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83 8 cause for alarm Without question, Maggie’s life and mine in England was a happy one, even though, except for our bed-shared hours, we were seldom together. During the days I wrote at the studios. During the evenings Maggie (stage name Faith Bennett) performed at this or that theater, on some occasions appearing (and three times starring) in films out at Elstree or Twickenham or Walton-on-Thames, any of which called for very early rising and pretty late homecoming. But in spite of long periods of such bisection, we were close. We loved each other and remained bosom pals up till her death—in spite of the eventual breakup of our marriage, which bore no relationship to our transplantation to Hollywood, the city where the Eleventh Commandment has long seemed to be “Thou shalt not commit matrimony in perpetuity.” We would go out to the Brooklands Race Track, where we knew the “Bentley Boys” racers, Jack Dunfee and his brother Clive. In September 1932 we were attending a race with Clive’s wife, the actress Jane Baxter, watching from the stands, when Clive’s “Speed Six” cartwheeled over the top of the great curve, hurtling Clive to his death at around 140 miles an hour. Grim. A couple of years later Jane costarred with Claude Rains and Fay Wray in my film The Clairvoyant. I wish I had foreseen the crash and warned Jane of this tragedy. Though my acting days had come to an end, not so the itchiness in my feet or my wanderlust with Maggie. With money coming in plentifully from my plays and screenwriting, we grabbed every opportunity to take our car across the Channel and explore any reachable spot on the European Continent. First, of course, came the great cities, although thanks to my time at the Théâtre Albert Premier, I already knew Paris better than other cities. But other capitals needed inspection—Rome, Vienna, Budapest, and so on—and got it. More often than not, we wandered off the beaten HitcHcock’s Partner in susPense 84 track, from ancient villages on the slopes of France’s Alpes Maritimes to the horse-herding witchery of the Hortobágy—the Gypsy-music-haunted Great Plain of Hungary. Until 1937 our vagabond affliction had been limited to the eastern side of the Atlantic. But while working on Young and Innocent (1937) with Hitch—we were in St. Moritz at the Palace Hotel—there came a telegram, sudden and unexpected, that rewarded our wanderlust with an eightthousand -mile leap to Hollywood. It was the turning point of our lives— anofferfromUniversalPicturestocomeoverasawriter-director-producer to what then was the truly filmic big time! Universal’s offer was better than good, more money than I’d previously heard of. A term contract at a king’s ransom salary, first-class transportation across the Atlantic with my wife and cat Nibbs, a luxury suite at New York’s Waldorf Astoria, and initially rewarding comfort at the Hollywood end—all we needed at the company’s expense until we’d had time to settle in. Mick Balcon, the respected head of production at my beloved Gaumont British, said, “Charles, just write [them] one screenplay , and you’ll be the top writer in Hollywood at any price you want.” He offered to double what I was earning in England if I’d stay; but the British film industry could in no way combat the Hollywood dollar, so filthy lucre won out as I became the first major British screenwriter to be signed by Hollywood.21 We bade farewell to the adorable flat in West Halkin Street and to our three- or four-hundred-year-old weekend cottage, Leatherwagon, on the lovely loneliness of Cliff End, near Fairlight in Sussex. I lost my sense of smell forty years ago, but not the memory of the summertime fragrance that clung to that cottage: the scent of rambler roses clambering affectionately here, there, and everywhere, and on warm evenings the intoxicating odor of night-blooming jasmine. Hitchcock threw a large bon voyage party for me, and then Maggie and I boarded the boat. In May 1937 De Reszke Minors cigarettes ran an ad on the back cover of News Review featuring Maggie and me. The photo showed us smoking in a theater lobby, waiting for the curtain to rise. The ad read, “10 Minutes to Wait.” It should have read, “Already Sailed,” as by that time we were long gone. March 1937...

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