Au temps du Boeuf sur le toit

M. Sachs, M. Ettinghausen

Au Temps du Boeuf sur le Toit is a patchwork of anecdotes and malicious gossip, disguised in the form of a diary, fictitious in great part, pompously subtitled journal d un jeune bourgeois à l époque de la prospérité, (14 juillet 1919 - 30 octobre 1929). The fashionable bar-dancing of the 1920s, Le Boeuf sur le Toit owes its name to the "farce pantomime" produced in February 1920 at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées by Jean Cocteau, based on music by Darius Milhaud, with sets by Raoul Dufy. The Boeuf, managed by Louis Moysès, opened in December 1921 at 28 rue Boissy d Anglas, succeeding the Gaya of rue Duphot. At the Boeuf one could run into Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau, Jean Wiéner, Francis Poulenc, Honegger, Aragon, Breton, Germaine Tailleferre, Raymond Radiguet, Blaise Cendrars, Brancusi, Francis Picabia, Picasso, Marcel Herrant, Coco Chanel, Yvonne Printemps, Derain, Éric Satie, Georges Auric, Fargue, André Gide, the maréchal Lyautey, Gaston Gallimard, Artur Rubinstein, Marcel Jouhandeau, Paul Bourget, Marcel Aymé, Max Jacob, Tristan Bernard, Paul Claudel, Pierre Reverdy... It was the epicenter of Paris during the Roaring Twenties. The only one who never appeared there was Marcel Proust, owing to his precarious health. In the wake of Cocteau, one also met there the young Maurice Sachs, who dreamed of greatness, and above all of replacing Radiguet in the heart of the great master of surrealist ceremonies. And the Boeuf sur le Toit was so much a token of its time that the title Au temps du... naturally lends itself to a book that purports to retrace the memorable social and artistic moments of this crazy decade, made of illusions and facilités.