It took nine tailors (1948)

GETTING THE GIRL 147 morning I told my wife to start packing; there was just time to catch the S.S. Paris back to New York. Upon my return I learned that Lasky was in New York. A meeting was arranged and I went to his office on Fifth Avenue. After considerable argument Lasky refused to give me a new contract but raised my salary to $3,000 a week. That was more than I had expected, so I was satisfied. We shook hands and made a golf date for the first Saturday he would be back in Hollywood. Paramount had never looked so good to me as it did on the day I went back to work and back on salary. It was exactly four weeks after I had walked out on my one-man strike. Lasky had told me in New York that he had no picture planned for me and that something would have to be developed. That suited me fine, because it gave me a chance to work with the writers and the director in preparing a script. When I arrived at the studio, I went straight to Walter Wanger's office. I was full of enthusiasm and anxious to get started. "How would you like to do a picture with Florence Vidor and Betty Branson?" he asked. "Fine! Great! What's the story ?" "It's a novel we have just bought from Alice Duer Miller called Are Parents People?" "What's my part like?" "You will play Betty Bronson's father." For a moment I was stunned. I was only thirty-five and they were relegating me to father parts! "If I'm Betty Bronson's father," I exploded, "then I must have been married at sixteen! Do I look like a character actor?" Walter tried to calm me down. "Why don't you talk to the director, Adolphe? Maybe we can change the story." "Who is the director?" "He's a new man we've just brought over from Warner Brothers. His name is Mai St. Clair." "St. Clair!" I exclaimed. "He's been making Rin-Tin-Tin pictures with Darryl Zanuck. He's a dog director!"