great woman of history
TO HER FANS, HELLÉ NICE WAS AN IMPOSSIBLY GIFTED
RACE-CAR DRIVER AND AN INSPIRATION FOR WOMEN THE
WORLD OVER. BUT HER DETRACTORS HAD OTHER IDEAS.Writer Brodie Lancaster Illustrator Timothy RodgersBORN: December 15, 1900,
Eure-et-Loir, France
DIED: October 1, 1984, Nice, France
............................................
THE FLOWERS ON THE CAR WERE
THE SOLE INDICATION THAT A
WOMAN WAS DRIVING.
It was May 1903, and only one female driver
was brave enough to get behind the wheel
for the 1400-kilometre car race from Paris
to Madrid. Known for wearing conspicuous
goggles and heavy gloves to protect her in
the open-air vehicle, she had begrudgingly
allowed the hood of her de Dietrich to be
decorated with garlands that signalled to
spectators that one of the 200-odd drivers in
the race was a woman. The driver was Camille
du Gast, and one of those spectators was a
three-year-old Hellé Nice.
Born Mariette Hélène Delangle in 1900
(although, as biographer Miranda Seymour
notes in her 2004 book Bugatti Queen, “1905
was her preferred year of birth”), the young
girl had been brought to Bourdinière, about
250 kilometres from her home in Aunay-
sous-Auneau, to watch drivers thunder down
Bourdinière hill. When Louis Renault hurtled
threateningly close to the townspeople at a
speed of 140kmh, it was the first time many
on the sidelines had even seen a car. They had
no idea they were also bearing witness to the
setting of a new record.Twenty-six years later, following a career as a
nude model and a dancer in the clubs of Paris,
Nice would get behind the wheel of an Oméga-
Six and claim her first title in the first all-female
Grand Prix. Before the race, the driver Marcel
Mongin told Nice, “Memorise every bend. You
need to know the track perfectly and be able
to drive it with your eyes closed.” That day in
Montlhéry, she trusted her memory and set
a new record for women’s land speed. After
crossing the finish line, her hands inflamed
from holding the hot steering wheel, she painted
on lipstick, straightened a beret, and posed for
the cameras. She became an instant icon.By this time, France was well established as
the home of organised automobile racing,
and competitions were as much about testing
the endurance of vehicles (and their drivers)
as they were about spectatorship and speed.
Racing, as Seymour wrote in Bugatti Queen,
was “one of the biggest entertainments the
1920s had to offer”.While contemporary racing today is thoroughly
male-dominated – you can count on one hand
the number of female drivers who have enteredat least one Grand Prix since 1950 – in Nice’s
heyday women behind the wheel were far less
rare. As well as Nice and du Gast, there were
Anne-Cécile Itier, Elizabeth Junek, and Violette
Morris – a fascinating figure who, as well as
being a French weightlifting champion and
frequent guest at the first lesbian nightclubs
in Paris, underwent a double mastectomy in
order to better handle her automobile. Back
then, entry into the sport was more a matter
of financial access than muscle mass or racing
experience. Basically, anyone who could afford
to race was allowed. And those – like Nice, or
the acrobatic driver Violette Cordery – who
could also sell products to adoring racing fans
and appeal to female drivers curious about
owning a car, were especially successful. “It’s
all I ever ask for,” she told a French newspaper
in 1930. “Just to show what I can do, without a
handicap, against men.”Nice was popular and feisty, and crowds
got so amped when her signature blue car
would appear that the roar could become
distracting – she was said to have slammed
on the brakes upon hearing the crowd react
to her arrival at the 1930 Grand Prix in Le
Mans, causing her Bugatti to spin and cross
the finish line in reverse.>>057 SMITH JOURNAL