Picture of the Month - September 2025

The Rowe Sisters, Paris 1929 — Photograph by Victor Console

This wonderfully exotic photograph captures the Rowe sisters — twins who performed as dancers in Paris during the 1920s. The image was taken by Victor Console, a photographer working in Paris for the Daily Mail.

Revolutionising the Daily Mail in France

While visiting the south of France, Console noticed that British newspapers often arrived a day late. Determined to change this, he arranged for the first edition printing plates of the Daily Mail to be couriered from London to Paris. There, local presses produced the newspaper for French distribution — giving the Daily Mail a ten-hour advantage over its rivals.

His drive and ingenuity pushed circulation on the Continent to nearly 500,000 copies a day, while during WWI the paper’s readership in Britain sometimes soared to five million copies daily.

Console worked in Paris until the city fell in 1940, covering major events such as the arrival of Charles Lindbergh, the Spanish Civil War, and the vibrant world of Parisian fashion and theatre. In 1932, he was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for his coverage of the war in Bulgaria.

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caption: Victor Console, Daily Mail photographer (c) is pictured in Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War.  Also named in the caption is Harold Cardoza  .

The Rowe Sisters: The “Greyhounds of Paris”

Among Console’s archive is the striking 1929 photograph of Pauline and Betty Rowe, twin dancers whose energetic performances earned them the nickname “the Greyhounds of Paris.” Their nationality is still uncertain — they may have been English or American — but their popularity in France was undeniable.

Their success soared after a performance at the Alhambra in Brussels, with Parisian newspapers reporting that the city was “eagerly awaiting the return of the Rowe Sisters after their success transformed them into stars.”

Although glamorous, the sisters never quite reached headline billing. Their act came to an end when Betty Rowe married French actor and singer Henri Garat, one of France’s brightest stars of the 1930s.

Betty Rowe and Henri Garat

Betty and Garat met by chance on a train returning from the French Riviera and married soon after. Their union, however, was troubled. Garat’s matinee idol looks, immense wealth, and irresistible charm made him a magnet for women, and his restless lifestyle was at odds with Betty’s hopes for marriage.

Their relationship lasted five years, during which Betty appeared alongside him in the 1934 film Prince de Minuit, as well as in small walk-on roles in two other movies.

According to later accounts, Garat’s dazzling stardom dimmed under the weight of cocaine use, philandering, failed marriages (including to a so-called “Russian countess”), fraud, and financial ruin. Though once celebrated as France’s leading film idol, his life ended tragically. Supported in his final years by the charity La Roue Tourne, Garat resorted to working in circuses and minor theatres where audiences barely recognised him. He died in poverty in 1959, aged just 57.

Final Years

Victor Console himself did not live to witness these later events. He died in 1941, in a nursing home in Cornwall, leaving behind an extraordinary body of work documenting early 20th-century Europe — including the glamorous yet fleeting brilliance of the Rowe Sisters.