Excerpt from Chp. 3, “Making Room for Daddy”
“These years included King sometimes taking Linnie and me to sets of movies he was directing, his big post-war movies Duel in the Sun and The Fountainhead. I saw how movies were made, and I met Jennifer Jones and Gary Cooper. On special occasions like birthdays, I went to the theater at the MGM studio, where I could bring others and have a private showing of just about any film ever made at MGM. During these visits, I met a remarkable array of Hollywood stars, script-writers, cinematographers, and studio moguls. Of these, Charlie Chaplin, with his new wife Oona O’Neil (the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill), was among our favorites.
One evening King invited Linnie and me to dinner with them. A chauffeur picked us up first at the Tower Road house, then drove us up to the “Eagle’s Nest.” Chaplin was immediately lovable. While we waited for dinner, he entertained Linnie and me by imitating any foreign language we named. He would reproduce every innuendo and accent so accurately, you could not tell he was faking it unless you knew the language. When we asked for Italian, he did actually say, “when the train is in the station, we encourage constipation” in Italian. It sounded so beautiful when he said it. We laughed till our sides hurt.”
Copyright (c) 2011 A. Vidor Publications
