A Classic Affair Comes Home : Fancy Dress, Vintage Autos and All Things French Are What Pasadena’s Concours d’Elegance Is All About

Jim Hull’s love of France, the poetry within its language, Impressionists’ countrysides, wine with long lunches as a joy of life . . . well, they have become Hull’s joie de vivre.

This gentle and slender Californian prefers labels from Beaujolais over most vintages from Napa. His appreciation of French food is rooted in a curiosity for the unexpected, creative flavors of chefs’ sauces. For two decades, Hull, 55, a Malibu architect, has collected vintage automobiles of France, the Delahayes and Talbot-Lagos of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

They have driven him to Monaco and podium finishes at the principality’s 90-year-old rally and Concours d’Elegance for classic cars; an elegant week at the Rainier Invitational with men in plus fours and women in marabou-trimmed wraps at grand balls where champagne is poured into tomorrow.

And that has tugged Hull into creating and chairing Sunday’s Pasadena Concours d’Elegance, a one-day replication of the traditions, automotive aristocracy, and upper- crust ambience of the Monte Carlo event. That means a private black-tie patrons’ party in a stately home, a public champagne luncheon on a bucolic and billiard-table lawn, and a deserving and favored charity, the Pasadena Historical Museum.

“But it’s not just a car show, and I have developed this term for it: ‘Automotive Theater,’ ” explains Hull. “It has to do with the sound of the cars, the costumes of their drivers and passengers, and with everybody playing a role, especially the cars.”

So look for chairman Hull acting the part of a Bois de Boulogne boulevardier at the wheel of his pea-green Delahaye cabriolet (with swooping coach work by Henri Chaprone), which curtsied at the Paris Auto Show in 1948. He will dress for his part in linen Kangol cap, knee socks and knickerbockers, and a green houndstooth hacking jacket.

Other car owners will appear as if costumed by Goldwyn and Mayer. Silk hats representing old money, and snap-brim fedoras of those who sought quick bucks. Parasols and chiffon scarves, sweater clips and flapper dresses, and brass-buttoned yachting blazers with every garment a custom re-creation or something tugged from attics and mothballs to complement cars from the Roaring ‘20s to the Finned ‘50s.

Jewels in the mechanical crown will be a bosom-fendered 1947 Delahaye Roadster once owned by Prince Rainier III, and a 1930 Rolls-Royce Phantom II that carried King Alfonso of Spain into exile. Pasadena being Hollywood adjacent, our movie royalty will be represented by Clark Gable’s 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SC cabriolet, and Bette Davis’ 1937 Packard Dietrich convertible, a gift to the starlet from Jack Warner.

“And we’re definitely trying to re-create the spirit of the Monte Carlo event with people, very important people, accepting their part,” Hull says. That part, he adds, is a momentary dissolution of their personal importance. “In Monte Carlo, no matter who you are, no matter your title or wealth, the concours has always been something that breaks down barriers.

“It’s a way of getting to know people and having fun. The cars have the position and status, the people don’t.”

Hull’s choice of Pasadena to emulate Monaco was no great stretch. Monte Carlo is a place of old families, their expensive automobiles and racing pleasures. Wealthy Pasadena has pioneer families and their estates, and the showroom of Walter Murphy, legendary crafter of custom coach work for Duesenberg and Pierce-Arrow, still stands on Colorado Boulevard.

“The Monte Carlo event is held at an elegant location, the Hotel de Paris,” says Hull. So the Pasadena Concours d’Elegance will be staged on the back lawn of the closest equivalent: The Ritz-Carlton Huntington.

“Monte Carlo is restricted to 50 cars, all by invitation only,” says Hull. That is the rule at the Pasadena festival.

“They have eight women judges, we have eight women judges,” says Hull, including a representative of local royalty to satisfy another Monte Carlo tradition.

However, with Pasadena somewhat shy of royals, these days, the regal requirement will be filled by Holly Halsted Balthis, a Tournament of Roses queen from 1930. In addition: Bobby’dine Rodda, a journalist who writes about cars; Sally Heumann, who supervises cars as co-chairman of the veteran Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance; and Karen Meguiar, whose husband makes polishes for cars.

The celebrity judge will be Ann Miller, known more for her acting and dancing than any talent for dismantling a supercharger.

“But that doesn’t really matter,” adds Hull. “The visual representation of elegance of a particular car is going to come out. Because the expensive cars, the great cars, have more size, more chrome and more drama to their design.

“And that has a natural, universal appeal to men and women.”

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Hull--co-curator with businessman Peter Mullin of a French collection of 25 cars--came by his Francophilia honestly.

As a 19-year-old engineering student at the University of Redlands, he took a summer course in Europe and with new friends made a vacation detour to Le Man--just in time for its famed 24-hour sports car race.

“We ended up on the pit crew of a private Ferrari entry,” he recalls. The parties, the cool of the drivers, the elan of the women, were “nothing like the people I’d grown up with in Orange County. But I also remember our lunches eating French bread fresh that day, and a big round chunk of cheese with a bottle of red wine.”

This was his entre to French automobiles.

“At a time when all other cars were boxes, the French were testing aerodynamic shapes,” he says. “Seductive. That’s a good word for their flowing lines. Where we would cut fenders off, the French would move doors back, solving a fabrication problem by extending and flowing the lines.”

While poised to teach urban design at USC, Hull met a group of English architects who were designing Paris’ Pompidou Center. He visited their controversial gerbil run for humans.

“I really liked it, all the ducts and huge tubular elements of it,” he says. “It was a brave new world of architecture, as the Eiffel Tower had been years before, and a concept I really believed it.

“And the French had the courage to allow it.”

Hull was soon hooked. On trips to France and three-hour lunches that contemplated life and times. On French citizens who care for language and traditions. On the architectural plan of Paris that has seen two millenniums and will survive the next as “an elegant statement within a functional city.”

He is a member of the Talbot-Lago and Delahaye clubs of France. He has driven near-priceless antiques in vintage grand prix across Alsace and at Angouleme. Two years ago, he piloted his 1948 Talbot-Lago from Paris to Monte Carlo and tied for first place in the Ranier Invitational.

Of course he has considered a home in France.

Yet he remains an American by roots, doesn’t speak good French, and the geography of Provence isn’t much different from inland Malibu--where he has decided to build a home.

Still, part of Chez Hull will be a stone barn with arched doorways, high ceilings, and very, very French. Right down to the dead Citroen 2CV parked outside as a piece of yard sculpture.

“My piece de resistance,” smiles Hull.