More than seven decades ago, the Cannes Film Festival was in its relative infancy. At its seventh-ever edition in 1954, Jean Cocteau was president, and the Palme d'Or, then known as the Grand Prix, was awarded to not one, but two films: Gate of Hell, directed by the Japanese filmmaker Teinosuke Kinugasa, and Viva Zapata!, from the American Elia Kazan. But a few days before the awards ceremony, the festival was rocked by a scandal that reverberates to this day.
It all happened when a group of stars were lounging around at a picnic on the Lérins Islands, a 15-minute boat ride from the Cannes harbor. They all had come together to enjoy the sea air, the sunshine, and a game of pétanque. Simone Silva, an actor based in Britain with French and Italian heritage, was among them; she'd recently been elected that year's Miss Festival, a title that had existed since the very first Cannes in 1946. (The title was given out until 1960, then returned in 2017 before being retired again.)
Silva had curly hair trimmed below the cheeks, soft eyes, and a carefree smile. She was known for her roles in John Gilling's Escape by Night and Compton Bennett's Desperate Moment. A few months before the start of the festival, she had divorced Briton James Silver, to whom she had been married for eight years.
But on April 3, 1954, her reputation collapsed. Some of the men she was with had removed their polo shirts in the spring heat; Silva, after being goaded by photographers , decided to do the same. She removed her bustier during a photo shoot that had her nestling in the arms of American actor Robert Mitchum. Her breasts were exposed to a flurry of photographers, sending shockwaves through the international press. In describing the rush to capture the images, an Australian paper would later write , "One photographer broke an arm; another a leg, and three more fell into the water and ruined their cameras."
The photographs circulated around the world, sparking a particularly harsh response in the American media—which denounced Cannes as a festival of debauchery with libertine practices. The event's organizers urged Silva to stay away from the public, horrified by the "vulgar publicity" that the photos had stirred up. Silva was kicked off the Croisette . Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, even declined to attend Cannes so that she could avoid tarnishing her reputation, and America threatened to withdraw her films from the festival.
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