Flights and Fashion: Women Aviation Pioneers and L’Autre Aile
The felicitous restoration by the Cinémathèque française of Henri Andréani’s L’Autre Aile offered a golden opportunity to celebrate the women pioneers of French aviation. To that end, we’ve placed four Gaumont newsreels featuring the most famous early female fliers before the feature.
While we know the names of the three great French aviatrixes of the 1930s – Maryse Bastié, Maryse Hilsz, and Hélène Boucher – we tend to forget that very early on, female fliers won fame through four remarkable figures.

[LA BARONNE RAYMONDE DE LAROCHE, AVIATRICE] (FR 1920)
regia/dir: ?. photog: ?. prod: Gaumont. copia/copy: DCP, 14”; senza didascalie/no intertitles. fonte/source: Gaumont Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
In 1910, Raymonde de Laroche (real name Élise Léontine Deroche, 1882-1919) became the first woman in the world to obtain a pilot’s licence. Beginning her career on stage, she was associated with the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, Théâtre des Mathurins, and Théâtre des Variétés, among others, gracing the pages of Les Modes in dresses by Christof Drecoll. Inspired by her close friendship with pioneering aircraft manufacturer Charles Voisin, she took to the skies and quickly became a celebrity across Europe; her aerial demonstration before Tsar Nicholas II led to her being popularly called “la baronesse,” and the fake title stuck. In July 1919, the same year she set the women’s altitude record, de Laroche and her co-pilot were tragically killed when their plane went into a dive during its landing approach. This newsreel was issued the year after her death, in memory of aviation’s first female celebrity.

L’AVIATRICE MADEMOISELLE MARVINGT, DÉCOLLE DE MOURMELON (FR 1910)
regia/dir: ?. photog: ?. prod: Gaumont. copia/copy: DCP, 1’12”; did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Gaumont Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
Marie Marvingt (1875-1963), “la fiancée du danger” (“danger’s darling”), divided her time between mountain-climbing and flying. She also ably practiced swimming, cycling, horse riding, gymnastics, athletics, fencing, tennis, golf, and polo… Disguised as a man at the start of World War I, she joined the 42nd Battalion of Foot Soldiers; following discovery, she was allowed to remain at the Front thanks to the intervention of Marshal Foch, working as a nurse for the Red Cross but also participating in bombing raids over Germany, for which she received the Croix de guerre. Marvingt was also associated with Italy’s 3rd Regiment of Alpine Troops [3º Reggimento Alpini], seeing active duty in the Dolomites. Following the War, she devoted her considerable energies to developing a flying ambulance service. At the age of 80, she flew over the city of Nancy in a supersonic U.S. Air Force fighter jet, and at 86 she cycled from Nancy to Paris.

[MADAME HÉLÈNE DUTRIEU, AVIATRICE VERS 1915] (FR 1915)
regia/dir: ?. photog: ?. prod: Gaumont. copia/copy: DCP, 20”; senza didascalie/no intertitles. fonte/source: Gaumont Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
Hélène Dutrieu (1877-1961) began her career as a Belgian sports cyclist. In July 1903, in the Eldorado cabaret in Marseille, she created a high-wire bicycle act, earning the nickname “la flèche humaine” (“the human arrow”). A true acrobat, she was soon fashionably looping the loop on a motorbike until an accident in 1903 in Berlin put a hold on her stunts. Unwilling to leave the footlights, she threw herself into acting, appearing at the Théâtre des Mathurins in Paris and in regional theatres, where she developed a reputation for elegance and was associated with the couturier Bernard, who in 1910 designed a special flying outfit for her soon after her interests shifted to aviation. Not only did she become the first Belgian woman to get her pilot’s license that same year, but she also won the Coupe Femina for a non-stop flight of 167 km in 2 hours 35 minutes (in 1911, Marie Marvingt beat her record). In 1913, Dutrieu was the first aviatrix to receive the Légion d’honneur; several decades later, in 1956, she created the annual Coupe Hélène Dutrieu-Mortier, for Belgian or French woman pilots making the longest non-stop flight.

[LA VIE AÉRIENNE. SUR L’AÉRODROME D’ORLY, MADEMOISELLE ADRIENNE BOLLAND A BATTU SON PROPRE RECORD EN EXÉCUTANT 212 FOIS LE LOOPING] (FR 1924)
regia/dir: ?. photog: ?. prod: Gaumont. copia/copy: DCP, 1’02”; una didascalia/one intertitle: FRA. fonte/source: Gaumont Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
Adrienne Bolland (1895-1975) turned her attention to the skies in late 1919, getting her pilot’s license after just two months of lessons. Taken under the wing of aircraft manufacturer René Caudron, she became the first female pilot to cross the English Channel from the French side, on 25 August 1920. In 1921, she tackled the Argentine Andes, flying over the highest peak at 6962 metres – an extraordinary achievement considering the limited capabilities of her plane. Bolland became the most active and popular air acrobat in France; politically she was a committed leftist, befriending Pierre Cot, Jean Moulin, and André Malraux.

Pierre Philippe, Jay Weissberg