The morning of Christmas Day arrived, and under the tinseled branches of the Christmas tree, among the traditional litter of ribbon, paper and squeals of infant joy, performing the offices of Père Noël which the senior years of his life had so unexpectedly and fortuitously thrust upon him, Grandpère grew rosy with delight.
When one o’clock came round, his appetite whetted by the morning’s domestic excitements, he took his place at the head of the table and the rest of us disposed ourselves in an eager and hungry circle around him. When the soup had been served and its dishes cleared away, Josephine brought in with a flourish and set before him as the climax of the day, the triumphant bird. And in due time she capped the climax by placing before him the impeccable pie.
Now, while Pierre and the ominivorous children regaled themselves with these superlative dishes, and the nurse, who was Alsatian, rewarded them with a lively eye and an appreciative fork, my own satisfaction was not complete. Although there never was a more perfectly chosen turkey in this world, nor more perfectly cooked, not better presented, and although there never was a finer mince pie, nor served at more precisely the temperature at which a mince pie tastes best, neither bird nor pie pleased Père Noël. He barely tasted the first, and his single, hesitant forkful of the second elicited from him only the murmured comment, “Intéressant.” Wherein had I failed?
Alas, it appears that with infinite care and tenderest foresight I had confronted Père Noël with the very first mince pie of his life and the first Christmas Turkey of his eighty-one years. In old Nice, it turns out (and I do think I may be forgiven for not having guessed), traditional Yuletide menu is—chicken and ravioli. As might be expected, I went into seclusion after that.
I emerged, eventually, for the celebration of the New Year, telling myself that a quiet dinner in one of Nice’s better bistros could not possibly hold for me the slightest danger of disaster. I had not counted on my unlimited resourcefulness. As the headwaiter pulled out our table at the banquette on the left, I slid behind it to take the place furthest along the wall. Pierre instantly grabbed my hand, pulled me back and, rounding the table’s other end, took the place I’d aimed for. I sat down stunned. What gaffe had I committed this time?
“Don’t you know,” said Pierre, “that a man always seats a lady on his right? In a restaurant, if he places her on his left, it’s a signal to all his friends that she’s the type he doesn’t care to introduce!”
Now I am emphatically for respect and all that. But there are times and places where I think Pierre carries the rule too far. I just can’t stand the righthand side of the bed.
A lot of people have asked me from time to time whether or not I’ve become an expatriate. My first reaction to that question is a strong impulse to whip out my Smith & Wesson and drill them full of apertures. It always sounds as if they’ve said ex-patriot. And of course you can’t say a thing like that to the mother of a half-Texan. In our family we remember the Alamo.
But I will say that bringing up a full-blooded American, half-Texan boy, who speaks English like Charles Boyer, and inculcating in him his American heritage far from the native land, does pose problems. To do it well requires a certain effort and an organized plan.
First, you decorate his room with photos and miniatures of as many ancestors as you can muster up out of his paternal archives. Over the radiator you range his Great-great-grandmother Norton in her widow’s weeds, surrounded by her small daughters, and you explain that all five of them were in Atlanta during The Burning. Over the mantelpiece you hang his great-great-grandfather, Dr. Benjamin Briggs Goodrich, who not only attended the wounded during Texas’ fight for independence but who signed in a flourishing hand the very declaration of that independence itself, as well as the Constitution of the Republic of Texas. You mention that you are sorry not to have a photo of his Great-great-uncle John who, of course, actually fell at the Alamo with Davy Crockett and all those other friends of John Wayne. Next to the doctor, naturally, you place his wife, Great-great-grandmother Serena, and under them their son Briggs, who was Attorney General of the Territory of Arizona, and very fast with his Smith & Wesson, so they say. Above your son’s desk you suspend the very latest model United States flag with every last star in place, and, out of respect for the boys in gray as well as the boys in blue, you hang beneath it the red field and crossed, star-studded bands of the Flag of the Confederacy. You are now ready for the Comprehensive Historical Sketch.
You start with the adventures of Eric the Red, Columbus, and the founders of the Jamestown settlement, passing on through the landing of the Pilgrims, the formation of the thirteen colonies, the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, George Washington, the Father of Our Country, whose statue is conveniently located in the center of the Place d’Iena, and Benjamin Franklin, whose statue is conveniently located near the Place de Trocadero, and you continue on down through the decades to the present, always emphasizing the principles of liberty for which we stand, the original model of the statue of which is conveniently located in the middle of the Seine.
In the meantime, your son, in his quiet infant way, is busy steeping himself in modern American culture. But it takes you a while to realize that his passionate attachment to the character whose name you understand to be Mie Quai Mousse and whose adventures appear in illustrated magazine form at every Paris kiosk on every Thursday, is, indeed, a devotion to none other than our very own Mickey Mouse.
However, learning of your patriotic task, and to make it easier and carry it a step further, friends from the homeland send, every Christmas and every birthday, volumes depicting the lives of great American heroes, great personages in the political and literary development of our country. You read these aloud to your son, cozily, through the summer vacation, the Christmas vacation, and the Easter vacation, and get quite an education yourself.
However, in my case, I’ve discovered that not every vaunted figure of American fame, no matter how carefully he may have been chosen by the publishers of boys’ books, is really the ideal influence for your fledgling patriot ’way over here on a foreign shore. There is only one hero, indeed, whom I have found to be perfectly flawless, and a boys’ study of whose life I can recommend without hesitation or reservation. And I’m really an authority, too, for I’ve read that life out loud exactly eleven times.
The hero of whom I am speaking is Robert E. Lee. He never, absolutely never, did anything wrong. He always told the truth, was a whizz at his studies, was nice to his mother, did the household shopping without complaint, and once, at the age of ten, when he lost five pennies on the way to market, he devised a geometrical technique for recovering them, and found every single cent. He had even freed his slaves long before the War Between the States, and the reason why he chose to defend the South was the logical fact that he lived there.
Now, Andrew Jackson, I am sad to say, does not stand the test. As you read aloud in hushed tones the story of this legendary figure, once President of our fair land, you come abruptly across all that horseracing. You try hurdling that chapter by passing instantly to the next, but your boy is too quick for you and reins you up short. You try to make yourself unintelligible by stepping up your gait to a fast canter, but beagle Ben asks you to pace the course over again. As his eyes gleam, you shudder, for he has the exalted look of a boy who has found his ideal, a boy who is about to pattern himself. Long before you reach the end of the book you find your son lying on the floor with the Herald Tribune, not engaged, as has been his habit, in a total concentration on the comic page, but in a fascinated study of the page adjoining. He is utterly absorbed by the mad excitements of the high jumps and the low of the United States Stock Exchange.
As you rapidly recite the last page of The Life of Andrew Jackson, you close the book firmly and immediately pick up The Life of Mark Twain, hoping to erase as quickly as possible the impression which the political figure has made by imposing vividly upon it the image of the literary one.
Alas, you hav
e gone from bad to very much worse. Mark Twain hated his studies and loved to play truant. Your son’s eyes develop that gleam of adulation all over again, and your voice goes hollow as you lead yourself further and further into the mire, trying to recover the situation by commenting with your false, nervous laugh, “Such a silly boy, isn’t he, when studies are so much fun, aren’t they?” You plow doggedly on because you know you will make Mark Twain infinitely more interesting if you abruptly stop reading as if you were afraid of something.
But the damage has been done. Maximum damage. Your son’s next report card comes home with the following notation from the headmaster: “Benjamin essaye à faire l’école buissonière—” (“Benjamin tries to play hooky.”) We know whose fault that is, don’t we?
On his next vacation you decide that the very best thing you can do is reread out loud the Life of Robert E. Lee. So, once again, you get him to take an hour’s rest in the afternoon with the argument that boys grow faster when they’re lying down. You then seat yourself in his plaid armchair and begin reading the story of that great gentleman, that boon to mothers far from the native shore, Robert E.
As you proceed you look hopefully to see if Benjamin’s eyes are a-shine again. Just as you reach the place where Robert has decided he wants to go to West Point, you think you detect the hint of a glow in his orbs. You plunge into the chapter which follows with full animation, reading with vivid expression, making the whole experience sound thrillingly interesting, desirable, emulation-worthy. When you finish, you look up and find Ben gazing at you with speculation and expectation. And you realize what you’ve done. You have just given an Academy Award rendition of the account of how Robert’s mother, her heart beating with proud encouragement, personally urged her son to go all the way to Washington to call on the Secretary of War; of how she, personally, went to see the one person of influence among their acquaintances whose letter of introduction would insure the Secretary of War’s receiving Robert once he got there; and once he did get there, how she, personally, canvassed all their friends, acquaintances and neighbors of note to write the character references which the Secretary had asked for; and how, indeed, her magnificent personal efforts helped to bring about the realization of her son’s dearest wish, his appointment to West Point. You are aghast. Especially as Benjamin now confides that he has, indeed, just decided that his new, deep, solemn ambition is to go to West Point.
What can you do? It is clear what you must do. You have succeeded in getting your son back on the safe and narrow—for the moment he has forgotten Andrew Jackson, and the memory of Mark Twain has been obliterated; you must at all costs grasp the nettle firmly and confirm your son in the image and the footsteps of the virtuous, the righteous, the admirable Robert E. Lee. You then say, “Ben, if it’s West Point you want, you know that Mother will do everything possible to see that you get that appointment. But you know, too, don’t you, that Robert’s grades in all his subjects were especially high ones, particularly so in arithmetic? Therefore, you must now, when you go back to school, do everything in your power to see that your own grades measure up to his, and do all that is necessary to make yourself eligible for West Point.” He says with new resolution and decision that he will. His next report card nearly floors you. He has “Très bien” in everything. Including conduct. Robert was also a very good boy, as we know.
At this moment you realize with fresh awareness the acuteness of your situation. You are about to leave for the United States of America for the exploitation of a film you’ve made and the title of which at such a time as this strikes you as painfully apropos—The Proud Rebel. It is perfectly clear what your additional and, indeed, primary responsibility will be when you set foot on American soil. You must, without any question at all, emulate the mother of Robert E. Lee. Your eyes may gleam at this realization, but it is not with the fever of adulation, it is with the tear of desperation.
In the States luck is with you. You have a day off from the exploitation schedule to go to Washington. This is even more than Mrs. Lee ever did—she merely urged Robert to go there. Enormous good fortune finds you actually in the rear area of the White House. This again tops Mrs. Lee. Then the smiling fates cause your path to cross that of the Secretary to the Cabinet, the charming and affable Robert (there are nothing but Roberts in this story) Gray. You consider his last name, Gray, coupled with his first a good omen. If he’d been Robert Blue things would not have augured well.
Graciously, Mr. Gray asks you if you would like to see where the Cabinet meets. This is almost exactly what you do want, and you almost tread on Mr. Gray’s heels as you follow him breathlessly into the Cabinet Room. It is empty. Empty of the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Air Force, the Secretary of the Navy, and of the Secretary of Defense. Empty of all the Secretaries. Of course, it is only the Secretary of Defense in whom you are interested as you assume it is he who has replaced Mrs. Lee’s Secretary of War. And the Secretary of the Army might do in a pinch.
You ask Mr. Gray if you might just for a second sit in the chair of the Secretary of Defense. He permits you to, and you do feel a little closer to the situation upon doing so. But it is not, after all, quite close enough. You know that if Mrs. Lee had got this far, she would have seen to it that the Secretary was in the chair, and she seated next to it. Mr. Gray is somewhat mystified by your curious absorption in the chair of the Secretary of Defense and, though he is too discreet to say so, would clearly like to know the explanation. You turn a tragic eye on him and explain that you have the solemn responsibility of investigating the steps and procedures necessary to obtain for your brilliant son, whose heart is determined to sacrifice itself in the service of his country, an appointment to West Point. “Oh,” says Mr. Gray, “if it’s information about West Point that you need, right here in the White House we have a military adviser, Colonel Schultz, who would be just the man to counsel you. Shall I find out if he can see you?” Your “yes” fairly leaps down his ear.
Colonel Schultz is able to see you a few minutes later, and down you go to his office, giving the Secretary of Defense’s chair a little knock for good luck as you leave the Cabinet Room. Colonel Schultz is an angel. Well, he is already wearing wings on his shoulders, which may have something to do with it. What happens next…well, perhaps we should let Leonard Lyons and the Reader’s Digest, who heard about it, tell the rest:
On a trip to Washington, film star Olivia de Havilland confided to the President’s aide, Col. Robert L. Schultz (Robert Lee Schultz, perhaps?): “I have a son who wants to go to West Point.” The Colonel nodded. “He has an aptitude for engineering,” the screen star continued. The Colonel nodded again and asked about the applicant’s school grades. “He has an A-plus average,” she said. The Colonel, impressed, inquired about the applicant’s extracurricular interests, and she told him, “He’s working on a missile which will prevent other missiles from reaching their targets.”
The Colonel quickly reached for a pencil and paper. “What’s his name and age?”
“His name is Benjamin Briggs Goodrich,” said Miss de Havilland. “He’s eight and a half.”
First published in 1962, Every Frenchman Has One humorously recounted Olivia de Havilland’s first years in Paris in the 1950s. Despite her early skirmishes with the French people, French customs, and the French language, she’s lived there ever since. In May 2016, on the occasion of her forthcoming centennial birthday, Miss de Havilland reflected on the book, and what she’s learned during her sixty-plus years in the City of Light.
From Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris to Stanley Donen’s Charade and beyond, Paris has been the site of many memorable films over the years. What is it about the city that makes it so irresistible to Hollywood (and to foreigners, in general)?
To begin with, Paris is a low city with a wide spacious sky above it.
Many of its buildings are ancient, historic, palatial, and beautiful. Furthermore, most of them are faced with luminous, creamy, Parisian limesto
ne. Even my little house, built only a century and a half ago and made of brick, possesses a façade of this lovely material. With wonderful attentiveness, the city requires that these pleasing and ubiquitous exteriors be cleansed every ten years.
There are parks everywhere, creating further open spaces. As does the river Seine, which winds its way through the city, contributing its own special charm wherever it goes.
There are also beautiful squares, like the Place Vendôme, built in 1702 and designed by the great architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart.
A favorite thoroughfare of mine is the Avenue Foch, a broad residential street lined with lawns, flower beds, shrubs, trees, narrow auxiliary throughways, and attractive dwellings. It begins at the Arc de Triomphe, commissioned by Napoleon in honor of the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and, in wonderful contrast, ends in a forest: le Bois de Boulogne.
A love of nature is evident everywhere in this city which has everything to appeal to one’s imagination and all one’s senses.
Could this explain its appeal to Minnelli, Donen, Hollywood in general, and strangers everywhere?
Did you ever visit Paris as a child? If so, how did the experiences of your youth compare to those of your adult years?
Alas, I never did visit Paris during my childhood.
However, when I was five years old my mother did teach me a little French child’s song. It had something to do with having in one’s right hand a rose.
Years later, when my own daughter, Gisèle, was the same age, I found among the books that friends had given her a collection of French songs for children. Within its pages I came across the very song my mother taught me—the one about having in one’s right hand a rose.
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