In spite of 71 years in the USA (I think I’ll temporarily decline to call it the dream-destination America or Amerika until midterm elections end 2018 or 2020) I do think of myself as an immigrant (and an apparently select part of welcomed US immigrants my being from Denmark, a close neighbor to and a genetic clone of Norway), and as such I am intensely interested in how one or another immigrant fares in the course of his or her assimilation journey. One such person that by chance has drawn my curiosity is the French-American actor Charles Boyer (1899-1978); by chance, often repeated, late last night I chose to see what’s offered on Turner Classic Movies to accompany my late dinner eating. It was devoting several days to his less known films, and, setting aside my normal compulsive work lifestyle, I indulged, permitting myself the luxury of screening two of his films in a row, the second in fact ending at 8:15 am this morning. Charles Boyer, after a good career in Europe in the 1920s, came first at age 30 to the USA. He had great success as the proverbial Continental lover in the 1930s 40s & 50s, on par with Clark Gable, the quintessential American heart-throb, who was raised like Boyer, in a very small town Figeac, France (pop. 10,000), was also from a still smaller town Cadiz, Ohio (3,000), USA. What I found of particular interest is that Boyer met and married within three months of their meeting, another actress-immigrant from England, Pat Paterson. They were married in 1934, for 44 years, until her death in 1978 of cancer, and he committed suicide two days after swallowing an overdose of barbiturates. Their only child, a son had also killed himself at age 21 decades earlier. The stresses of immigration & assimilation are not to be underestimated. My immigrant parents survived their full, and even beyond, statistical Life Expectancies. So in that sense, I’m a contrasting anomaly in terms of my experiencing still a good deal of emotional turmoil and insecurity. After 71 years, having come at age 13, I look back to a good deal of asocial and reclusive behavior that I partly attribute to those stresses. Earlier childhood trauma contribute the other part. I have, from my vantage at least, a very strong easily discernible dark side. I can count my friends on less than one hand. I live alone, spend six out of seven days alone; spend 10 hours a day in front of my computer screens, leave my closet/studio maybe two or three times per week for a couple of hours. Travel by bike and rarely venture outside Upper Westside Manhattan. Charles Boyer, from the surface screen persona, is light free-wheeling and comfortable with his persona, but seemingly, given his small town upbringing, kept a very tight dependent marriage relationship, his only marriage that, when it ended by her death, broke him up to the point of his actually terminating his own life. He appears to have had a less visible but strong dark side also. Their son’s demise is another indicator.
