• 17 •

On the Riviera

I was on my way to Beaulieu-sur-Mer, all my portable belongings crammed into Dale’s spacious American station wagon, leaving just enough room for her to see out the rear window when we were on the road. The vehicle, with its wood sides, drew long glances from cars passing from the opposite direction, as most were much smaller (and more practical) European models. Dale had bought the car at the US Army PX in Frankfort where she purchased most of her supplies at cut-rate prices as her husband had been a major in the reserves. She also had a small Fiat but used “Gertie” (her name for the station wagon) for hauling her purchases from Germany to Gstaad. Gertie was not easy to manipulate around some of the narrow roads in the Alps, and things had a way of shifting when one had to navigate the steep inclines and downhill reverse action. But Dale was an excellent driver and was blissfully happy at the wheel. Jay would follow us in three days in the silver Beetle with his possessions, the typewriter, boxes of my scripts, supplies, and our poodle family.

April is a spectacular time in the Alps, rivulets of melted snow streaming down the lower mountains, flowers of a brilliant mix of colors only nature could create carpeting ground level, the glacier shimmering in the glare of the spring sun. Dale seemed as excited about my move as I was. Mme Jeanette de Boussieu, my new landlady (who lived in Paris) had sent me a portfolio of photographs, interior and exterior, of Villa Roquefille that had truly overwhelmed us. My new home was not quite a chateau, but the pale pink, handsomely constructed, art deco stucco facade was as stunning as any movie-star estate in Hollywood. The grounds were magnificent: sloping lawns, an orange grove, several well-located, exterior terraces, and a concealed underground staircase below the grove with thirty-nine steps (just like the Hitchcock film!) that led to the coastline of the Mediterranean.

The foyer as you entered was impressive with a many-faceted crystal chandelier, terrazzo floors, and a wide, sweeping staircase that led to the second floor. The master suite was situated across the entire front of the house. Dale translated the dimensions of the bedroom into American figures. To my astonishment, my bedroom had a ceiling eleven feet high, twenty-six feet wide, and thirty feet long. There was a comfortable sitting area in front of the fireplace and a chaise lounge near the bed (when one wanted to greet visitors in one’s boudoir, I assumed). A door connected the bedroom with a gentleman’s dressing room that included a single bed, a sink for shaving, and a very impressive built-in wardrobe for his attire (one knew this was for the man of the house, as a horizontal bar divided the hanging space for shirts and trousers). Go through another door and voila! You had entered a lady’s toilette (very Jean Harlow—mirrored dressing table and a painting on the wall of a coyly concealed lady holding a sheer blue scarf). Another door opened into a Roman-style marble bathroom, with a recessed tub that would have pleased Cleopatra. Five more bedrooms, three additional bathrooms, a walk-in linen closet, and a back staircase completed the second floor.

The salon and dining room on the ground floor were separated by a unique two-way stone fireplace. Behind the dining room was a “morning room” (I could not help thinking about the “morning room” in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca where the new Mrs. de Winter hid a broken piece of china in a desk drawer). That room would be perfect for Jay to use as an office. My landlady enclosed no photograph of the kitchen but proudly noted that there was an American refrigerator and a six-burner range. This photo gallery that I was sent went a long way in raising my spirits at a time when my second marriage was crashing and I had no idea what my immediate future held for me. At least I now knew I would be living well—and at a price that was less of an outlay than my apartment in Beverly Hills had been. Having never previously visited the Cote d’Azur, I was struck by its resemblance in many ways to Southern California—the palm trees that stretched their narrow trunks into the sky, the deep blue of the Mediterranean waters that rimmed the coastline for miles and miles; the cliff-hanging houses painted in pastels, their red-tiled roofs fiery beneath the sun. It was as if all the Impressionist paintings I had always loved had suddenly come alive. It came to me that the scenic beauty of the Pacific Coast Highway that curved with the sea in Southern California shared so much with this part of France that it felt familiar and, for this time in my life—familiar was good.

We had a marvelous journey. The drive should have taken about six to seven hours. But, considering the weight of our baggage, Dale went at a rather slow speed, concerned that if, by some ghastly misfortune we had an accident, the car—as weighted as it was—could well flip over. On the narrower roads, no one was able to pass us and, at times there was a parade of cars lined up patiently behind Gertie as we lollygagged up and down the mountain roads. Incredibly, no one honked at us (as drivers certainly would have done in the States). Although, when two motorcycles whizzed past, the leather-clad drivers each lifted one hand in a rather impolite (and familiar) gesture. We stopped for lunch en route at a charming roadside restaurant. Outside there was a large water tank filled with live blue trout which, after we selected the ones we wished to have, were cooked (just barely) over an open fire, then deboned and served with a delicious lemon-and-caper sauce. We sat at a table near a window, the midday sun sharply reflecting through it massaging our road-tired shoulders and backs. We lingered. No hurry. Mme de Boussieu had expressed the house keys to me along with a signed contract and a list of local merchants. Genevieve and Gerard (the domestic staff) and their seven-year-old son, petit Gerard, were in residence in the house behind the main house and had been notified of my imminent arrival.

I had the new Michelin Guide and, once again on the road, read off all the restaurants in the near vicinity of Villa Roquefille. Rather than unload the car and dress for dinner, we decided we would pick something up from another roadside restaurant and bring it with us. We approached our destination about seven that evening. Never had I seen such a spectacular view as met our gaze when we started down from the Grand Corniche, the night-fallen Mediterranean awash with ripples of white foam, a full moon, and a sky crowded with luminescent stars reflecting upon it. We drove along the coast, the city of Nice now behind us, until we came to a sign announcing that we were entering Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Dale pulled into a restaurant called the African Queen (I mean, who could resist that!). She insisted on my staying in the car with all my belongings while she ran in to get something to bring to the villa for our dinner. She reappeared less than five minutes later. “How could anything be cooked in such a short time?” I asked.

“They’re not cooked. I got two lobsters and a bottle of chilled champagne!”

So off we drove again—my new home now only a half mile ahead of us. Creeping up the steep incline that was the start of the lower Corniche until we came to the first hard turn in the road. There it was, lighted as though for a gala party. The property was gated. I opened it with a key marked “exterieur.” The scent of orange blossoms perfumed our way up the path to the front door. To our right was a large patio with tall french doors that obviously led into the living room, but as the shutters had been drawn we could not see inside.

Another key opened the front door. “Hello!” I called out as we entered the foyer. Facing us was that grand staircase. Brightly lit as the house was, I could see clearly into the living room, which was on my right. We both stopped short and stared. Boxes were everywhere, papers piled high. Ashtrays were filled with dead cigarette butts. Empty beer cans were littered about. “Maybe the former occupants haven’t moved yet,” Dale reasoned.

“There were no former occupants. Just the film crew who, I was told, did not stay here, but used the premises for location shots.”

“Did you ask what else they used them for?” Dale said as she walked into the room and held her nose as she pushed aside the piles of debris.

It came to me now—as is! The place was filthy.

“Hello!” I shouted again. No reply.

We made our way into the kitchen—a vast room, much like a huge farm kitchen—a stove that made my old stove when I arrived in London resemble a child’s plaything. Indeed, there was an American refrigerator, and in the center of the room a large wood table literally stacked high with more empty beer cans and refuse. The double sink was filled with food-encrusted dishes and when I opened the refrigerator, the remains of food left there at least four weeks earlier were covered in a disgusting gray mold. I quickly slammed the door shut.

“Genevieve!” I cried. No reply. I told Dale to sit down. “I’m not sure I want to,” she said with distaste.

“Well I’m going to find Genevieve!” I started for the door from the kitchen that looked likely to lead to the cottage she and her family occupied (as shown on the map of the premises that had been enclosed with the keys and was quite a nice abode).

Genevieve was a huge woman (today we would call her obese and think we were being polite). Her husband came to her armpits and could have been lost in the folds of her skirt. Neither of them spoke a word of English. I have no idea why I had not asked whether they did in my letters to Mme de Boussieu, mainly because my landlady had written to me in English, and the one time I spoke to her on the phone, she was English literate (with a charming French accent). This had caused me to assume that her staff spoke at least some English. From the tone of Genevieve’s voice, I could not help but know that she was raging mad and that she would have nothing to do with the condition of the house. “Obscenite!” she shouted over and over, and then ranted on. What I got was that she would have nothing to do with cleaning up after the cochons! (pigs). (These would be the film crew who had used the premises as a location.)

Dale suddenly appeared by my side with the bag containing the two lobsters and making some gestures (as though in a game of charades) that they needed to be boiled, handed the sack to her. Genevieve’s thick, dark brows nettled, she opened the bag gingerly, squinted into it, and then with a shriek, threw it away from her and shut the door in our face.

Welcome to my new home!

I suggested to Dale that we go back into town and see if we could book a room at La Reserve, in the downtown section of the town, which I knew was one of the finest hotels on the Cote d’Azur (only foreigners refer to the southern coastal towns of France as “the Riviera,” I had learned years before). It also had a three-star restaurant. Dale would not hear of it. “I’m starved. First we boil these lobsters and open the champagne. We’ll eat out on the terrace.” We found a pot that looked relatively clean, filled it with water, and when it came to a rolling boil threw them in (or rather, Dale did. I was squeamish about it). We also located a champagne opener. In the dining room there was a handsome breakfront filled with fine crystal and china. Plenty of champagne glasses there and it looked like the cochons had never removed anything from it—drinking beer from a can had been more their style.

We opened the shutters and turned off most of the lights in the house (the rest of the place was just as filthy but the grandeur that lay beneath it could not be concealed). Then we sat out on the patio under a deep blue, silken sky, lighted by diamond-like stars and a moon that hung in the dark sky like a magnificent, perfectly rounded pearl. We decided that for tonight we would only clean the areas where we would sleep. I had brought my linens, which was helpful. Dale said she would tackle the master bathroom. We had found cleaning equipment and products under the sink in the kitchen—and in the closet off the kitchen there was a substantial-looking vacuum cleaner. It was nearing eleven p.m. For a moment I stepped out on the bedroom terrace. The view was the superlative of spectacular. Across the waters, a light beamed, casting a shimmering line straight to the shoreline beneath our villa. It was most likely a lighthouse. Still, in my research on the area, I had discovered that Somerset Maugham had done his writing in such a tower room—often at night. Of course, Mr. Maugham had been dead for many years, but the idea that this light could be from the room in which he wrote some of his greatest novels regenerated my energy. (I don’t believe in ghosts. Still, there is something to be said about signs. I liked to think this was a welcoming one from Mr. Maugham himself.)

Suddenly Dale let out a piercing scream. I ran into the bathroom. There was this most elegant lady, on her knees, her hair pinned back neatly into an upsweep to keep it from falling down on her forehead and her neck. To my puzzlement, one of her arms was up to the elbow in the toilet.

“Whatever you do, don’t flush it!” she ordered. The rubber glove she was wearing had twisted and caught in the turn of the toilet pipe.

“Are you in pain?” I asked stupidly.

“On a scale from one to ten, give me a twelve,” she replied.

“Oh my God! What shall we do?”

“He won’t help. Call a plumber. We have to take the toilet apart.” She was calm now. “First pour me a glass of scotch—you’ll find the bottle in my hand luggage.”

It was obvious that she was right. But the toilet was bolted to the marble floor and probably had been for at least forty-five years. Then what would we do about the flood of water that would then flow forth? “Maybe I can loosen those bolts,” I offered weakly.

“We need plumbing tools. Please, the scotch first, then call a plumber.”

After I had poured her a full tumbler of scotch, I opened the phone directory. Midnight was almost upon us and it seemed my chances to find a willing plumber to come out at such an hour were slim. Also, my French was extremely limited and certainly not equipped to make much sense as to why I was asking for plumbing help at this hour, considering we did not have a flood. And even if the man (I could not conceive France having lady plumbers) spoke English, how did one sound sane when explaining that a woman had her arm caught in a toilet pipe?

There were numerous plumbers listed in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. I started to dial the first one. “Crying is good,” I thought, recalling the time in Beverly Hills when we needed a veterinarian on Christmas Eve. More likely he would not speak English. Before leaving Gstaad, Jay had come up with the helpful information that over three hundred English words that ended in either tion or sion, although accented à la français, had identical meanings. I had the list in my pocketbook along with a small English/French dictionary. After glancing at the list, I made a quick vow to begin French lessons as soon as we were settled. My eye went down the page:

“Accusation, accumulation, admiration, affliction, application, attention, celebration, collection, continuation, collaboration, classification, fornication . . .” Forget it! I would just have to wing it. The phone rang and rang. I was about to hang up when, on the other end, a man’s sleepy voice said, rather angrily, “Hallo?”

I shouted into the phone, “Attention! Boom! Boom! Boom! Explosion! Villa Roquefille! Tout de suite!” (A tourist phrase meaning right away or immediately.)

He said, “Oui! Oui!” and hung up.

I thought I had successfully communicated with him. But then I realized I had not given him the address. I called back. No answer. I dialed several other plumbiers. No answers.

What I did not know at this time was that Villa Roquefille was the most famous house in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. No, not a whorehouse. It had belonged to Mme de Boussieu’s lover, who was the town’s greatest hero and martyr during World War II. Remember those thirty-nine steps leading underground to the sea? On the seaward side there were three locks, presumably to hold back the sea. But the middle one (constructed during World War I, I believe) was actually a dupe, with an amazing hidden door that—when approached by sea—could not be discerned—no cracks or openings visible to the eye. It had to be unlocked from the inside, meaning a cohort had to be waiting. During the occupation, Jewish refugees had been secreted from Italy up the coast on the darkest of nights (a blackout in effect during wartime) and had made it through that magical door, climbing the steps in pitch-black darkness (the door to the sea locked, the entrance concealed by thick brush) then guided through the orange grove, veering right to a path on the edge of the rose garden. Beyond that point, the terrain was nettled in overgrown shrubbery and brambles that had to be traversed to reach the back of the property, which was a steep, almost perpendicular cliff leading to the upper Corniche. In that rocky escarpment, small caves had been carved out, their openings covered over as had the steps. The refugees had to climb up that precarious edifice in darkness and silence. Three or four poor souls were held in each cave for days, sometimes weeks, until the Resistance felt it was safe for them to move up and over the top of the Corniche to continue on to Switzerland and safety. Some made it—some did not. Mme de Boussieu brought them whatever meager food she could from her own small rations, the Germans having stripped the orange grove for their own use. Her lover was eventually arrested by the Vichy government and hanged in the center of the town as a warning to all “foolish patriots.”

Villa Roquefille was sacred to loyal Frenchmen from the area who had survived the war. It had been a call to arms that brought my plumbier so quickly to my door that night. It was also why Genevieve was so furious that the film crew—the cochons—had so desecrated the premises.

However, this was still unknown to me when the plumber arrived in record time. As soon as he entered the house, he appeared to have second thoughts. I was wearing a light-cotton robe and was in my bare feet. When I tried to get him to come upstairs with me, he was sure I had invited him over for sex and there had been no “Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Explosion!” He turned to leave as quickly as he could. I grabbed him by the arm. Then I cried, the tears running down my cheeks as I pulled him toward the staircase. I never saw a more terrified man. Finally, he followed me up the stairs, crossly mumbling. (I learned later it was a moderate curse, something like “Fuck all bitches!”)

When he walked into the bathroom, Dale now three scotches the better, he stopped short and stared in utter astonishment. He kept mumbling as he worked to disassemble the toilet bowl and tenderly, most tenderly, the pipe where Dale’s rubber glove had become twisted and still painfully bound her hand. When she was free I suggested we go straightaway to the hospital as her hand looked just awful and she had a fever. However, she fell asleep on the big bed almost as we helped her to it. Her hand was badly bruised and swollen. I watched over her for an hour or so, the plumbier remaining downstairs in case he was needed. Finally, as she was talking feverishly in her sleep, I woke her up and with that kind man’s help, managed to get her into his truck and to the hospital where her hand was put in a cast. She had badly broken a wrist bone and a dislocated a finger as well as having endured painful skin abrasions.

The sun had replaced the moon by the time we returned from the hospital. Thankfully, Genevieve had cleaned up some of the mess and had mellowed into a more cooperative attitude. We were on our way to a livable situation. Once the trash and dirt was removed, the interior of the house was warm and comforting as well as being quite handsome and luxurious. I later learned that Mme de Boussieu (who had moved to Paris shortly after her lover’s death) had found it difficult to rent the house to full-time local residents. At the same time, she was loath to sell it and so had turned to film companies for it to be hired out as a location. To the French the Villa Roquefille brought back dark, painful memories; to me, that history was uplifting as I realized how many lives had been saved.

Jay arrived three days later, as planned. Dale had extended her visit for another week so that her hand would be strong enough to drive the station wagon back to Gstaad. One morning I was standing at the far end of the bedroom terrace, which overlooked the road that went by the villa, and saw Genevieve getting onto a moped. She put the thing in full gear. It revved up in a monstrous sound. It was a curious sight. A portion of Genevieve’s much-padded derrière hung over each side of the seat as she zipped down the hill in a flash—full steam. A half hour later she returned. I heard the rear door slam, and shortly thereafter she trudged up the stairs with a tray of darkly brewed coffee, thick cream, fresh crescents, butter, and jam. (Although the Queen of Speed on her moped, Genevieve was a tired foot soldier off her vehicle, her considerable weight an impediment to fast action.) Her early-morning trip was to the boulangerie where on my account (“the rich American lady”) she also bought bread for lunch and double the amount for her family, and did the same thing at the butcher and charcuterie shops. It was tradition, I was told. And though, of course I knew this was not true, I decided to let it go as I did not think the hundred dollars she received monthly for her services (as arranged by Mme de Boussieu) was fair pay, even given the fact that the cottage in which she and her family resided was rent-free.

Genevieve and Gerard finally got the house in shape. Petit Gerard fell in love with our poodle family and kept them running and scampering up and down the grounds—exercise they had never experienced before. There were always bowls of flowers from the garden in the main rooms and fresh-picked oranges in a large dish on the kitchen table. Genevieve had a warm spot for the dogs and although I tried to stop her, she continued to bring home from the boulangerie day-old sweets for them, served with saucers of cream. “Cream is for cats,” I told her. But the dogs were quite happy to lap up the cream, and she just smiled triumphantly. The warmest spot, however, Genevieve reserved for Jay.

I don’t think she knew anything about homosexuals and if she did, certainly did not realize that Jay was one. Late one night, sometime after eleven, I was reading in bed when I was jarred by a commotion in the far end of the hallway outside Jay’s “suite,” which consisted of two connecting bedrooms, so that he could have a private sitting room. Jay had on his sophisticated Asian robe while Genevieve’s fleshy body was barely covered by a flimsy nightdress. She was pulling on his arm. The dogs were in a dither, Biba snapping away at the hem of her ludicrous garment, Chrissy running around in circles, and Sandy barking (if I understood dog language, I would venture to say that he was egging his family on to further attack this strange creature).

“What is it?” I managed.

Jay pulled himself loose and shooed the dogs away. Genevieve turned and, sobbing quite dramatically, ran down the back staircase, the kitchen door slamming behind her as she exited the house.

In a declarative voice, Jay explained: “When I went to my room, there she was splayed on my bed! Her breasts spilling out of that obscene nightdress like two mammoth, rising yeast bowls of dough! No pretty sight, I’ll tell you! Can you believe it! How the hell did she get there? And in a nightdress? She came down from her house in a see-through night dress! It’s insane!”

“She’s got a crush on you,” I said, trying to control my desire to laugh.

“Well, she better get over it fast!” he said and turned on his heel—the dogs dutifully following behind him—and entered his room, not shutting his door until the poodles were safely inside. It took me very little time to adjust myself to life in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, perhaps due to the many likenesses it shared with Southern California: the gracefully curving coastline, the whiff of the salty sea the gentle summer breeze brought, the palm trees swaying in the soft-blowing wind, and the buildings—so many in the pastel colors so dear to California architects. The coastal highway wound itself just below our villa, weaving along the edge of the sand and sea much as the Pacific Coast Highway snaked its way from San Diego past Santa Monica, Malibu, up to Santa Barbara, and beyond. The younger Frenchwomen wore huge sunglasses (now popular), and sunbathed near nude on the decks of private hotels (well, at least, breasts exposed and wearing a bikini bottom that looked more like a G-string). As the hotels were on the sea and at ground level, their shiny, oiled, tanned bodies could be looked down upon from the windows and terraces of homes built into the cliffs.

Dozens of small seaside villages dotted the coast from Monte Carlo (east of Beaulieu) to Cannes (westward). We were situated less than a half hour’s car ride from Monaco and Nice, both of which had glorious outdoor weekly markets that were dazzling in their array of food and flowers. Cannes and Antibes were an extra thirty-minute ride (providing one did not drive during the heavy traffic hours) along one of the most glorious coast roads, equal—but not quite in my memory—to California’s magnificent Pacific Coast Highway. The best time to traverse this route was from noon to three p.m. when the French always stopped work to enjoy a relaxing lunch. What was strikingly different in the landscapes of Southern California and the South of France were the Corniches, where cliff-clinging villages had been built centuries earlier. I was fascinated with the old graveyards, well kept, many grave sites marked by porcelain flowers. I tried to plan some excursion, if only for a few hours, on one day of the weekend. I particularly liked market days, when we could buy a freshly baked loaf of bread and tomatoes that smelled redolently of the earth and sun. I can still remember the glorious taste of that humble meal, sprinkled with salt and a pinch of fresh pepper.

On weekdays I put in my usual long hours of writing. But on the weekends, with Jay at the wheel, we took to the highway and the narrow, curving, rather dangerous upper roads. Jay was a supercautious driver, seldom reaching the allowable speed. The French not being as polite as the Swiss, we were always being honked at, which did not bother Jay in the least as he kept to his snail’s pace. Often a driver would shout out offensive epithets. We learned very quickly that we were in a German car—and in this part of France, anti-German vitriol that had built up during the Occupation twenty-five years before had not been squelched.

I was deeply into my current book on the lives that had been thrown asunder by the blacklist. This novel had obsessed me to a degree that no other previous work had done. I had remained in close touch with Bob Rossen’s former secretary, Eleanor Wolquitt (now living in New York), and she had become irreplaceable in terms of research, traveling to DC to obtain copies of testimonies of friendly and unfriendly witnesses during the years that HUAC had such a manic hold on our country. I had renamed the book Shadow of a Lion (a Shakespearean quote) as I felt Post Mortem gave the false impression that the fallout due to the blacklist had ended, when I knew it had not.

I did not close my mind to the book on those weekend outings, for so many old friends and expats had relocated to the South of France. As in London, they hung together. Most remained bitter toward Hollywood and their expulsion during the McCarthy period. Suspicions festered—who had secretly named names; animosity flared—at those who had regained a foothold back in their profession, be it in Europe or in the States. Afternoons and dinner were often shared with them. Nearly twenty years had passed since they had been forced to leave home. They carried the past with them in unlocked areas of their minds and their hearts. Small incidents, words, names could bring forth a swell of emotions and recollections. The monkey still clung to their backs; the elephant remained in the room. I vowed I would not let that happen to me. Shifting what talent I had into writing books, not film scripts, had helped me to refresh my priorities. Now that I was writing about those times I had to chain my emotions. “No sliding back!” I would tell myself and try to abide by my own decree. This was difficult, however, when we were gathered together. All someone had to say to start a good two hours of dragging out the past was, “Did you read the reviews on Kazan’s new movie?” Or, “Well, that son-of-a-bitch-Reagan is going to run for a second term as governor of California!” (Reagan had notoriously betrayed the entire membership of the Screen Actors Guild when he was its president by giving names of his constituency to the FBI and the Committee.) They had not integrated into the life of the people of France; their current political, economic situation was seldom discussed, nor were the French films that were being made by French companies right on their doorstep at the Nice Studios, unless someone like Jules Dassin (and so one of them) was involved. (He was, in fact, filming Promise at Dawn, the project that Sidney and I had once worked on.)

There was plausible reason for this. The French liked Americans—especially the tourists who helped rebuild their businesses and bank accounts. But they seldom opened the doors to their homes to those of us who were now living in their cities and towns. When in their company, you lunched or dined in restaurants. They came to your home—but never seemed comfortable in doing so . . . even when they were fluent in English. They also had little patience for those who did not speak their language correctly. That would include me—as I never could get the right accent and often mixed my tenses.

With the parade of Hollywood expats who I saw and welcomed to Villa Roquefille and with my deep involvement with Shadow, I had very little extra time. Catherine came down from Switzerland whenever she could, often bringing a girlfriend, or as on one memorable weekend, a group of six or seven of her chums—male and female—who I found stretched out on mats all over the living room one Saturday morning. It was glorious to see her and to spend time with young people who were set to devour the world in one large gulp.

Catherine was a beauty—if I as a mother have the right to say so. In California she had adopted a somewhat gamine look—short-cropped hair, trim clothes. Now she was a full-bloom flower child, her mahogany tresses shiny, loose and long, her skirts full and filmy. Still, her straightforward approach to life had not changed, nor had her work ethic, nor the uncommon common sense with which she could surprise you.

Hardly a week went by that I did not have guests. Vera flew over and stayed for weeks, working on a novel of her own in two upstairs rooms across the hall from Jay. They got along famously. Neither ever let the other get away with anything. “Stop being so polite to me!” she once ordered him. “That’s what happens to me when I am in the company of an old woman who is too vain to put on her glasses to look where she is going!” he once retorted. She laughed raucously.

Vera and I would take long walks together along the shore, talk about the problems we were having with our work, and exchange opinions on just about anything that took our fancy. Confiding in Vera was comfortable. She looked at things with a clear eye, no mist or sugarcoating. “If you can’t communicate with a man and the sex has lost its fervor, what else is left?” she said of my decision to divorce Leon. “You have a career. You are independent of his support. I’ve known Leon for years. He’s like the blindsided captain of a ship who steers it into an iceberg and then expects everyone on board to go down in the deep waters with him. He’s entombed himself in that apartment of his with steps that could lead to a scaffold. It’s his penance. But it damn well should not be yours!”

Vera’s presence was more bracing than the salty winds that came to shore off a rolling sea. I loathed to see her return to the States but Paul Jarrico and his new lady, Yvette, came shortly after her departure and brought with them a fresh wind. Yvette was French, formerly married to a Czechoslovakian, politically involved in his troubled country’s postwar problems. Putting aside Paul’s inclination to speechify, he was a very likeable character. He had been nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay of the lighthearted Ginger Rogers film Tom, Dick and Harry (1942, directed by Garson Kanin) as well as producing—on a shoestring—Salt of the Earth (1953), an iconic left-wing movie about the hardships of Latino mine workers in New Mexico, an impressive endeavor as almost all members of the company were either unprofessional actors or blacklisted filmmakers. Gaining an American release was impossible at the time. Yet, because of its unique history, the film had gained stature abroad and in private showings in the States. Certain that one day he would be famous for what he considered his contribution to cinema, the trunk and backseat of his car (which seemed the only permanent home he had at the time) was piled high with every paper that carried his words. There were hundreds of letters from “famous people” to him, and reams of notes he had made on his day-to-day doings and thoughts. There was only room in the front seat for the two of them. Yvette accepted this with good nature and by taking a minimal amount of her own belongings.

My old friend Lester Cole spent a weekend with us that first summer. He remained bitter, testy at times, but he had a new love, Kay, an attractive American divorcee, an intelligent, amiable woman who seemed able at times to gladden his moods from gloom to cheeriness, and when in the latter state, Lester could be extremely warm and entertaining. Harold and Ruth Buchman were now living in Cannes, as, of course, so was Sidney. Friends from London, John and Harriet Collier, lived up the coast a bit in a villa that Napoleon supposedly had bought for his sister, quite a bawdy lady as the story went. John was one of the few English writers who had been blacklisted in Hollywood, where he had immigrated in the midthirties having already become a critically acclaimed short-story writer in England. He notably contributed to the screenplays of The African Queen, I Am a Camera, and Her Cardboard Lover. He had a terrific story mind, very offbeat. A short bulldog of a man with bushy black eyebrows and a wry smile, he often took pleasure in belittling himself. He was now reflective of his Hollywood years. “I sometimes marvel,” he wrote, “that a third-rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second-rate writer.” But he did regard himself a fantastic chef and insisted on having these big gatherings where he did all the cooking, always finding some exotic fish or animal body part that was seldom served (for good reason). Once nearly all the guests came down with food poisoning (I was laid up for a week after that meal), and on another occasion only an hour after dinner had been served, John had to be rushed to the hospital with such strong stomach pains he could not stand up.

Jules Dassin had a residence in Lausanne, Switzerland, and offices in Paris. But he shot most of his films at the Victorine studio in Nice—seldom bringing Melina Mercouri (now his wife) with him. Melina devoted much of her time as a political activist and campaigned diligently against the ruling junta in her native Greece. Her passport had been confiscated, her citizenship revoked, and she had been forced into becoming an exile from her beloved country. The similarity of their situations had initially brought them together. Sadly, now it seemed to be placing a wedge between them. Mainly, I suspected, because Jules had turned away from his activism to his work as a producer and director, while Melina had distanced herself from acting and had become more deeply involved in the political chaos in her native Greece.

One morning Jules rang me. He was working on postproduction of a film at the Victorine and having serious problems with the quality of the sound mixing. He once again wanted to get in touch with Leon and hoped he might be with me in Beaulieu, as he had not been able to reach him in London. I told him that we were now permanently separated and that I did not know where he was. “I thought you two had pulled it together,” he mused.

“I’m afraid not. How’s Melina?” I asked.

“She’s fine, but we’re having some difficulties of our own at present. I always seem to be coming in the front door when she’s leaving through the back.” We consoled each other for a few minutes, and then he asked if I would have dinner with him at La Reserve (a fairly midway point for the two of us). It was a Friday night and I was free. Jay could drive me there and I could take a taxi back (not an expensive fare).

I had recently read an article about Jules that said something to the effect that he was “a man still in search of a country and a cohesive artistic style.” Bea (his ex-wife) had told me once that he was always looking to morph into a new persona, never sure of who he really was or who he wanted to be. His parents had both been Russian immigrants who had settled in Harlem which, at that time, had separate black, Jewish, Irish, and Italian ghettos. Everyone seemed poor, and the groups were constantly fighting each other. The elder Dassins had eight children and they were hardly able to keep their family fed. “We were so poor, it was ridiculous,” Jules once said. “There was always the problem of eating. And it was cold . . . it was always so cold.”

“You know,” he also said to me, very seriously, when we happened to be talking about Vivien Leigh just after her tragic death in 1967. “I am the only man I know who understood Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien’s most famous role), for she was a woman’s creation, after all. But that line—‘I’ll never go hungry again—nor will any one of my family’—I understood that. Sympathized with that. I felt the same way when I was a young man. Still feel that way. It makes you ambitious—but it also makes you insecure, fearful.”

When I first met Jules he was in his forties. He was now in his midsixties. He looked tired and older than his years and somehow had the aura of defeat about him, something of course that Scarlett O’Hara never had, and since he had done reasonably well in Europe, adding rather than subtracting to his preblacklist status, it seemed odd. He was genuinely glad to see me. We were seated at a rather secluded table in the elegant dining room of La Reserve. Our waiter spoke English quite well, but Jules always addressed and answered him in French. We talked about a variety of things—the business (films), my books, his concern for his children (now adult). Suddenly, he asked me, “You were close to Bob Rossen, weren’t you?”

I explained the relationship.

“I always wondered how he could face his kids after he had named names, betrayed his friends. What kind of a role model is that for a son or daughter?”

“Stevie, his son, had the most trouble with it,” I admitted. I recalled how Bob was always telling Stevie to face down those who tried to bully him. Stevie was a sensitive youngster—not a fighter, really, and Bob wanted his son to be more of a macho man. “I believe that Bob thought the fact that he had given in to the Committee, not fought his battle, was a greater betrayal to his son than to those who he had named.”

Jules sat across from me thinking about that for a long time. He took a deep breath, cast his gaze somewhere in the past for a moment, and then turned back and stared hard at me. “That’s one of the saddest stories of the consequences of the Committee’s bullying tactics that I have ever heard,” he said in a soft voice, moist with emotion. “There can’t be anything worse than if a man’s children think he has betrayed them.”

He insisted on driving me home. Our conversation grew lighter, perhaps superficial as we glided around the curves of the seafront highway. He got out of the car to escort me to the door.

Not long after our dinner, his son Joe, who had been a singer, died of a heart attack. Jules suffered one himself a few months later but recovered. I never was able to get that moment out of my head when we were discussing Bob Rossen and a father’s betrayal to a son and how deeply Bob’s family situation had affected Jules. I wondered if he hadn’t felt his leaving Bea for Melina was also a betrayal to his children—or perhaps that his son had thought it had been. I made a mental note for my book to investigate the effect the blacklist had on the children whose lives had been upturned (including my own) and who thereafter carried the engraved stamp on their deepest, darkest, interior feelings of their parents’ decisions during the early days of the blacklist and of HUAC’s brutal gavel.