Shopping with Audrey Hepburn...Clubbing with Peter O'Toole...Going to the races with Omar Sharif...Witnessing a domestic spat between Rex Harrison and his wife Rachel Roberts...Taking Katharine Hepburn's chicken salad to a sick friend...Watching Marlene Dietrich pelted with beets...
These are just some of the stories and people Frawley Becker encountered during his years as a movie dialogue coach in Paris. The author reminiscences about his work on the sets and in the dressing rooms of Hollywood personalities, providing glimpses into the private lives of a stellar array of actors and actresses. Besides these and other stars, Becker also discloses fascinating details of working with world-famous directors John Huston, William Wyler, Nicholas Ray, Anatole Litvak, René Clément, and Vittorio de Sica.
The events recounted here take place against the backdrop of Europe, and particularly Paris, in the 1960s--a time of unrest and political upheaval--from the Paris student revolution of May 1968 to the sex and murder scandal that touched a French film star and shook a president--from the paranoia in Poland under communism to the most elegant, expensive brothel in the world. This is a fascinating chronicle of a time and place, of the stars who moved around Europe, and the dialogue coach who moved with them.