FRESHLY arrived in Glasgow from London, Leslie Caron was whisked to her suite at the Central Hotel, and was happy to pose for a photographer from The Bulletin. It was all in a day’s work for the young, French-born actress and dancer, who was in town to appear at the Theatre Royal in Gigi.

“Personal Appearance of the International Star of the films ‘An American in Paris’, ‘The Glass Slipper’,’Daddy Long Legs’ etc,” ran the wording in the advertisements placed in that night’s entertainment columns.” Caron would be “playing the role of Gigi, which brought stage fame to AUDREY HEPBURN in the New York presentation of this brilliant play. BOOK NOW!”

(Also in town that same week in April 1956 was one Alec Guinness, who together with Irene Worth was starring in a Feydeau farce, Free Exchange, at the King’s Theatre.)

In a Vanity Fair interview in May 2018, Caron recalled that MGM producer Arthur Freed had asked her, in the early 1950s, if she had any idea in mind for a new film project; Freed was anxious that her character in Lili, the film she was then making, was somewhat ordinary, a far cry from the glamorous woman she had played in An American in Paris.

“What about Gigi?” she suggested, referring to one of her favourite French works of fiction, written by Colette in the mid-1940s, which chronicled the education of a young courtesan.

Freed took 18 months to respond to her, but respond he did, and the result, in 1958, was one of MGM’s most beguiling musicals, and the winner of numerous Oscars.

While the film was being put together, Caron starred in a non-musical theatre adaptation of Gigi, in London, in 1955.

As its director she chose Peter Hall (later, Sir Peter). “We were very attracted, one to the other, but were extremely professional and didn’t go out together at all, until the opening night,” Caron told Vanity Fair. “Then, that was it, on the opening night, we got together. That was it – until marriage, children, everything!”

Also in that touring production of Gigi was Tony Britton, the well-known actor, who died last month aged 95.

The Glasgow Herald’s theatre critic noted that Caron was playing a girl of 16, “undergoing careful training by her grandmother and great-aunt for a successful career as a courtesan”, but that it was not until the third act was the impact of her performance fully perceptible.

“The waif-like charm, with which Mlle.Caron has been endowed by various critics and columnists, was in evidence but scarcely seemed appropriate to an adolescent who may have been a bit of a tomboy but was still well-cosseted.

“The end of the play, however, with its startling and, to Gigi’s relatives, scandalous outcome of marriage, saw her establishment without question in the character she had to portray.”

Read more: Herald Diary