The Dolce Vita
An Excerpt From My Memoirs
The summer was drawing to an end, and I had been enlisted at the Overseas School in Rome. The night before my mother and I were due to fly to Italy, there was a reunion of old school friends that degenerated into a vandalistic raid on the College Protestant Romand.
We drove there in the middle of the night and, with jubilant deliberation, pelted and demolished a great many windows. Before retreating, we tossed a length of wire, to which empty cans were attached, into the telephone wires.
As a result, the phones rang all night long, and the wind moving the cans composed numbers all over Switzerland in the most erratic manner. Irate people, woken up in the small hours of the morning, had the calls traced, rang to complain, and added to the ever-growing confusion.
The matter was reported in the press, and more details were collated from accounts obtained from the younger brothers of some of the participants in the raid.
Rome, in the fall of 1959, was a very lively city.
Fellini was in the process of completing the filming of “The Dolce Vita,” and on Via Veneto, all the terraces of the cafés were full. There was in the air a sense of excitement that made one glad to be alive.