My First Encounters with Hollywood Legends
An Excerpt From My Memoirs
My first night in Hollywood I drove east on Sunset and discovered a small bar where I met the actor Harry Dean Stanton, who told me about Eric Morris’s Method acting class which a lot of already well-known actors were attending and which, in due course, I would join.
The next day I picked up the telephone and rang Sam Goldwyn Jr.’s office at the Sam Goldwyn Studios, told his secretary that I had a letter of introduction from Marc Allégret, and at once obtained an appointment for the next morning.
At 10 a.m. the very next day, I drove for the first time onto the historic Samuel Goldwyn Lot. It had initially been the location of Samuel Goldwyn Productions since the 1920s, but had also been the site of the Fairbanks–Pickford Studio.
A bitter legal battle between Mary Pickford and Samuel Goldwyn, over the property and its name, which had begun in 1940, was not resolved until 1955, when Pickford was outbid in a court-ordered auction.
Sam Goldwyn Jr. received me with open arms and, hearing that I was as keen to study American film techniques as I was to pursue my acting career, took me forthwith to see Billy Wilder, who was beginning to shoot Irma La Douce (1963), starring Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon, on the lot.
Wilder, who admired my father’s work and even owned one of his paintings, received me with great kindness and took me to the set and introduced me to the principals.
The director of photography Joseph LaShelle took me under his wing, and I was able, as an honored guest, to come and go as I pleased.