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174 IT TOOK NINE TAILORS
We had a date for luncheon at a speak-easy— a place called Moriarity's. By the time we arrived there the coats weighed a ton. We wanted to get rid of them but we hesitated to entrust them to the checkroom, so we went into a huddle to discuss the situation. After all, this place was operating illegally; at any moment it was likely to be raided by prohibition agents. If that happened, our coats might be in serious jeopardy.
"You're an authority on clothes," said Mai. "Is it proper to wear a fur-lined overcoat into a speak-easy dining room?"
" Only," I assured him, " when it is not covered by insurance." So we took our coats with us to the dining room just in case we needed to make a fast getaway.
Clothes have always had a wonderful influence on my physical well-being as well as my self-assurance. All I have to do to make me feel like a new and younger man is to order three new suits of clothes. My fur-lined overcoat gave me such a glow of health that very shortly after acquiring it I was able to enjoy the hazards of a Gargantuan studio cocktail party without a single twinge of pain.
Paramount tossed this magnificent party in true Hollywood style, and when a studio pays for a big cocktail party, it expects to get value received. In this case it was publicizing my next picture and hoped to get free literary advice from a famous Armenian author. It probably got plenty of publicity, but nobody ever got anything free from an Armenian author.
I was the publicized host and Michael Arlen was the guest of honor. The studio had just purchased Arlen's The Ace of Cads as a vehicle for me. It had wanted him to write the scenario for the picture, but he was booked for passage back to England and already had a pocketful of moving-picture money, so he refused to accept the assignment. Somebody around the studio got the bright idea that if Arlen were wined and dined he could be induced to discuss his story and might, in an unguarded moment, disclose valuable information as to just how he, the master storyteller, visualized his saga on the screen.