Women

"He could not see without his glasses, and if he always seemed to be without them when someone he wished to avoid appeared, he got them on fast enough when a pretty girl went by." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 11

regarding the way in which women reacted to him as he gained fame:

"What a lot of silly nonsense. And what am I supposed to answer when some idiotic woman simpers: 'I think you're the most marvelous man'?"

"Get 'em to ask me," replied his wife. "I'll tell them all statues have feet of clay."

"Oh, Ruth. How horrid you are—don't you think I'm marvelous?"

"Marvelous—certainly not," lied his wife.

 A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 169

regarding Leslie's dalliances:

"Leslie's private life...was not at all predictable. If he had a set of rules in his professional life there was little evidence of them in his private life, which was full of emotional inconsistencies, as if it was being conducted not so much by an amateur as by a rather over-romantic schoolboy. In his pursuit of notions about the fair sex he was frequently misguided—or, perhaps, simply over-optimistic—for he put a number of women on pedestals to which they were scarcely entitled. The goddess-like statues he made of them too often had clay feet. In most cases they fell, well short of expectation. Strange that such a coolly detached man should have been such an impressionable idealist about the opposite sex. Yet that was his mould.

"Despite a lack of realism in these romantic adventures, mainly with actresses, Leslie conducted them with commendable discretion. If they were no more than the by-products, or side-effects, of more serious professional activities Leslie managed, in his careful, fastidious way, to keep the disparate elements apart—so far as the public was concerned—thereby drawing no undue attention to the odd shenanigans of the romantic idealist at loose inside the dedicated professional. They had a clandestine anonymity by which he cleverly concealed them from both public and press. He could fade into the colour of the background with the dexterity of a chameleon and some of his amours were almost invisible. How successful Leslie was in fostering this image of innocence, without a breath of scandal, may be measured by the fact that his many thousands of fans never doubted that he was the paragon of all that constituted the happily married man, whose background was one of undisturbed domestic bliss."

In Search of My Father, pgs. 40-41

"He had once let it out that he did not 'drink, drug or divorce' which was, I suppose, his way of saying that he was a careful, well-balanced sort of fellow who did nothing to excess. And, certainly, this was partly true. The relationships with theatrical ladies had been evanescent—bright and beautiful, fast and furious—and, predictably, burnt their way out in a matter of months." In Search of My Father, pg. 43

"Like a bee visiting flowers, he always returned to the home-hive." In Search of My Father, pg. 44


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