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This chapter discusses the start of the construction of the church promised by Legentil. It describes the basilica of the Sacré-Coeur and looks at the succession of Joseph Hippolyte Guibert as the archbishop of Paris. The chapter then studies Guibert's efforts to fix a diocese in disarray, before reviewing the vow made by Legentil. One section centers on the search for the proper site of the votive church in Paris, which posed challenges and created opportunities. The various drafts of the designs considered are discussed, one of which was Gothic. The chapter reveals that the jury chose the design of Paul Abadie, which incorporated a Romano-Byzantine style of sacred architecture. The final section focuses on the critics of the chosen design.

France's victory in the Great War against Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany was tempered by a massive loss of lives, including its flowering youth, who felt the monstrous anger of the guns at Verdun. But in 1919 the capital was poised for gaiety, and Parisians discovered America. French citizens of all ages looked to the horizons of the Atlantic for symbols of popular culture that fantasized a world divorced from the past. Also in 1919, Harlem discovered Montmartre. Like musical missionaries, black American musicians and entertainers from Harlem and other jazz capitals in the Bronzevilles of America descended on la Butte, armed with drums, horns, music scores, and gadgets to make noise.

In spite of catastrophic world events at the beginning and end of the decade, and the turmoil they caused in the music industry, the thirties were some of the richest years for jazz. On the morning of Tuesday, 29 October 1929, front-page news in Le Figaro—a brief report on the financial crisis in Wall Street—did not slow the Parisians' ritual consumption of large gulps of café au fait to wash down hunks of bread. The Wall Street crash heard by Parisians was more a squib than a great explosion but it sent shock waves throughout the community of expatriate Americans. Harlem in Montmartre was no comfort zone, no shelter from the impact of economic depression on the black entertainment community. Unlike white Americans in Paris, members of the black community had their wealth in musical and entertainment talent, not in marketable commodities or assets bought, sold, and exchanged on international monetary markets. Black jazz in Montmartre nightclubs had spread like wildfire arranged to a musical score in the age of le tumulte noir, but the popularity of making noise and stomping feet masked the precariousness of the black jazz scene, which the Great Depression now pushed to the edge of the economic abyss.

For two decades, cultural ties of music and the literary and expressive arts held together two black communities on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Black Broadway in black Paris drew almost exclusively on the music and entertainment talent of itinerant African Americans from Harlem and other Bronzevilles. Yet the Americans' popularity and success in Parisian nightclubs was also, in part, their failure. Stephen Mougin, the sometimes firebrand music critic and talented pianist, decried the shallow “Negrophilia” that fostered racial posturing over good music in the jazz nightclubs in Montmartre and Montparnasse between the wars. Under the banner of the Harlem Renaissance, Charles Johnson and Alain Locke rallied black Manhattan's musicians to the cause of economic, social, and cultural equality with white Americans, perceiving arts in general to be a crack in racism.

Barbara returns to California and is informed by Dr. C. E. Galloway that she exhibits symptoms of incipient pulmonary tuberculosis. Disregarding Galloway’s admonition that she rest, she presses ahead with the next film under her starring contract. Unwilling to continue portraying dimensionless vamp roles, she has taken a stand with her career and insisted upon playing a genuine character in a story with heart interest; she begins work onThe Girl from Montmartre (1926)—concealing her illness and frailty, and determined to make a comeback. She also consults with her attorney, confiding her conviction that Arthur Sawyer and his partner, Herbert Lubin, are cheating her financially, and endeavors to sever her contract with them. A large segment of the chapter entails Barbara’s work onThe Girl from Montmartre; the plot synopsis is presented and Barbara’s valiant struggle to complete the film, despite her advancing illness, is recounted.

As the chapter opens, Barbara’s final film, The Girl from Montmartre (1926)—-a deviation from her vamp typecasting and thought by Barbara to showcase her finest work—is released within days of her passing, eliciting an unparalleled response from the public. Details relating to critical reception of the film are provided. The chapter then delves into the myriad theories surrounding the ultimate cause of Barbara’s death, as touted by period magazines and presented by her friends and colleagues. Misperceptions shrouding her memory (including Barbara’s alleged drug use), as well as sources that spawned them, are explored and juxtaposed with commentary from those who knew her intimately. Completing the chapter is a discussion of the commemoration of Barbara’s film work by her colleagues and documentation of the survival status of the films she wrote and appeared in.