Bardot going bust?
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:
French actress-turned-
activist Brigitte Bardot has fired
longtime Brigitte Bardot Foundation
head Liliane Sujansky, replacing
her with antivivisectionist Stephane
Charpentier at the recommendation
of her husband of 18 months,
Bernard d’Ormale––a close friend
and advisor to Jean-Marie Le Penn,
head of the far-right National Front
Party. Contributions to the founda-
tion have fallen by two-thirds since
the marriage. Most of the falloff is
attributed to the cancellation of four
episodes of the foundation’s S.O.S.
Animaux television program after
Bardot denounced the slaughter of
sheep during the Islamic feast of Aid
el Kebir in terms many members of
the substantial French North African
community considered racist.
The loss of revenue came just after the
foundation spent $256,000 in
December 1993 to set up a no-kill
shelter. Bardot, 59, set up her
foundation in 1987 by auctioning off
$513,000 worth of personal posses-
sions, and has mortgaged her
Riviera home to keep it solvent. She
denies sharing her husband’s views.
“He is interested in politics; I am
interested in animals,” she told
Nicholas Powell of the London
Observer. “I argue with Bernard. I
think the National Front is too
extremist. But I am forced to wear a
ticket which is not mine. If these
rumors do me too much harm, we
will have to separate, and I think it
is unjust to have to spend my last
years alone.”
