There’s this bit of dialogue in Ernest Lubitsch’s 1931 film, “Trouble in Paradise”.
Gaston Monescu: Madame Colet, if I were your father, which fortunately I am not, and you made any attempt to handle your own business affairs, I would give you a good spanking – in a business way, of course.
Mariette Colet: What would you do if you were my secretary?
Gaston: The same thing.
Mariette: You’re hired!
Gaston Monescu, by the way, is played by Herbert Marshall, who acts, talks and moves impossibly smooth. But he did his entire film career on a wooden leg, because he’d had the original blown off in the First World war. You’d never notice. Mr Suave indeed.
That Lubitsch touch, that meant so much.
Here’s another still from “Trouble in Paradise”, showing that Gaston Monescu knew his duties as a secretary. It’s not all filing correspondence and spanking the boss, you know.
I’ll come back to Lubitsch films later, because they’re surprisingly, and persistently, perverse. But in the meantime the next post is going to start dragging the tone of this blog down. Not before time.