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THE EXPATRIATES
fighters. Gregory Peck and Kirk Douglas found themselves French wives. Grace Kelly found happiness with a prince in Monte Carlo. Darryl F. Zanuck found happiness in the Casino at Cannes.
What particularly interested me was not so much what they had all found in Europe, but what, by implication, they had all failed to find in Hollywood. Humphrey Bogart had told me — and he was a man of sensitivity and culture — that in Beverly Hills he was lacking in none of the necessities of civilised life. But from my own observations I felt sure that something was lacking there.
It is true that everything you could want is available : there is no shortage of brilliant conversationalists : there is no lack of impressive scenery : there is even, if you want it, an abundance of squalor in the seamier parts of Los Angeles. Yet something is lacking.
The atmosphere is enervating to the visitor, claustrophobic to the resident. As an alien in the place, I found myself living at a much more leisurely pace than in London. Hollywood had the same effect on me as a sedative — the kind of sedative that could become a bad habit. I felt uncharacteristically tranquil.
Living one's whole life in Hollywood must, I suspect, feel rather like being a bee trapped in a honey jar. After such an abundance of honey, the garlic flavour of Europe must have come as a welcome change to many of the stars.
Initially there were other incentives, in addition to the purely spiritual ones, for leaving Hollywood. A law designed to encourage men to work in uncongenial jobs in remote parts of the world had been passed in America. It stipulated that anyone living outside the United States for longer than a given period would be exempt from paying income-tax. The film accountants immediately saw in this law (the law has now been changed and stars
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