When You Lunch with the Emperor

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Ludwig Bemelmans - legendary bon vivant, raconteur and self-mythologiser - lived life like a character from a novel. Thankfully for us he was there to write about it himself. After an idyllic Tyrolean childhood followed by an equally rebellious adolescence, Ludwig was shipped off to America by his family. He spent years working in New York's hotel and restaurant demimonde and a period in the US Army before eventually becoming a celebrated artist and writer. He moved seamlessly from below stairs to mixing with the rich and famous. He spent time in Hollywood, designed sets for Broadway, opened restaurants and travelled on endless adventures through South America and Europe. Wherever Ludwig went and whatever he did -letting Parisian criminals baby-sit his daughter, getting caught with his toenails painted red by the Gestapo or discovering the only restaurant with toilets in the Amazon jungle - you were guaranteed magic and pure entertainment. When You Lunch with the Emperor paints an enchanted picture of this life less ordinary through Bemelmans' finest tales.

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Contents

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13
Arrival in America
33
Herr Otto Brauhaus
48
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Ludwig Bemelmans, April 27, 1898 - October 1, 1962 Ludwig Bemelmans was born on April 27, 1898 in Meran, then Austria. At the age of eight, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Regensburg, Germany. He was enrolled into various public and private schools and failed out of most of them. At the age of twelve, unsure of what else to do with him, Bemelmans was apprenticed to an uncle in the hotel business and proceeded to go through many jobs, being repeatedly dismissed. After supposedly shooting and almost killing a waiter, his family gave him the ultimatum of reform school or emigration to the United States. He arrived in America in 1914 with reference letters from his uncle to various hotel managers in New York. Bemelmans obtained a job as a waiter in the Ritz-Carlton, but left that job to join the Army in 1917. In the Army, he worked with German speaking recruits and as a military hospital guard. In 1918, Bemelmans became a naturalized citizen, returning to hotel and restaurant work a year later, eventually opening his own restaurant. In the 1934, at the suggestion of one of his friends, Bemelmans began to write, producing his first children's book, "Hansi." He was best known though, for his series of books about the little french girl, "Madeline," which is still a childhood favorite. "Madeline's Rescue," the second book in the series, won the Caldecott Medal in 1953. His first book for adults was entitled, "My War with the United States" and was a diary of his experiences in the service during World War I. In fact, Bemelmans usually wrote his books based on his life experiences, such as "Life Class" and "Hotel Splendide," about his life as a restaurateur, his travels to Ecuador and Italy appeared in "The Donkey Inside" and "Italian Holiday," and his brief stint as a screenwriter in Hollywood was the basis for "Dirty Eddie." Bemelmans wrote about a book or two a year and was a contributor to Town and Country and Horizon, as well as a cover illustrator for The New Yorker. In his later years, Bemelmans enjoyed some small fame from painting, with some of his work appearing in various galleries. Ludwig Bemelmans died of pancreatic cancer in New York on October 1, 1962.

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