Aisling O’Loughlin An affair to remember
The comments section of the Mail Online never fails to conjure a giggle. What about this one by tin g ton g mac dangdang on the news that movie icon Catherine Deneuve had a 50 something year fling with Johnny Hallyday, otherwise known as the French Elvis.
‘They should have married after his 2nd divorce and saved us all from reading this nonsense .’ Ah tin g ton g mac dangdang you clearly don’t understand the French (does anybody?) — getting married would have dispelled all the creepin’, sneakin’ fun and intrigue. Apparently. I’m into my second year in Provence and the French are still a mystery. Frankly this could have something to do with my fragile grasp of the French language. I’m still awaiting that Bart Simpson breakthrough moment of fluency.
Any day now.
But there is one language I understand, and that’s lurrrve. OK I don’t get that one either and Johnny Hallyday and Catherine Deneuve’s six-decade tryst is downright baffling. Surely the fizz fizzled at some point as their hair turned brittle and jawlines slackened. Did Cath not care about the five wives or the thousands of lovers (up to 4,000 at last count) ole Johnny boy was notching up on the side of the side?
This, of course, makes him a ‘Sex God’, or as Vogue France put it ‘an eternal romantic’, not a nympho who’d hop up on a gust of wind. And what about Deneuve’s seven year marriage to English photographer David Bailey which ended in 1972, and her relationship with French director Roger Vadim with whom she has a son?
It’s all a bit ‘euughhh’ really. All that ‘lovemaking’. All that turning a blind eye. According to a new book, Lady Lucille, (Hallyday’s pet name for Deneuve and his 1964 hit song), Hallyday described their connection as ‘the love of a lifetime... a passion lived in hiding. Catherine was what other women do not have.’
Now what could that possibly be, Johnny? An all-consuming rage when we find out our supposed significant other has been doing the dirty, perhaps? Was Deneuve so special because of her languid acceptance that Johnny, quite simply, couldn’t be good?
Obviously neither could resist the temptation of each other’s presence from the moment they met as teenagers on the set of the 1961 movie, Tales
of Paris. Apparently Hallyday told Giles Lhote, his biographer, before he died in December 2017, aged 74: ‘When the time is right, it would be good if you recounted the real story of Lady Lucille.’ Only thing is, Deneuve is still alive at 76. Will the diva confirm her status as Lady Lucille? Or is she bulling Hallyday has blown her cover from the grave? What will the wives say? This kind of thing was usually reserved for between 5pm-7pm (cinq à sept) — the Frenchies’ hall pass for a quickie post work with their chosen lover. No questions asked.
Now here, before you start getting ideas, this is not the secret to a happy marriage. So much so French women seem to be particularly watchful of their men folk these days, which also doesn’t seem to be the secret to a happy marriage.
Certainly for Johnny Hallyday, his enduring illicit relationship with Catherine Deneuve seems to have trumped all others, marriages included, in his remarkable life.
Deneuve and Hallyday’s secret romance is revealed