Agnès Souret

Agnès Souret
Agnès Souret in London after her election in 1920 as the first Miss France
Born	Jeanne Germaine Berthe Agnès Souret 21 January 1902 Biarritz, France
Died	c 30 September 1928 (aged 26) Argentina
Years active	1920-1928

Agnès Souret, (1902-1928) was a French actress and dancer who was the winner of the inaugural Miss France competition in 1920.

Biography

Jeanne Germaine Berthe Agnès Souret was a French-Basque born in Biarritz south-western France on 21 January 1902. Her early life is not well documented. She was the daughter of a former ballet dancer Mauguerite Souret and her grandfather was Henri Souret, a customs official in the town of Bidarray. Souret’s formative years were spent at Espelette in the Basque province of Labourd.

La plus belle femme de France

In 1919, the dark brown haired, brown eyed Agnès Souret was the winner of a beauty competition to become Miss Midi-Pyrénées. In 1920, she was acclaimed the most beautiful woman in France (La plus belle femme de France) in a contest now regarded as the inaugural Miss France competition. The seventeen-year-old Souret won over 2000 entrants and attracted 115,000 votes. In Le Figaro, she was described as a ‘’dazzling beauty’’.^[1] In the New York Times, she was called ‘‘the fairest in France’’ ^[2] At 1.68 m tall, she was relatively slight by the beauty queen standards of the late 20th century.

Artistic career

Souret’s success in the competition and the subsequent publicity resulted in her becoming for a few years one of the most celebrated women in France. Her photograph was extensively circulated in journals and magazines.^{[note 1][3]} Details of her life were commonplace in the gossip columns of the early 20s. She appeared in a dancing role at the famous Parisian music hall the Folies Bergère and at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. She was in two films directed by Henry Houry: La Maison des pendus and Le Lys du Mont Saint-Michel.

Her fame extended beyond France to the United Kingdom where in 1922 she appeared in the revue Pins and Needles at the Gaiety Theatre in the West End of London. While in London, she was invited, along with two English actresses Margaret Leahy and Katherine Campbell, by the film director Edward Jose and producer Joseph M. Schenck for an audition to appear in films in Hollywood travelling to the United States at the end of 1922. Although her screen tests do not appear to have led a role, her beauty was noticed. She published a book The Famous Book of Beauty Secrets^[4] and toured major cities with acclaim.^{[note 2][5]}

Agnès Souret died of peritonitis in September 1928^{[note 3]} while on a tour of Argentina. To ensure that her body could be repatriated to France, Souret’s mother Marguerite raised the money by selling many of her goods including her house at Espelette. Agnès Souret was laid to rest at her home Basque Country village in a tomb that features a sculpture by Lucien Danglade.^{[1][6][note 4]}

Filmography

• 1920 Le Lys du Mont Saint-Michel
• 1921 La Maison des pendus

Bibliography

• 1922 The Famous Book of Beauty Secrets, Chicago Mail Order Company,

Notes

1. The very first edition of the French film magazine Cinemagazine published in January 1921 features Souret on the front cover
2. A full page image of Souret's face adorns the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on September 30th 1923
3. The exact day of her death in September is not known
4. In 2002 the mayor of Espelette André Darraïdou invited the head of Monument historique to visit Souret’s tomb with a view to establishing it for official preservation. A ceremony and an exhibition of Souret’s life were organised leading to the tomb becoming a tourist attraction.

References

1. Article du journal Sud-Ouest Archived December 2, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
2. New York Times, Agnès Souret, Hailed as the fairest in France, decides to quit Paris. Article November 24, 1921
3. Cinemagazine issue 1, January 21–28, 1921
4. The Famous Book of Beauty Secrets, Agnès Souret, Chicago Mail Order Company, 1922
5. San Franscico Chronicle, September 30th 1923
6. http://surlaroute.blogs.sudouest.fr/tag/Andr%C3%A9+Darra%C3%AFdou