The demimondaine as transmedia celebrity: remembering La Belle Otèro

This paper explores the famous performer and dancer, Caroline Otèro, who was active in Paris (and then the US) the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that Otèro was important to the development of c20 modernism. On stage, in photos, and on film, she sold exotic beauty, spectacular sexuality, and female athleticism. However, her career was significantly re-written after her death in Richard Pottier’s 1954 biopic entitled La Belle Otèro. Today framing the legacy of Otèro’s fame, we see Otero as a 'pretty' woman working in New York (which is presented as being culturally separate from Paris). A famous woman who controlled her image in the Belle Epoque is therefore reduced to a historical curiosity through a badly made bio-pic. I argue that this is just one example illustrating why feminist historiography is necessary today, not only in traditional archives but in media archives.