20                                James Oliver Brown

In addition to my rather numerous trips to Europe, I did a lot of
traveling in this country during my stint representing writers. I
spoke to writing groups at the universities of Georgia and South
Florida, California State College, Indiana University, Wagner Col¬
lege, Columbia, and the New School; I was the participating agent
in three of the Radcliffe College publishing courses, and I even
spoke to the Westchester Womens' Club and to the students at Miss
Porter's at Farmington.

Although I made a number of trips to California in the interests
of selling motion picture rights, I never could fit into the way of life
"out there" in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and Bel Air.
I remember how upset my client Gore Vidal was when my wife and
I took him to dinner at Chasen's and we were put at a table in the
rear. And in a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, someone came and
took away my flowers and candy and cookies because the hotel had
sent them to me by mistake. I can still see my attractive, socially
secure client and friend Marguerite Gilbert McCarthy, author of
The Cook Is in the Parlor, driving up to the hotel in her ancient little
Chevrolet. What a relief it was from the Cadillacs and British cars
the fashionable film people drove! The Mercedes had not yet made
its re-entry after the war.

In 1978 I was "captured" by the British. On my many visits to
London I had made many friends among agents and publishers
there. As a midshipman at Annapolis, I visited London in the sum¬
mer of 1931. President Herbert Hoover, our commander-in-chief,
had decreed that, in the interests of conserving space on the battle¬
ships, our everyday double-breasted blue uniforms would be our
formal attire for black-tie affairs abroad. The British were not
impressed by the order ofthe president of their lost colonies, and to
dine in London with friends at restaurants and at the then fashion¬
able Kit Kat Club, and even in my own hotel, I was forced to rent a
dinner jacket, a breach ofthe rules for which, had I been discovered,
I would have suffered demerits and some punishment. This was the
beginning of a feeling I had against the Brits that was not dispelled
until my association with Curtis Brown in London began in 1978.1