The only problem I seem to remember was I got jaundice, yellow jaundice. I must have eaten some bad mussels in Marseilles, and I was… I didn't know, because I was all… I became yellow like a canary, and I was staying at the Hotel Rühl in Nice. And they sent a doctor, Dr Rosanoff - I'll never forget his name – from Russia, and he said, 'You've got jaundice, and you've got to stay in bed'. I said, 'But the Hollywood director's coming over tomorrow'. He said, 'Forget the Hollywood director'. Well, I didn't forget the Hollywood director, and… but I was so yellow, you know. And in any case, at the hotel, I heard the owner ring up – you know, it was one of the small hotels in Villefranche – was it safe to have somebody who was as yellow as a canary staying in his hotel?
And so I got a car, I went to Nice airport, and I collected the director, who was a man called Raoul Walsh, who was a sort of blood-and-guts director. And I felt terrible, you know. I don't know if you've ever had yellow jaundice, but I mean really terrible yellow, and I tried to pretend – I had dark glasses on, you see – pretend that I was okay, and I said to him, 'Really, I'm not too well, and, you know, I've got a bit of a yellow skin'. He said, 'No, no, you're that sort of exotic type, you know!'
Well, I wasn't going to give in, so… but I couldn't go with him on the locations which I had found before, so I had all the meetings with them in the hotel, lying in bed, you know, with the Russian doctor saying he's not going to accept any more responsibility. He said, 'If you don't stop this and take the medication' – in those days they gave me artichokes, you know – you'll be dead'. So, you know, it's nothing to laugh about.
Well, I got away with it, and established a great relationship, a) with the shipbuilder, who became a lifelong friend who unfortunately died last year, and the whole family. And they have this fantastic house in Villefranche, and we used to stay there, and he lent me his old pre-war Mercedes to drive around. And I tried to, you know, I said, how many times am I going to be in a place like this? Jack Warner had a villa at Juan les-Pins, a Villa Aujourd'hui, and all those things. Garbo was staying at Haut de Cagnes, you know. It was fantastic, but I didn't feel very well, and if you see some of my photographs of back then.
