«Unlike Rose Hobart and Sylvia Sidney, Claudette Colbert had a different story to tell of her encounters with a very frisky Fredric March:
"Freddie March was the worst womanizer I ever knew. His hands had twenty fingers, I swear, and they were always on my ass. I finally said, "If you don’t stop I’ll walk right out of the scene and tell Mr. DeMille what you’re doing" … So the camera rolled again. I’m on top of my throne surrounded by four blacks - they called them Nubians then, honey - and all the eunuchs. The blacks and the eunuchs were always shooting craps. Anyway, Mr. DeMille yelled "Action" and all of a sudden I felt this hand around my left cheek and I stopped and walked down to camera and demanded to see Mr. DeMille."
Apparently, even this didn’t stop March - who was in one of his Peck Bad Boy moods. The Colbert derriere was so appealing to him, he couldn’t resist a pat or pinch even when the famed Hollywood photographer John Engstead was shooting publicity photographs for the film. One photo “…with Freddie’s hand wrapped around my rear end,” Colbert recalled, found its way into the Police Gazette. “And the caption read, ‘Even if the Marines haven’t landed, Freddie March seems to have the situation well in hand.”’ Colbert was so appalled by this that she went to the Paramount front office and demanded that she be given approval of any photographs taken of her - the first Paramount star granted such approval - and all because of Freddie March and his “twenty” fingers!»
from “Fredric March: A Consummate Actor” by Charles Tranberg
