Josette Day (1914–1978), a leading light of French cinema in the 1930s and 1940s, wore many Cartier pieces.
Born in 1914, Josette Day landed her first screen role at the age of five, in a silent movie by Léon Poirier. A few years later, her passion for performing led her to join the young pupils at Paris Opera Ballet School, known as the petits rats, before a fall on stage forced her to abandon her dance career. In 1931, she returned to cinema, shooting a string of talking pictures. Her first major roles date back to the second half of the 1930s. She drew particular acclaim for her performances in Abel Gance’s 1935 release Lucrezia Borgia and in Julien Duvivier’s The Man of the Hour the following year.
In 1939, she met Marcel Pagnol, who became her partner for part of the Second World War and wrote the hit film The Well-Digger’s Daughter for her.
Her greatest role came in 1946 in Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, an adaptation of the famous fairy tale. The public was moved and enchanted in equal measure by the scene in which she cries over her sick father, her tears made from diamonds borrowed from Cartier.
In 1950, Josette Day called time on her acting career and married Maurice Solvay, a wealthy entrepreneur from Belgium. From then on, she devoted part of her life to charity work.
Josette Day was a regular Cartier client, who tended to opt for the Maison’s animal-inspired creations. Examples include a 1972 lizard bracelet – the creature’s gleaming, brightly colored scales set with white and yellow diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires – and butterfly clip brooches from 1945, with yellow-gold wings streaked with black enamel and coral.
Coral was clearly her favorite stone: her jewelry collection also included a pair of diamond-incrusted coral hoop earrings, as well as a watch placed inside a carved-coral lion’s head with a diamond-studded mane. All these pieces are now part of the Cartier Collection and are regularly exhibited in Cartier retrospectives at prestigious international museums.
