"How do you shave in there?"

Audrey Hepburn cornered
Cary Grant in a Paris
hotel lift and finally
got to the bottom of
one of the great impon-
derables of American
cinema, in Stanley Don-
en's farcical thriller,
Charade (1963). I went
to see the movie with
a Dartmouth freshman
in my curiously end-
less rôle as a younger
sibling, not yet of the
shaving class, myself.

By the time of his

commencement, my in-

terest was no longer

academic, as I had

crossed the hirsute

frontier, yet still

not into the land of

road trips to the near-

est licensed premises.

Oh, I might tag along.

I even learned the cus-

tom of the determined

drive, to the nearest

place like Vassar.

But there was a frontier toward which no curiosity conducted me, toward which I really didn't venture. I saw it as a chore I could just as easily postpone. I don't mean to claim any profit by this flat procrastination, except to say that it strangely spared me any pang of abstinence. I had no sense of doing, anything; I had no sense of not doing, anything - but of course, this doesn't mean I was being very bright. Nor if it did mean anything, even to this day I could not responsibly say, it could mean only one thing. In all events, it did mean, I did not meet my Audrey Hepburn, until she was brought into my eating club as my friend's romance.

They still make fron-

tiers, I find; and I

have learned to take

them with a merrier

anticipation. Not with

any better perception,

nor with much advance

in method. But there

are pictures, to this

day, which can show an

edge or two to make

one smile, even about

oneself. Still, I know

never to expect obser-

vation to be welcomed 

as anything better than 

spying, without rever- 

ing farce.

Stanley Donen
  director, producer
Peter Stone
  screenplay
Charade
Universal, 1963©

Robbie Beeser

Road guys
Georgia, Caucasus
Joonas Parviainen

Model for Damir Doma
Paris

Blond at border
Germany
Joonas Paraviainen