Entering the bougainvillea-covered entrance to Club 55 at lunchtime last July 4, I was looking forward to the annual American Independence Day celebration that was always held at this iconic restaurant.
As usual, the whole of the outdoor venue was a riot of stars and stripes. American flags fluttered from the rafters and waved from the middle of each table.
Then I noticed something was not quite right. In place of Patrice de Colmont, the energetic and good-looking host who could normally be seen greeting and seating the day’s patrons, was his sister Veronique.
‘Where’s Patrice?’ I asked her.
‘He’s not too well,’ she replied, ‘He’s in the back of the restaurant — you can see him. We don’t tell many, but he would love to see you.’
I went back and what I encountered took me by surprise. Patrice had always been a dynamic and powerful personality, with a lion’s mane of hair and that genuine perma-tan that one only gets by being a true outdoors man.
What sat in his place was a frail old man who was struggling to stand up. Yet his magnetism and his beautiful smile remained undimmed as we greeted each other.
And so, when I heard he had died last week at the age of 77, the memories flooded back, not only of celebrating Independence Day, but of all the lunches I had enjoyed at 55.
It all began when the de Colmont family cooked lunch every day in their tiny beach hut for Brigitte Bardot and Roger Vadim’s film unit when they turned up to make the film And God Created Woman on what would end up as the most famous of all the Riviera’s beaches.
After the film crew left, the de Colmont family decided to keep making lunch but invite only those they knew, and so Bernard de Colmont created Le Club 55.
It was called 55 because it all happened in 1955, and ‘Club’ because de Colmont only wanted to serve people he liked.
Club 55 not only became the trendiest go-to place for lunch on the whole of the Cote d’Azur but the most sophisticated, yet effortlessly glamorous, beach club in the world, hosting heads of state and the global elite, without ever losing its unpretentious — almost primitive — allure.
It is a Mecca, not only for the denizens of Saint Tropez, but for the summer season’s visitors.
Today the hoi polloi fight to get reservations, yet Patrice de Colmont, son of the patriarch, followed his father’s example in being very choosy about whom he allowed in to sample the delicious food and the heady ambience of his little bit of heaven.
To give you an example of how difficult it was to get a table, one morning I received a call from a Hollywood superstar asking us if we were free for lunch the following day. When we said yes, he asked sheepishly: ‘Shall we go to Club 55? I couldn’t get a reservation, and I know you can’?
Patrice ran Club 55 so expertly in the high season that it maintained a turnover of at least three lunch sittings every day.
There is the 12 o’clock group, mostly toddlers, nannies and kids; the two o’clock group, mostly regulars; and the afternoon crowd who stumble in from their gin palaces after four o’clock to have fun until the sun and their hangovers settle. More than just a restaurant, it is true ‘theatre’.
I first went to Club 55 shortly after it opened. In the 1960s, the American Hollywood actress Natalie Wood and I stayed at the nearby Tahiti Plage, with my two toddlers Tara and Sacha.
Leaving them to frolic in the sands with nanny, Natalie and I would deck ourselves out in the St Tropez fashions of the day—denim shorts, bikini top, multiple colorful scarves and pareos (a sort of wraparound skirt) and tons and tons of necklaces and bracelets. We usually topped it all off with massive earrings and either a trendy head covering or a straw hat.
We noticed Patrice, then the young son of Bernard, helping his father in the restaurant.
‘He’s very good looking’, giggled Natalie as we sat drinking their vin de maison Petale de Rose and checking out the other guests.
Cher was one of them, holding court and also wearing an ultra-chic bohemian outfit. Many thought Patrice was the best-looking boy on the beach, and he held this ranking for decades.
During the 1980s, 55 thrived and it became impossible to get a reservation unless Patrice knew and liked you. He disliked drunks but he didn’t mind smokers, even cigar smokers, which I hated.
As the spring days turn warmer, the anticipation of going to Club 55 is akin to the advent of Christmas, and although technically it was not a club, it felt like it because all of one’s friends were there lunching on their superb artichoke vinaigrette or loup de mer.
On any given day you can see stars of stage and screen, heroes of the playing field or titans of business.
On one recent memorable day this last summer we were surrounded by the Spanish Formula One driver Carlos Sainz, the American basketball great LeBron James, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his scantily clad new wife, and recent Oscar winner for The Brutalist, Adrien Brody, who very sweetly came over to say ‘Hi’. I told him he obviously needed to make more movies whose titles ends in ‘ist’ since his previous Oscar was for The Pianist.
Jack Nicholson was a frequent customer, arriving by speed boat at the jetty, grinning his famous smile and smoking … not sure what … followed by several acolytes.
Another icon who regularly lunches at Club 55 once or twice a year is Elton John with his husband David Furnish. He would always arrive in a sleek motorboat with several celebrity friends. After lunch he would return to his villa in Nice, leaving in his wake his hilarious anecdotes and gracious charm.
Harvey Weinstein often lunched there during the Cannes Film Festival in May. He wore the filthiest sneakers and T-shirts, and watching him slobber his spaghetti was a revolting sight.
In the 1980s, I’d often lunch with Roger Moore, his wife Luisa and their children, who were around the same age as mine.
Luisa was Italian and feisty and extremely possessive.
Roger, then at the height of his James Bond fame, was like catnip to women, lots of whom would sidle up asking for a photo or an autograph. He would always oblige, but Luisa was having none of it.
After Roger, the model of a polite gentleman, had stood up, oozing his fabled charm, to indulge an admirer one time too many for his wife, Luisa hit him on the shoulder with her napkin and hissed at him in Italian to stop flirting.
‘I wasn’t flirting, he protested, ‘I was just being polite’. At which Luisa hit him again, this time with a hard-sided Gucci handbag.
One celebrity who impressed me tremendously with his cool attitudes and polite manners was Johnny Depp. Percy and I had joined him for lunch with my friend, the producer Mike Medavoy, at a long table full of what looked like Hollywood ‘suits’.
Depp had recently had massive success with Pirates of the Caribbean and was extremely popular with the younger generation.
I watched in admiration, and some awe, as all the youngsters at 55 queued up to have a selfie with their hero and he, like gentleman Roger Moore, obliged every single one with a smile and never sat down to eat a bite.
More often than not, however, celebrities are left in peace and not asked for selfies or autographs. Hence, I was most surprised when one suspected fan lunged at me across my table and swiped my hat off my head.
I was seated next to Piers Morgan who, with cat-like reflexes, grabbed the wrist of the aggressor. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded (he can be quite imposing that way).
The poor lady who had perpetrated this act pleaded in a terrified voice: ‘I was just trying to save her from the poisonous caterpillar that landed on her hat …’
In summer, St Tropez can be rife with the ‘pine processionary’ — a caterpillar that can cause a terrible skin reaction and one of them had landed on my hat.
Piers was pleased. ‘I saved your life,’ he crowed for the rest of the day.
Club 55 is also a favorite with many Americans. When Percy and I first moved to New York in the early 2000s we received an invitation from the wife of an American mega billionaire to attend his 55th birthday. ‘Dress Club 55’, said the invitation.
‘It’s February,’ I said to Percy, ‘We’ll freeze!’ But of course I donned on my heaviest winter overcoat on top of my floatiest, frilliest dress and went, taking our friend Kenneth Branagh, who had asked us out for dinner.
He was as dumbfounded as we were upon seeing this gorgeous penthouse Park Avenue apartment done up like Club 55. There was sand on the floor, palm trees and tropical flowers in abundance and a set of backdrops painted with the skyline of St Tropez.
Everyone was dressed to kill in Riviera gear, the rosé was flowing and the French music made us feel as if we were back in summer.
‘Why did you want to do this?’ I asked the host.
‘I’m crazy for Club 55’, he replied, doffing one of his most prized possessions — his Club 55 baseball cap. ‘There’s no place like it in New York and since I’m turning 55, why not?’
There certainly is no place like Club 55, and no one like the great, gentle man and brilliant host Patrice de Colmont. Mav he rest in peace, but may Club 55 continue to give us fabulous memories for many more years.
Joan Collins is an English actress, author, and columnist
