TO MICHAEL MEYER

as from Antibes | 13 November 1972

Dear Michael,

Many thanks for sending me your memories!³⁸I wish however your printer had not misprinted Orwell’s letter to Fyvel and reversed the positions of France and England in the quotation. If you read it again you will see that it doesn’t make sense as it stands if I am to be the first Catholic fellow-traveller. It should read ‘A thing that doesn’t exist in England but does in France.’ I think too from page 131 it would have been fairer to say ‘that Graham partly admired him’. The only book of his I’ve really liked is Animal Farm and I found later the selected letters in the book of essays published by Penguin in four volumes almost deplorable during the war period. His rumour-mongering at the time of the blitz I think was really despicable.

The meeting between Truffaut and Martine went very well and he told her he had seen her on television and thought at the time that it was a good face for the films. I think he is putting her in touch with some form of agent on the coast and Suzanne was also very kind. Yvonne and I went to a little cocktail party on Friday evening at a hotel to celebrate the end of his film, but we only stayed about a quarter of an hour as it was really too noisy. We had also had Truffaut and Suzanne to dinner at Félix.

[…]

I hope to see you in England in December when I’m feeling better after the operation.

Love,
Graham

In 1972, François Truffaut (1932–84) and his collaborator Suzanne Schiffman (1929–2001) shot La Nuit américaine (Day for Night), starring Jacqueline Bisset (b. 1944), in Nice. Yvonne’s daughter Martine, an aspiring actress, wanted to discuss her prospects with the director. For Graham to help her, he needed to meet Truffaut. Michael Meyer took him, identified as ‘Henry Graham,’ a retired businessman, to a party and proposed him for the tiny role of an insurance agent in the film. Schiffman decided he was perfect. Apparently, Truffaut did not know whom he had directed until the scene was shot. This was the first time Graham’s face was seen in a film; his hand had already appeared in Mario Soldati’s The Stranger’s Hand (1954).³⁹

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 669