Mariette Hélène Delangle (1900–1984), better known by her stage name Hellé Nice, was a French dancer and motor racing driver. She danced in Paris at the Hôtel Ritz, Olympia Hall and Casino de Paris, before her career was ended by a skiing accident. She became a racing driver, using roadster cars built by companies such as Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, DKW, Ford, Hispano-Suiza, Renault and Rosengart. She competed in various Grand Prix motor racing, hillclimbing and rally events at a time when it was rare for a woman to do so. She won the Grand Prix Féminin and the Actor's Championship in 1929. Already famous in Paris, she became a household name in France in the early 1930s and raced as an exhibition dirt track driver for a season in the United States.
Nice won the Rallye Paris – Saint-Raphaël Féminin in 1932 with Odette Siko. Racing was a dangerous profession in which some of her friends and lovers died. In 1949, the racing driver Louis Chiron accused Nice without evidence of being a Gestapo agent in World War II. The allegation ruined her planned comeback and her partner eventually left her. She lived her last years in poverty and estranged from her family, supported by the charity . She died in Nice in 1984. A 2005 biography The Bugatti Queen: In search of a motor-racing legend by Miranda Seymour rehabilitated her reputation and her grave was marked by a plaque in 2010.
Early life
Mariette Hélène Delangle was born on 15 December 1901, to Alexandrine Estelle and Léon Aristide Delangle. Her father worked as the postman in Aunay-sous-Auneau, a village 40 miles from Paris. At three years old, she witnessed the 1903 Paris–Madrid race passing near to Aunay at Bourdinière. In 1915, she moved to Sainte-Mesme with her mother and three years later, she moved to Paris, living in rented apartments near Avenue des Ternes in the 17th arrondissement for the next decade. She worked as a nude model for artist René Carrère and performed as a dancer. Two years later, whilst skiing offpiste at Megève, she injured the cartilage in her knee. She did perform again after taking a year to recover, but she decided to switch to motor racing, taking morphine for the pain.
Racing
Nice entered her first women's Grand Prix motor racing event in June 1929 (the Grand Prix Féminin), racing against Aniela d'Elern, Dominique Ferrand, Violette Morris and Lucy O'Reilly Schell. She was mentored by Mongin and trained hard, driving ten laps a day of the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry; at the wheel of an Oméga-Six car, she came first. The next day, she was invited to the Bugatti showroom on Avenue Montaigne in order to discuss driving a Type 43A roadster in the Actor's Championship. She met drivers Guy Bouriat and Albert Divo, and won the championship. She also won the race at Le Touquet in a 1928 Rosengart. She signed a sponsorship deal with Lucky Strike cigarettes and bought herself a yacht and a black Hispano-Suiza car.
Ettore Bugatti invited her to drive a Type 35 in speed trials at the Montlhéry circuit, advised by Bouriat and Divo. In December, she recorded a speed of 196.871 km/h over 5 km (with a best lap at 197.7 km/h (123.56 mph)). At the time she was having an affair with Bruno, Count of Harcourt who was married to Princess Isabelle of Orléans. She bought one of the cars she had used in the time trials for 40,000 francs and travelled to the Moroccan Grand Prix in Casablanca where she hoped to spend time with the count. He died after crashing in practice and she withdrew from the race. She raced in the Grand Prix Bugatti on the Le Mans Bugatti Circuit, coming third out of three behind Max Fourny and Juan Zanelli. At the Stade Buffalo in Montrouge, Paris, she fell off a motorcycle then jumped up and took a bow.
Poster for the 1932 [[Rallye Paris – Saint-Raphaël Féminin|alt=Poster with a racing car and the French words "Paris Vichy St.Raphael – 24–28 Fev. 1932 – IVieme concours de tourisme feminin"|thumb|right]]
Nice had become a household name in France and capitalising on her fame, she toured the United States in 1930. She practiced dirt track racing at Harrington Park, New Jersey and was paid $200 per event as an exhibition driver. Her first appearance was in Woodbridge and she was nicknamed the "Speedbowl Queen", gaining a sponsorship deal with Esso. Promoters told her she was the first woman to race cars in the US; Joan la Costa and Elfreida Mais had done it previously, although no woman had raced on dirt tracks. Nice drove at dangerous circuits such as Langhorne Speedway where deaths frequently occurred: Bill Albertson shared tips with her and died on the Orange County Fair Speedway in 1930; her friend Herman Schurch died on a practice run at the Legion Ascot Speedway the following year. After eight weeks, she was offered a contract extension. She drove cars borrowed from other drivers, such as an American-made Miller. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina she hit a pothole and crashed; her last ride was at Spartanburg, South Carolina and she holidayed in Florida before returning to Europe. The following month she came ninth in her blue Bugatti at the Grand Prix du Comminges, was the only female entrant at the Monza Grand Prix in Milan and competed in the Grand Prix on the beach at La Baule-Escoublac. Guy Bouriat, who had helped her in 1929, died at the Picardy Grand Prix. Nice won the Woman's Grand Prix again at Montlhéry and in the Coupe des Alpes came third with Roger Bonnet. The following year, at the Grand Prix de Dieppe, Nice saw her friend Jean Gaupillat crash into a tree in qualifying (he later died). She raced in the final despite women not normally being permitted to do so, coming seventh whilst competing against drivers such as Chiron, Lehoux, Etancelin and Francis Curzon, 5th Earl Howe. She also placed seventh in the Algerian Grand Prix. Whilst in hospital she was visited by President Getúlio Vargas and her lover Henri Thouvenet wrote from France to ensure she was not held responsible for the crash and received compensation. On her return to France, Nice became embroiled in a scandal over the importation of cars without paying duty and alongside other racing drivers such as Robert Brunet, Philippe Etancelin, and Raymond Sommer was convicted and ordered to pay a fine. In 1949, the noted racing driver Louis Chiron accused her of being a Gestapo agent in the war, at a party in Monaco to celebrate the first postwar Monte Carlo Rally. She was too shocked to reply at the time and she was later ostracised. Her biographer Miranda Seymour considers what the evidence could have been: a connection to Fritz Huschke von Hanstein did not prove problematic for fellow driver Anne Itier, who was known to have had an affair with him; in Nice's archives, Seymour found a picture of German General of the Cavalry Manfred von Richthofen, who had written to Nice in 1936 after her accident in Brazil, but no further link could be found; enquiries at the German Federal Archives in Berlin yielded no record of Nice having been a collaborator. Despite the allegations not being backed by facts, they were enough to deter sponsors and thus ended her racing career.
After Nice's name had fallen into obscurity, Miranda Seymour's 2005 biography The Bugatti Queen renewed interest, although Seymour has acknowledged that the book is partly speculative. In 2010, the Hellé Nice Foundation installed a plaque commemorating Nice in the graveyard.
Racing record
Career highlights
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; font-size:90%"
|-
! Season
! Series
! Position
! Co-driver
! Team
! Car
|-
!rowspan=5 | 1929
| Montlhéry Grand Prix Féminin
| 8th
|
| Mlle "Helle-Nice"
| Bugatti Type 35
|-
!rowspan=3| 1934
| Grand Prix de Dieppe
|
| Fritz Huschke von Hanstein
|
| DKW
|-
!rowspan=1| 1939
| Comminges