What a narrow escape! I might have ended up a Fox staff director. My first film had been a great success, and Zanuck was hot after me. My long-term contract would have been eagerly “adjusted,” that is, enriched. I could have had a lovely, spacious home in Bel Air in any one of a number of styles—they were all there to pick from—or a beach house in Malibu, or both, and why not a ranch up north in the Ojai Valley (only an hour and a half away)? I could certainly have had a numbered bank account in Switzerland and a press agent to see to it that I was showered with praise often enough to quiet any and all doubts I had about myself. I could have had my name in the Hollywood Reporter once a week like so many others and, as a reward, have enjoyed any success-hungry young actress I wanted. I could have had every joy that a successful career in Hollywood could have given me. And here is the best of it: I was loved; not challenged, loved! The crews loved me, the designers loved me, the department heads loved me, the cameramen en masse loved me; they were all eager to work with me. “When? When?” they’d cried. “When are you going to do another picture?” The Fox lot, that year of ’45, was the happiest place I’d ever enjoyed. If I wasn’t a king—that was Darryl—I was a prince. Everybody greeted me whether they knew me or not; they couldn’t afford not to, for who could predict how far up in the world I’d rise? As for missing the New York crowd, they were all there or on the way west, ready to drink with me evenings or, on Sundays, picnic around swimming pools of emerald water, clear and clean enough to drink. And as for my contract to direct Sam Behrman’s Dunnigan’s Daughter—well, it wasn’t a contract, it was only a handshake; my agent would find a way to weasel me out of that. I didn’t want to do that damned play anyway.