We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
146 IT TOOK NINE TAILORS
born in Pittsburgh. They exchanged horrified glances. All Paris, they informed me excitedly, believed that I was a Frenchman— in fact, all patrons of the cinema in France had been led to believe by the distributors of American pictures that I was a citizen of France. Furthermore, if I was an American, how could I speak French so fluently and without a trace of accent?
My father was French, I told them, and I had spoken French ever since I was a child. This seemed to help a bit, but I could tell that they were disappointed in my belief that I was an American. The articles they wrote about me later somehow conveyed the impression that I was only temporarily sojourning in the United States and would one day return to my fatherland to take up my rightful position in the French theater. Even today most French picture fans are under the impression that I am a Frenchman.
We went to the hotel and I inquired casually for cable messages from the United States. There were none. Next morning there was still no cablegram from the United States. I began to grow exceedingly despondent; I was on strike, but nobody back at Paramount seemed to be worried about it.
With grim determination I tried to put pessimistic thoughts from my mind. My wife and I went on a wild cultural orgy. We visited the Louvre, the Palace of Versailles, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Fontainebleau, the Tuileries, the Eiffel Tower.
When five days had elapsed, I lay awake most of that night pondering my position. I was thousands of miles from Hollywood and the motion-picture stages. Nobody was begging me to come back and no money was coming in. It seemed to me that already I must be forgotten in the moving-picture business. And it was a business that I loved, for an actor must act or he is unhappy.
Suddenly I realized that my strike was a bust; I was one lone star against all those others who were still busy making pictures for Paramount. The company would go right on making pictures, and soon I would be as forgotten as last week's newspaper. Next