<<
Her uniform was just as beloved. She tucked
her white-blonde curls inside a fabric helmet,
and often eschewed the traditional boiler suits
worn by her competitors in favour of a short-
sleeved shirt with flowers sewn on the cuffs.
Other times she simply wore a bathing suit.
And despite being protected by a windscreen
no larger than a dinner plate, she was known
for driving with her mouth open. Nice was
unmissable, and able to supplement her
income with product endorsements and brand
sponsorships from the likes of Esso gasoline
and Lucky Strike cigarettes.
Shortly after winning her first race, Nice
headed to the U.S. for a tour of the east
coast, sponsored by the talent agency
William Morris. She drove an American-
made car – a Miller – and drew crowds at
each stop. The tour wasn’t without incident.
In Flemington, New Jersey, while driving on
her first dirt track, Nice lost control of her
vehicle and crashed. She emerged uninjured.
And so began a death-defying streak that
would last years. Later, she would skid on
black ice during the Monte Carlo Grand Prix
and drive into a canal. Each time she took
to the track – whether she finished safely or
emerged unscathed from a dangerous near
miss – her legend only grew.
Despite the theatrics, Nice was considered a
relatively safe driver, one with tremendous
control over her car. She would challenge her
male competitors on the track, but pull back if
too great a risk presented itself. Her favoured
car – a Bugatti 35B, made by one of her closest
friends, Ettore Bugatti – was a design marvel,
with thin wheels and a cubist engine, but was,
according to a report from its eventual sale in
1997, “primitive when it comes to safety.” Sitting
behind the wheel, Nice was exposed in the
topless vehicle, with a single-strap seatbelt – not
unlike those on an aeroplane – holding her in.
When Chicago collector Ben Rose bought the
car in England in 1983, he took it to a race meet
of the Vintage Sports Car Drivers Association.
Examining the specimen, Paul Newman
(as in, the Paul Newman) shook his head and
told Rose, “Man, you’re crazy. Anything could
happen. You could lose your head.”In 1936, Nice would be thrown from her
vehicle once more, this time with tragic
consequences. She was in Brazil for the São
Paulo Grand Prix, a race run on the city’s
roads rather than a professional track. Nice
was placed second behind local driver Manuel
de Teffé, but as she was embarking on her
final lap, a gust of wind blew a hay bale onto
the track. Nice hit the bale while taking a
corner at 150kmh, and was thrown clean from
her Alfa Romeo Monza, which spun into the
crowd, killing six spectators and injuring 30.
Nice collided with a man in the crowd; his
skull was smashed fatally open and his body
absorbed the blow she would otherwise have
been subjected to. She survived, though that
fact wasn’t clear when her body was laid out
beside the track alongside the dead.Nice lay in a coma for three days, and
remained in a Brazilian hospital for several
months. When she finally got back behind
the wheel the following year, she would set 10
new world records. “Elle a du cran,” French
newspapers wrote: “The girl’s got guts.”A near-fatal crash might sound like the
biggest hurdle a racing driver could face
in their career. But this turned out to be
nothing compared to the cocktail of jealousy
and showmanship that would ultimately
be Nice’s undoing.In 1949, celebrations were held in Monte Carlo
to commemorate the end of World War II. The
world’s top drivers were gathered to celebrate
the armistice and the subsequent return of
competitive motorsports, when Monegasque
racer Louis Chiron announced for all to hear
that Hellé Nice had been a secret Gestapo
agent and was a traitor to France.Why he said this remains a mystery. Perhaps
Nice had rebuffed his advances and he felt
bitter. Or maybe he had been jealous of thefame and sponsorship deals she received.
Another far-fetched theory claims that Chiron
had simply confused Nice with Violette
Morris – the recipient of the voluntary
double mastectomy, who actually had been a
collaborator, and who had been gunned down
by Resistance commandos while driving her
sports car in 1944. Whatever his reasoning,
the claim was unfounded then, and would
remain so in subsequent years. But the
accusation alone was enough to sink Nice.
The racing world turned its collective back
on the champion, and her endorsements
dissolved. She would never race again.With her career over, Nice’s personal life
seemed to crumble around her. Nice’s lover
and mechanic Arnaldo Benelli exhausted
her fortune and left her destitute. Shame
eventually drove her to assume a new name,
while desperation saw her resort to selling
tickets at cinema matinees to make a living.
When Nice died in 1984, in the public ward
of a hospital, her possessions included two
boxes filled with photos, newspaper clippings
and trophies – the only records she had of
her past life – and a gun, on the chance that
Benelli dare show his face, so she could shoot
him in the knees.Following her death, the landlord of the
rat-infested apartment she rented either
dumped, sold or gave away her last remaining
possessions. Ten years later, an antiques
dealer named Warner Dailey came across
Nice’s scrapbook of photos and clippings at an
antique sale in southern France. It’s thanks
to his chance discovery – and the fact that he
happened to mention it to writer Miranda
Seymour over dinner – that the story of
Hellé Nice was not completely lost to time.
Seymour’s subsequent 2004 biography helped
exonerate the forgotten driver’s reputation in
the West. (Curiously, her flame never quite
extinguished in Brazil, where Hellenice and
Ellenice remain common girl’s names to this
day.) A charity has since been established
in Nice’s name; one of its first efforts was to
place a plaque on her previously unmarked
grave, to chronicle her legend. •