100 Francs Arletty

Arletty — born Léonie Bathiat in Courbevoie in 1898 — remains one of the most complicated figures in French cultural memory. Her wartime affair with a Luftwaffe officer led to her arrest at the Liberation and a brief detention, followed by years of professional ostracism. That France chose to honor her on a coin fifty years after that scandal says something about how the French reconcile artistic genius with compromised biography.

This piece belongs to the Monnaie de Paris "Grands Hommes" commemorative series of the 1990s, which issued silver 100-franc pieces honoring figures from French arts and letters.