Dingo Bar

The Dingo American Bar and Restaurant at 10 rue Delambre in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France opened its doors in 1923. Most commonly referred to as the Dingo Bar, it was one of the few drinking establishments at the time that was open all night. It became the favorite haunt of the many English-speaking artists and writers who gathered in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s.

As recorded by Ernest Hemingway in his book A Moveable Feast, he first met F. Scott Fitzgerald at the Dingo Bar in late April 1925, two weeks after the publication of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Others who frequented the Dingo Bar included Aleister Crowley, Nancy Cunard and Isadora Duncan would come over from her apartment across the street.

James "Jimmie" Charters, a former English lightweight boxer from Liverpool was the highly popular barman at the Dingo and was responsible for much of its success. Charters' "This Must Be the Place; Memoirs of Montparnasse." was published in 1934, edited by Morrill Cody with an introduction by Ernest Hemingway, republished 1937, then 1989.

The premises that was home to the Dingo Bar remains but today is occupied by a restaurant.

↑ "This Must Be the Place; Memoirs of Montparnasse."

Jimmy Charters served as barman at several Parisian establishments including the Dingo, the Falstaff, the Trois et As and the Jockey. Charters did not compose the memoir himself, but instead dictated impressions of and stories about his various clients to a stenographer hired by his collaborator Morrill Cody, an American journalist (and later cultural liaison) who also participated in Left Bank expatriate circles. According to Cody, Charters undertook the memoir at the urging of American artist Hilaire Hiler, who served as Charters' initial ghost writer before he (Hiler) persuaded Cody to take over. The resultant text first appeared as "This Must Be the Place; Memoirs of Montparnasse by Jimmy the Barman (James Charters) ; edited by Morrill Cody ; with an introduction by Ernest Hemingway ; illustrated by Ivan Opffer and Hilaire Hiler," published in England by Herberbert Joseph Ltd. in 1934. Lee Furman brought out an American edition in 1937. Hugh Ford, who wrote the forward for the 1989 Collier Books reprint, recounts that Hemingway agreed so long as he liked the contents. Hemingway looked over an early and rough version of the text with Cody and Charters at Shakespeare and Company while on his way from Key West to Africa in November 1933. Hemingway then mailed his introduction from Nairobi, Kenya in January 1934.

Note, P.30, 'Writing Communities: Aesthetics, Politics, and Late Modernist Literary ...' - Elspeth Egerton Healey, 2008

ISBN: 9781243582416