Jack Hasey was a young American who talked his way into a sales position at Cartier Paris in the late 1930s. He was about twenty years old and knew nothing about jewellery, but his confidence and charm won over the branch's directors, Leon Farines and Edmond Foret, who agreed to take him on after checking his references through the Cartier New York office.
At Cartier Paris
Hasey's instinct for connecting with people quickly proved its worth. When the Hollywood actor Douglas Fairbanks walked into 13 Rue de la Paix and recognised a fellow American, the two fell into conversation about baseball. Fairbanks asked the young salesman to deliver a gift to Marlene Dietrich at her hotel. Hasey obliged, and then boldly asked Fairbanks to suggest that Dietrich visit Cartier and ask for him by name. She did, to the astonishment of his French colleagues. From that point, Hasey was given free rein with the American clientele. He also spent summers selling jewels at the Cartier branch in Cannes.
The war
When war broke out in 1939, Hasey tried to enlist in the French military but was refused on grounds of nationality. Undeterred, he formed an ambulance unit and travelled to Finland during the Russo-Finnish War, where he was hit by an explosive that shattered his right forearm. In 1940 he made his way to London to join the Free French Forces. There he encountered Bellenger, the director of Cartier London, who invited him to dinner at his home in Putney and introduced him to General de Gaulle. Hasey recalled that de Gaulle wore a khaki uniform "bare of medals and decorations" and left a deep impression on him. Bellenger warned that enlisting would likely cost him his American citizenship, but Hasey went ahead, becoming the first American soldier in the Free French Army. By September 1940, he was heading to Dakar in West Africa with de Gaulle's forces.
Hasey later wrote a memoir of his wartime experiences, Yankee Fighter: The Story of an American in the Free French Foreign Legion, published in 1944.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), pp. 365-367, 399-401
- John F. Hasey, Yankee Fighter: The Story of an American in the Free French Foreign Legion (Garden City Publishing, 1944)
