On August 11, 1970, Alain Delon appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. The first minute of his interview involved his rapport with Cavett on Delon’s self-assessed bad English. Cavett replies that if things get too bad, he’ll speak in a French accent to balance things out.

“Would you?” Delon replies.

He seems genuinely on edge, despite speaking the foreign tongue with grace and wit, and making nary a single grammatical or vocabulary error during the entire time he is pouring his worries onto Cavett, who seems slyly amused by the entire irony of the situation. The host changes the subject.

“The women on my staff have just been passing out at the thought of your coming over here tonight.”

A response, midsentence, and I’d guess only half-seriously: “Why?”

The rest of that interview is a magic carpet ride.

A person can be identified in any number of ways, from…