Lazareff was in such an eruptive mood last week was that his staff was up to something, and for once, he had no idea what it was. This week he found out: it was a surprise dinner to celebrate his 25 years as a working journalist. It was a long and remarkably successful career to be celebrating at 40. Lazareff started sending articles to theater weeklies at twelve. Despite his father's warnings 'that French journalism was only for "misfits and blackmailers," at 15 he started a weekly of his own. He called it Illusions, and he lost some of his when it died shortly.

Put to work on Paris-Midi, he livened its feature page so capably that at 19 he became its city editor. He needled the news with sensationalism but did not twist it politically, as most prewar French papers did. In a year its circulation multiplied twelve times. Then Lazareff took on Paris-Soir, in a few years ran it to France's biggest daily (circ. 2,500,000). He put the formula to work on a picture magazine, and Match surged to 1,200,000 circulation. His Marie-Claire, for women, hit 1,000,000. Lazareff left Paris when the Germans arrived; his collaborator, Jean Provoust, stayed on and worked under the Nazis.

Invited to his party this week were Lazareff Friends Prince Peter of Greece, ex-Premier Paul Reynaud, Mistinguett, Marlene Dietrich, Jean Cocteau, Cinema Producers Marcel Pagnol and Rene Clair, dozens of writers, Cabinet Ministers, deputies and generals. They could toast Lazareff as one of the few journalists who had lived through, without being stained by, the venal days of France's prewar press. They also could toast a proved proposition : that journalistic honesty can pay off in France.

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