The only thing I knew about Adolphe Menjou was a vague sense of his look - 1930s movie guy with slicked black hair and a moustache - and his name occurs in the musical of Sunset Boulevard ("Who'd you get that fancy coat from? Adolphe Menjou?")
Here follows an odd trail starting with Billy Wilder, circling to Adolphe Menjou, and back to Sunset Boulevard again
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I was just reading a recently translated book of Billy Wilder's newspaper work from Germany and Vienna in the 1920s as a young whippersnapper journalist. It was nice light reading for a recent plane trip. There is an essay by Wilder interviewing Adolphe Menjou's agent, who is visiting Berlin around 1928, and then interviewing Menjou himself, by way of telephone from Paris. The essay mentions twice that Menjou's mother was from Leipzig. And that Menjou spoke German pretty well.
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Nope.
I googled Menjou and found his Wikipedia page. There, we learn his father was French, and his mother from Ireland (Nora Joyce, and stated to be a distant cousin of James Joyce). Not German. A couple secondary sources also gave me Menjou's mother as Irish.
I just got an inter library loan of Menjou's 1948 autobiography. And there it is. Several pages discuss his mother and her Irishness.
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HYPOTHESIS
Menjou was looking for work in Europe, and he thought it was an asset to give his paternal heritage as French in France - which was true In his autobiography, he describes the French press going nuts over his French heritage.
So the next week, why not try telling German journalists that "his mother was from Leipzig" which was flat-out fake news but might buy him some extra column-inches and reader interest.
That's my guess. This gives us the Billy Wilder essay as we have it, and his quotes about the German mother of the actor.
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WILDER's SCRIPT
Wilder rose from being a hand-to-mouth newspaper writer to a top Hollywood director. Sunset Boulevard was written by Billy Wilder, and the quote about Adolphe Menjou was in the original 1950 film just as it appears in the 1993 musical.
Wilder rose from being a hand-to-mouth newspaper writer to a top Hollywood director. Sunset Boulevard was written by Billy Wilder, and the quote about Adolphe Menjou was in the original 1950 film just as it appears in the 1993 musical.
So, first, interesting that Wilder had been tracking Menjou since Wilder began reviewing his films in the mid 1920s, and wrote him into the Nora Desmond movie as a quip. And, second, Wikipedia tells us Menjou was famous for his sartorial excellence, and extravagantly large wardrobe, and that's the purpose of the 1950 quotation, to set him up as the fancy dresser nonpariel.
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FAR RIGHT
Menjou was also known for being "slightly to the right of Attila the Hun," to pull a phrase from another Webber musical (Evita). Menjou was a big proponent, a big fan, of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and a flag waving member of the John Birch Society.
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Wilder briefly joined anti-HUAC groups in Hollywood, but backed down and became less vocal. Menjou was loudly pro-HUAC. Why did Wilder take the effort to make a call-out to Adolphe Menjou in the Sunset script?
1. It's just a pop culture reference about expensive clothes, the simplest and thus perhaps most likely idea.
2. Wilder saw the storm clouds of HUAC and soon McCarthy, and by prominently naming Menjou, wanting to imply he was a bit pro-HUAC, if needed.
3. Wilder despised Menjou, and even if Menjou wouldn't be caught in the same room with Wilder, he could name and slightly mock Menjou by way of his script.
I looked through a number of Wilder biographies. Mentions of Menjou are absent or tiny (including Menjou's name in a list of his 1920s interview subjects, or remarking that Wilder's "Front Page" was a remake of a 1931 film that included Menjou.)
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I'm waiting for an original German copy of Wilder's essays by slow mail which hopefully will include the Menjou interview.
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FINAL PUZZLE
Since Menjou was raised in an English-French household (bilingual) and was a layabout in college (by his own recounting), it's unclear where his high quality German comes from, as Wilder described it, it's not a language you pick up in a spare week. But Wilder vouches for his German skills, and in his autobiography he remarks he's made movies in English, French, Spanish, and German.
(That might have been in Germany itself but equally possible it occurred during the short period early in the Talkies when Hollywood made multi lingual movie versions right in LA. Menjou does discuss making a two-cast (except for him) English and French movie that way.)
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I made a 4 minute amateur video documentary about this.
Supporting visual material including Menjou's memorial (by his wife, by the pond) at Hollywood Forever, and Menjou's star on the walk of fame (across from Hwd & Highland). Not shown, Menjou's mother he apparently moved here, she is buried at the Catholic Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. The video includes a snapshot of Wilder's stone, in Westwood, and Wilder's star, on North Vine St in Hollywood.
