MY DINNER WITH JEAN

In 1959, then-student editor CEDRIC PULFORD invited the young American actress Jean Seberg to write an article for Oxford Opinion. This led to a memorable encounter with the star in Paris, as he recounts in this contribution to the Jean Seberg International Film Festival, held at Marshalltown, Iowa (her hometown) in November 2011

My path crossed with Jean’s towards the start of her life in Paris, when I encountered not Jean the actress but Jean the writer. So as my tribute to a fine star and a fine person I’d like to suggest that with another turn of fate’s wheel she might also have become a fine writer.

The story begins at Oxford University in 1959, when I was editing a student magazine called Oxford Opinion. In Max Beerbohm’s novel Zuleika Dobson, the entire male student body of the university fell in love with the beautiful Zuleika. I won’t say that Jean had quite that high a profile, but she was pretty big in Oxford at that time after the huge publicity surrounding Saint Joan!

And so I had the idea of making a big splash for Oxford Opinion by inviting this beautiful but unlikely movie star, this girl from a little place in the middle of nowhere (quote, unquotes!) who bobs up in Paris speaking what a newspaper at the time described as “fluent but ungrammatical French”, to write an article.

I sent a letter via Columbia Pictures in London without any great expectations. But I underestimated both Columbia and Jean. Soon I had a reply: yes, she’d be delighted.

The article that Jean wrote for Oxford Opinion was produced without any fuss or complications. There was no press officer intervening in the process. We spoke comfortably on the phone. No fee was mentioned by either side, which was just as well because the magazine had no money. The manuscript when it arrived was clearly genuine: no professional ghost writer would work on a beat-up old typewriter!

In her article, Jean sensitively and maturely for one so young describes the pros and cons of acting. The article also provides several pointers to her interest in writing. She gives “inability to express oneself in one’s own words” as one of the several reasons for wanting to be an actress. She complains that while a writer has a manuscript rejected for reasons to do with the book, an actor loses a part because of himself.
Jean shows a journalist’s awareness of a strong ending when she concludes the article:  “There is always, even in the crowd artists, the bit players, the character actors, that secret hope that when the sheriff gallops up to ask which way he went, the answer will be “He went that-a-way”, pointing right on up.” As someone who has taught journalism all over the world, I’d be happy to commend that ending to my students.

And I’m happy to report that the circulation for that issue of Oxford Opinion increased in a bound.

My invitation to write the article evidently played directly to Jean’s literary ambitions. Garry McGee’s 2007 biography of Jean makes clear that she wanted to be a writer. Furthermore, she was in love with one of France’s biggest literary lions, Romain Gary, whose fame must have seemed the real deal. Who knows what might have been without the distractions of her later life; who knows what we’ve missed with the disappearance of her literary papers after she died.

Cue fifty years on, and I’m astonished to find that the Oxford Opinion article is quoted in Garry’s biography. It’s in David Richards’ 1981 biography, too (which I somehow missed at the time). Old articles never die, it seems. How this one got into these books shows the after-life that pieces even in the obscurest publications can enjoy.

Garry and his research associate, Michael Coates-Smith, were aware of it from Richards and set about finding the article for themselves. Michael drew a blank at Oxford itself – but found a copy of the magazine on file in Cambridge. One up for Cambridge in the rivalry between these historic varsities!

David Richards, a drama critic at the time, told me he’s forgotten where he got the article from, although the answer lies locked in his brother’s barn in Massachusetts. It appears that Jean or someone else must have sent it to him. That makes me proud. David wrote in his book: “When the article appeared, [Jean] told friends it was one of her proudest accomplishments.” That makes me proud, too.

At Jean’s invitation I visited her in Paris a year or so later. On a cold night in December 1960 we met at an apartment – presumably the one where Jean and Romain were living. Jean answered the door herself. I was thrown. I didn’t think film stars did that.

One of her first remarks to me was not “Have you seen any of my films?” but “Have you read any of Romain’s books?” She pronounced his name in the English way, rather than with the second syllable through the nose in the French way. To a French speaker it would sound like the woman’s version of the name.

I should have seen the question coming. Jean had mentioned in a letter that she’d shown Oxford Opinion to Romain. But he wasn’t a big name in England, and I hadn’t bothered to find out who he was or what he’d written. “I know him by repute,” I clunkily replied. End of that topic.  

The others at the apartment were Romain, Aki Lehman, Jean’s housemate at 55 rue de Bellechasse (whom I knew as Aki Hersay), and a visiting jazz musician from America whose name I remember as Gene Norman. We all of us went on to the seriously top-end restaurant known as “Chez Moustache”. This famous restaurant was one of the real Paris locations featured a few years later in the film Woman Times Seven, starring Shirley MacLaine.

Jean was warm and utterly charming in an unforced way, not remotely playing the movie star. She wore a simple black dress. As it has emerged in the biographies, numerous witnesses have testified to this aspect of her character. Romain was taciturn. They seemed very comfortable with each other, but their manners were impeccable in avoiding overt displays of their romance. No doubt Romain’s political prominence had something to do with that, too.

My abiding memory of the dinner was that Romain looked bored throughout, disappearing several times to make phone calls. To my 22-year-old self this seemed the height of sophistication. For the next several years, I did my best to look bored at social events.

Strangely, I can’t remember a thing that was said at the dinner table. Does this mean that nothing of note was said, or the opposite: that the conversation was so brilliant that my memory crashed from overload? I know I was out of my depth; for me, the occasion was surreal.

The menu might have been written in ancient Egyptian. The only thing I recognised was Chateaubriand steak, which I ordered and then realised to my horror that it was the most expensive item on the menu of this very expensive place. Romain took my order with aplomb.

At one point I must have said something faintly interesting or amusing because Jean laid her hand on my upper arm – the effect was electric. This was the “Zuleika Dobson effect” that others have also felt – a devastating, unstudied mix of naturalness and allure that was Jean Seberg.

And then it was all over. We were standing in a cold street. Jean and Romain went off in one direction, I went in another. I never saw or heard from her again. The paths of a young journalist on the treadmill of newspapers and the international film star moving in the company of princes and presidents were miles apart. But I treasure these memories of her, and through Oxford Opinion I’m proud to be a footnote in her fascinating life of triumph and tragedy.

PARISIAN HEYDAY: Jean Seberg around the time she met the author of the article

BIO NOTE: Jean Seberg made headlines around the world when director Otto Preminger picked her after a search of thousands to play Saint Joan in the film of that name (1957). Although the picture was poorly received, she went on to star in more than 30 films. A girl from a small town in the American Midwest, she settled in Paris where she married the celebrated author, Romain Gary, and became – and remains – an icon for the French. She came to the attention of the FBI through her support for the radical Black Panthers. The agency issued black propaganda against her, which many have blamed for destroying her health. Jean Seberg’s last decade was marked by alcoholism and nervous breakdowns. She was found dead in a Paris street in 1979, aged 40, a suspected suicide.

The actress’s life is sensitively portrayed in the book Jean Seberg: Breathless (a reference to her most famous film), by Garry McGee (2007).

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FILMOGRAPHY: Jean Seberg’s film career was unique in embracing major pictures in French, English, Spanish and Italian. Her notable movies include A Bout de Souffle (1960), English title: Breathless, a seminal film of the French “New Wave” cinema; Lilith (1964) a moving study in madness, and the charming, early Bonjour Tristesse (1958). Michael Coates-Smith and Garry McGee have written a comprehensive filmography of Jean Seberg’s widely scattered work, The Films of Jean Seberg (due 2012).

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BIO-PIC: The successes and ultimate failure of Jean Seberg’s life continue to fascinate. The three decades after her death have seen numerous books and articles, and several theatrical productions. Now, with renewed interest in the actress in her native Iowa and far beyond, Fourth Wall Films are creating Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg (in production).

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THANKS FOR THE MEMORY:
Cedric Pulford revisits the Left Bank apartment building (2011)
where he met the actress