![]() A pose from the French film made in 1932: "L.F.I. Does Not Answer" |
![]() When Lilian Harvey and Boyer made the French film "Moi et L'Imperatrice" they didn't dream that Charles would succeed in Hollywood and Lilian fail. |
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BUT AS Louise Durand dreamed her brilliant dreams, Boyer pere thought only, with solid satisfaction, that at last he had a son who would carry on the business when he was gone. The fair fields of France still would be reaped and sown by machinery bearing the Boyer name.
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"For the first ten years of my life, " Charles
told me, in his quiet, unostentatious way, as we sat together in the
pine-panelled library of his Hollywood home, "I was a most naughty
little boy -- spoiled and petted. Then I changed suddenly but most completely.
Before that change came, however, the change which divided my life as
a chasm divides the land, I got into every kind of mischief available.
And when none was available I invented some. I was never "like
the Boyers." I took no interest in the factory, other than to memorize
the names of the employees and the machinery. I took no interest at
all in thriftily depositing my francs and centimes in my small bank.
I am sure that my good father must have deplored, a little uneasily,
this changeling in his home. But my mother smiled her secret smile (that
smile that Charles has inherited) and was convinced that a new intellectual
light had been born into the world. And because she so believed, she
humored me and always 'spared the rod.' |