A few years back we happened upon two of American author David Dodge’s travel books. The first was 1953’s A Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, which shared anecdotes and tips for the adventurous, budget-minded continental traveler trying to cross borders and broaden horizons. He wrote the second after his novel To Catch a Thief became an Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. It’s called A Rich Man’s Guide to the Riviera and was published in 1962. You see its summery cover above, with Dodge’s schnozz making a dent in the righthand margin.
Dodge was a budget traveller, so we thought the title of the book was tongue-in-cheek, but it isn’t. His life had changed. To Catch a Thief had been a bestseller, had been lucratively optioned from him, hit the book lists again in conjunction with the film, and had provided a windfall of Hollywood residuals. Instead of focusing on how to advantageously work exchange rates and hustle for cheap room and board as in A Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, he focuses on the jet-set lifestyle of the South of France, some of its unusual history, and many of its unforgettable characters.
He writes about the origins of the Cannes Film Festival, describing it as a counterweight to the Venice fest, which up until World War II had been dominated by fascists from Italy and Germany. He bewails the construction of the Palais des Festivals film exhibition space, a sharp-edged and oversized box that brought about the demolition of the elegant Cercle Nautique, a Belle Epoque structure built in 1859 as a sailing club. And he tells never-heard-before tales about many participants in the Festival, from the famed Sofia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida to the never-famed bikini girls that drove photographers crazy for ten days every year.
It’s all written with Dodge’s trademark panache, with plenty of deft wordplay. We were especially amused by his discourse on the difference between playboys and playgirls, and how women inevitably fall short in the area of pointless profligacy because they’re not egomanical enough to do ridiculous things like light a cigar with a thousand dollar bill—which any number of Côte d’Azur playboys did. We want to quote some of his stories, but they tend to be long, so instead we’ll transcribe some of their final sentences. You’ll have to fill in the anterior blanks yourself, but you’ll get the picture:
The bartender had to walk home and explain the situation to his girlfriend, who hit him on the head with a ravioli cutter she happened to be holding and scarred him for life.
For all that he was short, roly-poly, balding, a sloppy dresser, and a dull conversationlist, he could keep more beautiful movie stars in the air at one time than Pan Am.
All that stood between Jayne Mansfield and myself was a single partition, the mountain of muscle she was married to, and my wife.
He took forty two rooms at the Hotel Carlton for his entourage and demanded the poached ears of the maître d’hôtel for dinner.
Two years later, when the thieves had exhausted the cash and were picked up attemping to fence off her jewelry, her reproach when called to identify them was, “You might have left me half!”
Guinevere’s voice said confidently from the bar: “Don’t you worry about me and that slab of Tasmanian ham, Elvita, honey. I’d roll him up like a Venetian blind.”
That last one is about Errol Flynn. They’re all great tales, and the book is a joy. The only thing it lacks is the illustrations of A Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, which had the artful ink/watercolor stylings of Irv Koons as accompaniment. Perhaps some of Dodge’s earlier travel books contain art. He wrote seven others, including two or three that visited some of our old haunts in Latin America, so we’re likely to try those too at some point. For anyone who enjoys a trip back in time, vintage novels are the best, but vintage travel books do it too, in a different and very satisfying way.
