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

anecdotes. You have to be interviewed a hundred times, you have to take pride in the knowledge that your cars are being compared to canned food in so and so many jokes. Business, my dear man, business …”

“Tenth: do you identify as a billionaire or as a journalist?”

“Journalist!”

“Well, then, goodbye, Herr Kollege.”

Mister Vanderbilt laughs so heartily that his bad teeth can be seen once again. But now I know for sure: he truly has no time to visit a dentist.

Die Stunde, July 10, 1926

The Prince of Wales Goes on Holiday

What is the Prince of Wales? A funny boy, a snazzy guy.

And how is life at the court? He’s sick and tired of it.

How Buckingham Palace bores him! And Windsor Castle. And his Marlborough House. And the Osborne House summer residence on the Isle of Wight. And Balmoral in Scotland.

So how is the world’s most popular young man feeling? Bored stiff and deeply unhappy.

It doesn’t even pay to run incognito to the London bars, to the Kit-Kat Club, where they’ve been playing the same songs for seven weeks, “Baby Face” and “Charlie My Boy,” “Charlie My Boy” and “Baby Face.”

Yes, and those fellows on Sandringham in Norfolk play golf so badly that the chickens get a good laugh.

There’s still the greyhound races in White City; it is a fine thing, once, twice, then even the electric hare makes you yawn.

There’s still a little outing with the royal yacht, oh, very pleasant if you weren’t disturbed every moment by cross-Channel swimmers and the whirring of flights over the ocean.

There might still be a cute little tumble from a horse, in the presence of members of the press and their photographers. But that is an old repertoire; his majesty the prince has indulged in a bit of a slip off the horse—one little tumble per season—back in 1926, 1925, 1924, 1923, 1922 …

A world that—God have mercy. So dull, sooo dull.

Another trip around the world?

Hmm, hmm.

He knows the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia as well as his pants pocket and holster.

As for Egypt, the crocodiles already whistle his name in front of the pyramids.

Australia? Australia gets on his nerves.

New Zealand, Guyana, Jamaica, Ceylon, the Fiji Islands, Hong Kong, and Malta: ditto.

Fun, thy name is colonies.

Turbulent days followed in Marlborough House, until it occurred to the prince: Canada wouldn’t be half bad.

Canada!

An icy gust blows in from the Rocky Mountains, and mustangs and buffalo graze on the prairies. And there are farms everywhere, trappers ahoy.

An order was placed by telegraph for the Prince of Wales: a ranch, a real Canadian ranch, the kind the wild guys over there live in, pieced together out of gnarled wooden tree trunks, rough and weatherproof, thousands of miles from Quebec and Montreal, in the midst of immense forests and endless prairies. A simple ranch with six bathrooms, two billiards rooms, a bridge room, a dance hall, three bars, and so on.

Everything according to the prince’s own wish list. A steamship full of suitcases departed from England, and there was a big flurry of activity to put together the ranch.

Good summer retreat for a prince.

Daily schedule:

Get up at five-thirty. A little ride on an empty stomach and in a red tailcoat can’t hurt.

Seven to eleven: first round of breakfast, English-style. Clothing: pajamas or a green silk bathrobe.

Eleven to two: conversation with the courier. (“Where’s my pay?” Forty thousand pounds salary and sixty thousand pounds from the Duchy of Cornwall’s income.)

Two to four: light meal outdoors, then press reception. Clothing: cowboy pants, purple shirt, purple tie, purple handkerchief, purple hatband. The prince is clad in purple.

Four to six: reception with the public. Clothing: two-piece outfit, striped trousers, black sports jacket.

Six to eight: Souper dansant.* For this purpose, two locals wind up the gramophone. The prince gives Black Bottom lessons. A game of billiards. Clothing: tuxedo.

Eight to twelve: game of bridge. In nice weather at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Clothing: tailcoat.

Then dancing.

Newspaper clippings from British newspapers: “Our prince is living among the farmers in Canada.”

“Our prince shoots seven buffaloes.”

“Our prince wins at breaking in wild horses.”

“Our prince gets lost in the mountains.”

“Our prince learns how to throw a lasso.”

—Recently they woke up the prince, at about three in the morning, to find out whether he might enjoy taking part in a hunt. What kind of question is that? He rode off in his nightshirt. Yes, indeed!

Hello, prince, you are a funny boy.

Now, more than ever, as a genuine trapper.

Berliner Börsen Courier, August 31, 1927

Chaplin II and the Others at the Scala

An excellent program! Colorful, sparkling, and what is more: it’s new!

Clowns: there’s Will Cummin, a magnificent young fellow, who uses an umbrella as a lighter and takes his hat for a stroll balanced on a cigar; who amazes a juggler by working with twelve top hats and thus parodying Rastelli; who pours hundreds of gallons of water out of a paltry little vase, all the while making the sweetest of all silly faces.—And then there is the Andren family, musical geniuses, vaudeville virtuosos of the first order. With a little boy whose eyes flicker unending melancholy and fiddles “Träumerei” while slinking along on tiptoe.

Three bears and Okito: One gray bear enters on roller skates to start things off, then a second one tap-dances, and the third (Fräulein Ottilie from Schöneberg, as Joseph Breker, the trainer, calls this one) rides a bike. With the grace and ease of young girls. Yes, it is only when the band jazzes things up with a wild Charleston that the three forget their outstanding training. Like lunatics they pull at their chains, to the beat and with syncopation, of course, but in such a spirited manner that they tear Mr. Breker’s sidekick’s pants to pieces. And Okito: an illusionist without a moderator, which is quite an advantage. At the same time, this “Asian” man is a great artist; how does he do the thing with the gold ball and the thing with the geese? The full dozen wonderful kimonos that