The Théâtre Itinérant de Tours presents a motoring mystery

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Gather round, folks, gather round! Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we present a grand performance at the Hotel Le Bordeaux in Tours, where the Tours Amateur Opera Society will perform for your viewing pleasure a unique version of La Traviata, sung and instrumentally accompanied by by an all-star cast of talented young actors and musicians!

Okay, honesty compels us to say that we don’t really know anything about this scene at all, so all we’ve just said is pure fiction. What we do know is that the photograph was taken in the city of Tours in the 1950s, but the occasion could be anything. A festival or carnival? A school performance? A traveling theatre company?

The few clues don’t help us much. The photographic agency Photo Neveu is hardly known to the worldwide web (an address of 30, rue Colbert in Tours is all we found), Maison Annie in Tours is more obscure still and the same may be said for Nicaud’s radio shop. Nicaud’s little camionette in the background could be just about anything, too.

Having examined everything else, we come to the main subject of the picture: the people carrier avant la lettre with its wooden wheels, acetylene gas lights and Hôtel/Restaurant Le Bordeaux banners. Other than a hotel bus of some description, what might it be? Would anyone care to tell us?

Words: Jeroen Booij; picture: Photo Neveu, source unknown
 

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