The Smartest Set in World

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 400, 14 July 1928, Page 24

The Smartest Set in World

ADOLPHE MENJOU RECORDS HIS FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF FASHIONABLE LONDON

■[THIN an liour of my arrival in London I was asked to give my opinion of English, women and to criticise the way English men dressed. To have done the first tvas clearly impossible, for I had not seen any. To have done the second would have been an impertinence. The English are the best-dressed nation in the rvorld. All I would care to say about clothes is that I take a very great deal of trouble with my own. A film actor has to —for the slightest blemish in cut stands out a mile on the screen.

To me London is easily the smartest city in the woi-ld. The men are so well dressed in the streets. They carry sticks. It gives them an air. The policeman and the commissionaires salute so smartly. The carvers and the waiters in your chop-houses and restaurants are so tidy and efficient, while in the hotels there is just enough foreign intonation among the staff to produce a pleasant cosmopolitan veneer.

Kind friends took us to the Embassy Club. Never in my life have I been in such a distinguished gathering. We

saw the Duke of York and the Duchess dancing beside us. We saw Prince George siting next to Lady Mountbatten. We saw the Marquis de Casa Maury, Sir Philip Sassoon, who was beautifully dressed —I wonder who his tailor is? —and dozens of other people whom we did not know but could see at once were both brilliant and famous. I tell you, we were tickled to death. I got a particular kick out of seeing Lady Louis Mountbatten, because it was on the day she arrived in Hollywood that I got my first big chance on the pictures. For that was the day that Charlie Chaplin offered me a part in “A Woman of Paris.” And what wonderful manners you English have got! I wanted to stare all the time at the Duke and Duchess of York and Prince George, but iiobody else did and so I just had to content myself with a peek every now and then over my wife’s shoulder. If it had been in New York or Hollywood, everyone would have been staring hard all the time, and I am afraid I should have, done so too. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in London, show your best manners. On three or four occasions I very nearly yielded to my inclination to bump into the Duke so that I could apologise to him, and when I got back to America say that I had had an exclusive interview with the King’s second son.