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had found her profoundly loyal to her friends. He had importuned her to talk to him about Fedora, and she had adamantly refused. She did, however, recall for him the precise details of her and Moe Roseman’s initial encounter with Fedora. It had been on a Sunday, and Vi had expressed the wish to go to the beach. She and Moe caught the Venice Short Line from downtown; the car was hot and smelly, and bore only three passengers: a young couple and Fedora. Fedora was crying, and feeling sorry for her, Viola moved beside her to discover what the matter was. She met with a stream of what sounded like gibberish, but Moe recognized it as Russian. He could speak a little and thus a line of communication was opened. During the trip they talked, and he learned that she was an actress who had come from Berlin, where Abe Bluhm of AyanBee studios had offered her a contract. It was Bluhm who bought her contract from Improstein, and he then had left Berlin for Vienna, telling Maria to get to New York on the next boat. Which she did, but hardly in the manner described earlier. She traveled third class on the Kronprinzessin Carolina, was terribly seasick, and arrived sans fur coat and sans roses, to be taken in tow by a member of AyanBee Pictures’ office staff, who checked her into a cheap midtown hotel, where he left her for two days. She spoke hardly any English and the city terrified her.
    With the same paucity of fanfare, she was met in Pasadena by a man in a secondhand roadster, in which he drove her to a hotel—little more than a rooming house, really—on Melrose Avenue, and deposited her. A dapper fellow, the man wore a gray flannel suit and spats, which Fedora found odd, considering the hot weather. He also sported a gray felt hat with a natty silk band, the brim turned rakishly up on one side and down on the other. “What kind of hat do you call that?” she asked him in her broken English. “That?” he replied. “That’s a fedora. Why?” She shrugged and tilted her head critically to one side. “I like it,” she replied.
    No one at the studio seemed to know who she was or what was to be done with her. She languished for endless weeks, picking up her salary check on Fridays with the secretaries and the grips, and believing she had made a dreadful mistake. She had never seen the Pacific Ocean and made up her mind one Sunday to go unaccompanied to the beach. On the train she was drowned in a wave of self-pity and homesickness. Enter Moe Roseman and Viola. His American tongue fumbled over the Russian syllables of her last name and he said, half kidding, that she ought to get another one. “I have,” she said. “What?” he asked. “Fedora,” she said. “Fedora’s a hat,” he said. “I know,” she said. “I want to he a high hat.”
    So she had the name before she had anything else, except the face. Later, the “high hat” remark was misinterpreted as meaning that she wanted to be snooty, but at the time she meant only that she wanted to be important, famous. It did not take long, and both Moe Roseman and Viola Ueberroth were pivotally involved. Moe had been peddling a scenario around the studios, one which in fact Sam Ueberroth had written. It was titled Zizi, and since “Fedora” had been put under contract personally by Abe Bluhm, Moe thought he sniffed possibilities at AyanBee. He and Vi tricked Fedora out in a glamorous outfit, borrowed some furs, a large dog, and an important-looking car. Sam, in a chauffeur’s uniform, drove Moe and Fedora to AyanBee, where Viola had telephoned down to the gate to have them passed onto the lot; the pass read “Madame Fedora and Maurice Derougemont.” Bluhm was still in Europe, and his partner, one Jake Amsteen, was minding the store, though the right hand of Bluhm never let the left one of Amsteen know when it was washing, or what. Though he knew nothing of Fedora, Amsteen was impressed. Moe used the French boulevardier’s accent he later became famous for, Fedora was