Grady would check in with us every couple of days to see everything was going right and we wrapped up the expensive, the fur coats for the Hepburn women and Spencer Tracy. And Grady came and retrieved those because Cukor was going to give these presents himself and that left everything else. And so Grady came up one day and said, 'Do you boys have a car?' 'Yes, sir.' We had a VW bus. 'Okay. Here are the addresses for all these presents. Go deliver them.' So we had a piece of paper that had names and addresses of all of the Hollywood people, short of the Hepburn's and the Tracy's. And for the next four, five days, we drove around Hollywood and Beverly Hills and Brentwood and all of these fancy neighbourhoods, knocking on doors and: 'Present from Mr Cukor!'
There was one bobble in the otherwise well-executed plan which was, I took the present to Signe Hasso, who was kind of an Ingrid Bergman next generation. She was slightly younger but in the mid-50s, she had a moment of stardom, and so this was 1965 and knocked on the door. A sort of Erich von Stroheim character opened the door, 'Yes?' I said, 'Well, here's a Christmas present for Miss Hasso from George Cukor.' 'Thank you very much.' Click. I went back to the VW bus. Who's next? And I picked up a present, Signe Hasso. So I had delivered the wrong present. So we did a U-turn. I went back, knocked on the door. Erich Von Stroheim answered and said… I said, 'I'm afraid this is Miss Hasso's present. I gave you the wrong present.' 'Oh. Just a minute.' Click. So five minutes later, the door opened up again and he handed me a package that looked like it had been attacked by a wildcat. So the Christmas wrapping had been ripped off and the box had been torn open and he said, 'I'm afraid you're going to have to rewrap this present.'
So this was about a week or so before Christmas but Miss Hasso was so anxious to see what George Cukor had given her for Christmas. Because of this pyramid, you could determine what your specific gravity was. If the gift was a certain kind of gift, George Cukor thought that you were high on the pyramid. If it was a cigarette lighter, then you were at the same level as the guards at the gates to the studios. So I hope, and I don't know, I hope that the present I gave, the second present to Miss Hasso was higher in the pyramid than the first present that I gave her.