With a talent for witty, ribald tales, Mankiewicz was just the sort of person who would have gotten along well with a CIA operative who had once dreamed of becoming a New Yorker cartoonist. Over dinner at Lansdale’s Rue Duy Tan house, Mankiewicz said he had bought film rights to The Quiet American “to prevent the British or French from making an anti-U.S. movie.”60 Lansdale helped him craft an alternative storyline. A few weeks later, Ed wrote to Helen, “Seems that Mankiewicz liked the plot twist for ‘The Quiet American’ that we discussed. . . . Quite a change in the French propaganda!”61 A
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