Billy Wilder on Assignment by Noah Isenberg (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

Jacobsohn’s hat. Jessie is about to tuck a colorful piece of paper under Director Alexander’s jacket collar, Mabel chats with the photographer about the beauty of the Scottish landscape, Dorothy and Olive quarrel, Molly holds Miss Harley, the leader, by her arm and guides her from booth to booth.

They like it here. The amusement park is larger, but the Prater is jollier. London is colossal, Berlin spectacular; but in Vienna there are such good schnitzels, such wonderful sweets. They would so like to stay on in Vienna. But on the first of the month they have to go to Dresden, then to Hamburg, and back to Berlin.

We discovered all that in a Prater snack bar. The girls are all forthright; they even own up to having a “darling” when that is the case. And Miss Harley, the governess, is allowed to hear it.

Let’s stay indiscreet: you even get a (harmless, unerotic, friendly, cousinly, for God’s sake obligation-free, forgotten the next minute …) little kiss, if you beg for one. God knows that’s no simple matter. But you get it.

Say it came from Billie.

Die Bühne, April 15, 1926

Girardi’s Son Plays Jazz at the Mary Bar

While his father is celebrating his professional milestone and posters on the streets request donations for a monument to this most popular person in Vienna—along with Mayor Karl Lueger—while a theater acts out the story of his life every evening and an exhibit dedicated to Girardi shows his realia to the Viennese, Toni plays jazz at the Mary Bar.

Toni Girardi is just twenty-eight years old, and people even claim to see a certain—outer—resemblance to his great father. He sits there, in front of the big drum, the drumsticks in his hands, works with all the instruments, the triangle, the cymbals, various whistles, and comically constructed thingamajigs that produce all sorts of exotic noise. Toni works with all of it, full of enthusiasm and love for the profession. Sometimes he even sings, when there’s a jolly atmosphere. “I love Ukulele Lady, Ukulele …” Oh, Toni is a good jazz band player.

“So, you’ve become a jazz band player? Very interesting. If father only …”

“Oh, fiddlesticks. You have to make a living. Minimum wages at Jarno …” “You’ve been through quite a lot?” “Oh, yeah. The old man didn’t want me to become an actor. No doubt he himself had a rotten time with this profession. But then he did sign my first contract for St. Pölten. Then I got married and went to work for my father-in-law in the car business. I liked that. Then I got divorced and remarried. Oh, well. At Jarno I acted again. I’m supposed to live on minimum wage. Two million.”

During this conversation Toni goes on playing, warbling the melody to himself: “… ein Gra-, ein Grammophon … Küss’ die Hand, gnä Frau … das macht so schön trara, trara, Sie wissen schon …”

“I had no more desire to keep on acting and wanted to go back to the car business. Easier said than done. Then I announced that I wanted to become a chauffeur. No reaction from anyone. Now I play jazz over there in the bar. You have to make a living.”

And once again, the drumsticks in Toni’s hands start to whirl.

Die Stunde, May 22, 1926

Paul Whiteman, His Mustache, the Cobenzl, and the Taverns

AN AFTERNOON WITH AMERICA’S SECOND MOST FAMOUS MAN

1.

In January of this year, the Chicago Tribune published statistics about the top-rated American celebrities. Millions cast their votes; the entire U.S. was in a flurry of excitement.

The statistics went like this: 1. Charlie Chaplin; 2. Paul Whiteman; 3. Jack Dempsey; 4. Ford; 5. Douglas Fairbanks; 6. Edison; 7. Johnny Weissmuller; 8. Rudolph Valentino; 9. Lillian Gish; 10. Rockefeller; 11. Tilden; 12. Coolidge.

Voice of the people—voice of God.

2.

Yesterday at noon, number 2 on the above-mentioned statistical list got out of a sleeping car of the express train from Berlin to Vienna.

If you add these things together—the most amusing mustache you could imagine, a truly charming little double chin, two gentle, childlike eyes in a nice broad face, a burly, graceful, tall man, dressed casually and unobtrusively—you get Paul Whiteman.

He is accompanied by Fritz Wreede, the well-known Berlin publisher, Paul’s personal friend—his publisher, not his manager, as is being erroneously reported.

The “welcoming committee”—the two directors of the Wiener Boheme Verlag, Otto and Erwin Hem, composer Dr. Robert Katscher, Herr Armin Robinson, the Berlin managing director of the Boheme Verlag, a dozen enthusiasts, several journalists—are quickly introduced, a six-man band plays Whiteman’s big American hit song, “Wonderful One …,” Whiteman happily shakes the conductor’s hand, two photographers capture his portrait, and the whole group gets into the three cars waiting outside. Paul Whiteman, America’s second most famous man, rides down Porzellangasse.

3.

He’s staying at the old Hotel Bristol. In the bar downstairs, while the new arrivals are enjoying beer and sandwiches, there’s time to put Whiteman under a magnifying glass and examine him in slow motion.

There’s that mustache of his again, a splendid, peerless, divine, superb mustache. It alone would have made Paul famous, without a doubt. It is cut quite short and twirled up in the middle, the two ends extend out quite far, and it points upward toward his nostrils at a sharp angle; the tips have a bit of pomade, which adds an aromatic element to our visual pleasure. That is the mustache of the future. Copyright by Paul Whiteman.

Whiteman is drinking beer, Schwechater lager, and he likes the taste. “Wonderful,” he says, and lifts his upper lip in ecstasy, which makes the ends of his mustache tickle his nose; that is Paul’s way of displaying his enthusiasm. He doesn’t speak a single word of German, even though his forefathers were Germans, his youth, his career, etc.… all of that is already well known. It’s important to come up with very different kinds of questions.

“In your opinion, what influence does the prohibition of alcohol in America have on music?”

“It is killing everything!” comes the reply,