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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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wasn't anything else to do, and he was lucky if he could get the Duke to sit down for two hours maybe twice a week. They would schedule, like you try to schedule me, but something would always interfere. And there was Charlie with a piece of paper in front of him and no Duke.

Anyway, the book finally came out. The Duke had said to Charlie, “Now, when this is finally-- when it's all done and finished, I'm going to take you out and give you the finest dinner that you can possibly have.” So he did indeed take him out to dinner to the finest restaurant in New York, and at the end of dinner, of course, it turned out the Duke wasn't carrying any money. [laughter] Charlie paid Joe the dinner.

As part of this scene--when I was just married to Madeleine Carroll, we were in Paris, and I got a call from Charlie saying that the Duchess wanted us for dinner on--I don't know--Thursday, or something like that. And I said, “Absolutely impossible, because we're not carrying any clothes.” I had no black tie, and I knew that all their dinners--Charlie said, “Oh, well, that's a shame,” and we forgot about it. And the next thing I knew was, “It didn't matter; it was not going to be black tie.” So we went over, and all the guests assemble. The Duke arrives; ultimately the Duchess arrives. You go through a little bit of chit-chat. You sit at the table. Then after dinner you go to the Grand Salon, you sit down next to somebody, and just about the time you've gotten the name or maybe the geography of the person that you're talking to, the Duchess arrives, and says, “Oh, Mr. Heiskell, I want you to meet and talk with--”. So, up you get, go over to the other corner; you sit down and talk





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