An American Programmer in Paris -- 1965-1966

It proved to be a remarkable adventure and thorough re-education (not only in the language spoken). These are some of the happenings.

Living Quarters for a Year

After taking my Berlitz French course, my wife and I flew to Paris (trip 1965 #5, Feb 26 to Mar 03) to pick out an apartment. Found a very nice almost affordable one on the second floor of a 6-floor building. Remember that in Europe this means 6 floors above ground, plus the ground floor itself - the "rez chaussee" in France.

It was in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb just on the West side of the Bois de Boulogne opposite Paris itself. We looked out on the park and its horse chestnut trees just across the road. The address was 33 Blvd du Commandant Charcot, and it was notable for the residents, the neighbors, the decor, and the help.

The Residents

Each floor (etage) had one apartment with two front windows, and a larger one with three.

• Rez chaussee (ground floor) -- Raymond Guerlain, of the perfume family.
• First floor -- on the 2-side, a television producer; on the 3-side, the Prince of Baroda, (nicknamed "Princie") who threw some wild parties, was known as a rake all over Paris, and drove a yellow Rolls-Royce that had elephants painted on the doors, their trunks spouting hot-air balloons in many colors! A reader wrote to say that it was the Rolls-Royce Phantom V limousine that the Maharani purchased in 1963 to replace the 1956 Rolls that he now owns.
• Second floor -- on the 2-side, us; on the 3-side an Iraqi named Munther Fattah (of whom I shall say much in what follows).
• Third floor -- the daughters of the Governor of Martinique.
• Floors four and five -- anonymous people so rich they came there for only a few weeks in the year. We never saw them or knew their names, which I am sure was exactly what they intended!
• Sixth floor -- the owner of the building.

The Neighbors

• Down the street about two U.S. blocks, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, in a semi-palace called the Chateau de Madrid.
• In an apartment building in the opposite direction, the Maharani of Baroda, the kid's mother, with two poorly-trained poodles her maid had to walk and contend with. She managed to live on about $10 millions in jewels she had absconded with.
• Across the boulevard in the Bois, prostitutes that chased you around through the trees if you dared venture in at nighttime. Turned out to be good sorts when one got to talking with them. They liked Americans.
• And one early morning Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa died when he crashed his Ferrari in the Bois de Boulogne near us. We had seen him earlier the previous evening at a bar in the George V, and it was a surprise!

At one of his parties I looked down to the street to see a Ford Mustang, and commented to three Arab oil businessmen that I had read in Playboy that James Bond's creator Ian Fleming had said that he always kept an American car, in addition to the best British makes, so he could be certain of having one that started in the morning. To which one of the sheiks responded "Oh, do you know the Playboy people? We financed the London Club for them."

The car turned out to belong to a Swiss general at the party. The only comment was that he liked boys.

I can verify the Arabic thinking that women are chattels. Once, before Munther and I could notice, one of them had swung my wife into the air over his shoulders, and was heading to a bedroom wih her,

Of course, Munther himself wasn't averse to a little of that himself. Once, while his wife was at a diet farm, he tried to give me a free trip to Nice on the Riviera, with guaranteed dates with Playboy girls. This was not a scam; he showed me pictures in Playboy magazines, then pictures of himself on the beach with the same girls. I decided to stay in Paris to protect my wife.

One Sunday morning Munther came over, whispering "Come see who's in my bed". As he had a bottle of that Dom Perignon in hand, we did. A vision in a black feather negligee stretched her arms and asked "What's going on?" Surprisingly, in English, for it was the actress Claudine Longet. She who costarred in the Peter Sellers film "The Party".

The Decor

• Exterior -- reddish marble all over.
• Foyer -- Twin Herculite glass doors, etched in a split round ornate design. And, in the foyer itself, a backlighted sculpture of colored glass, every bit as magnificent as those one sees in the Paris Metro (subway).
• Elevators -- stainless steel door facings, red carpet on floors and walls.
• Stairs -- marble treads, with laminated wood railings.
• Walls -- small marble pieces, where not red carpet.
• Apartment doors -- stainless steel with a huge opal (ours was 7 inches long) in an ornate bronze abstract.
• Apartment floors -- marble over radiant heating.
• Bidet -- operable, though my wife kept a toy frog in it.
• Garage -- small enough so they complained about our standard-sized Buick. But they never carped about the yellow Rolls!
• Furniture -- much of our own, flown over so we felt at home! But we had to buy a refrigerator, and all French models of that era were tiny!

We were pretty helpless as far as shopping went. It took a while to identify horseradish at the markets ("raifort" - strong radish), as the word was not in our French dictionary. And the kitchen facilities were small and in a very tiny space. So we mentioned the problem to the concierge. No problem at all. He mumbled something about a Cordon Bleu graduate, and his wife cooked a superb dinner for us. So we hired her sister, who definitely was not a Cordon Bleu graduate, even though the wife of the concierge was.

A Question

This was 20 years after World War II, and Paris to our eyes looked very prosperous and totally restored. Was I just a country boy dazzled by the richness of the life? Or did I get placed automatically in a fancy position because I was in charge (via some 1500 people) of most of the software business in Europe that wasn't IBM's?