In the 1930s, all of Miss K.’s Parisian friends longed to be in the movies, and a few succeeded. Lee Miller appeared in Jean Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet, playing the part of a living statue. In 1932, Hoyningen-Huene directed a drama, a film that is lost today, featuring Horst, his assistant and lover, and Natalie Paley, the splendid Romanoff princess whose life’s journey could be compared to a trip on board the Nautilus, Jules Verne’s fictional submarine. Toto was soon seduced as well. The official version has Toto heading to London after learning that director and producer Alexander Korda was holding auditions there for his new film, The Private Life of Don Juan. Toto took a screen test and landed the part of one of the famous seducer’s mistresses. Natalie Paley was also cast in the film.
“Actually, it was her friend Conrad Veidt who convinced her to sign a contract with Korda,” explained Toto’s friend F.C. “Had they met in Germany? In London or Paris? It does not matter, they all traveled extensively. They got along famously and Veidt, whose Nosferatu-like character appealed to Toto, persuaded her to go ahead. He probably thought that Toto, who was so incredibly photogenic, would be perfect for the big screen.”
Bitterly opposed to the Nazi regime, the actor had moved to London in 1933 to protect his Jewish wife. At the time, he personified German Expressionism and was known for his roles as a psychopath or a pervert: he played Cesare, the homicidal somnambulist in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920), and Gwynplaine, the disfigured circus artist in The Man Who Laughs (1928)—a performance that inspired the part of the Joker in the Batman series. Film buffs also remember him as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942). In addition to Veidt, Toto befriended many other artists who had fled the growing Nazi threat.
Miss K. was enchanted at the thought of working for Alexander Korda, whose extravagant style was so typically Mitteleuropean. After fleeing the regime of Béla Kun in his native Hungary, young Korda lived in many different cities in the first half of the 1920s before settling down in Hollywood, where he directed sixteen films. But America could never live up to Korda’s beloved France or England. “For a time, he lived and worked in Paris before settling in London,” remembered Denise Tual, his friend and collaborator. “A Hungarian Jew from a very poor family, he had an innate taste for luxury and his brilliant sense of business allowed him to live the high life. When I met him, he was living at the Ritz, place Vendôme, and when he moved to a suite at Claridge’s, in London, an orchestra played czardas and Viennese waltzes while footmen in full livery wore white gloves to carry his prized paintings. I never forgot that moment. It says more about Alexander than volumes of writing.” Indeed, he was a perfect match for Toto.
In London, the ambitious and ruthless businessman—tough and wildly jovial at the same time—founded his own production company in 1932; he called it London Films and chose Big Ben as its logo. With the backing of his brothers Zoltan and Vincent, Alexander could now give in to his penchant for extravagant costume dramas. While The Private Life of Henry VIII appealed to a wide audience, the same would not hold true for his next project.
Released on September 10, 1934, The Private Life of Don Juan was a stodgy farce starring an aging and heavy-set Douglas Fairbanks. It was set in a picture-perfect Seville replete with predictable balconies ready to be scaled. Only Olivier Messel’s superb costumes redeemed the dreary film. The leading lady and Korda’s then-current mistress, Merle Oberon, was unconvincing as a flamenco dancer. Miss K. did not appear in the film—all her scenes had been cut during the editing.
“Toto found filming tedious,” recalled Lady Deirdre Curteis. “The endless waiting between takes was unbearable. She yearned for action and excitement.” Miss K. was not about to give up her modeling career—though she eventually would in 1934—to be imprisoned once again in a static environment. One morning, Toto did not show up on the set and Korda, realizing she would not return, immediately terminated her contract. Still, they remained on the best of terms and saw each other regularly at the home of their friend Moura Budberg.
Many photographs of Toto were taken during the filming and, oddly, those still shots were used to promote the film. She gave many interviews and the press predicted a bright future for her in movies. There was talk of a new project with the actor and director Monty Banks, who had worked with Laurel and Hardy. But none of this came about, as Toto had definitively given up the world of the cinema. However, she did attend the première of The Private Life of Don Juan in the company of Tallulah Bankhead and their appearance as a couple caused a sensation.
Miss K. and the American actress were lovers. Tallulah Bankhead was an authentic southern belle whose wild and eccentric lifestyle filled the gossip pages. In 1934 she had not yet appeared in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, which would be her biggest critical and commercial success, but her reputation, both on stage and on the screen, was already well established. She appeared regularly on the London stage and the press covered every detail of her escapades, to the delight of the British public.
The stunning flame-haired Bankhead was a friend of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s and a member of the Algonquin Round Table in New York. She could easily consume one or two bottles of bourbon each day, smoked close to one hundred cigarettes between dawn and dusk and never tired of singing the praises of her hunch-backed cocaine dealer, a black man named Money. “My father warned me about men and booze, but he never said anything about women and cocaine,” she responded when asked about her bisexuality. She was thrilled to be implicated in a moral scandal involving fourteen-year-old Eton students. Like Sarah Bernhardt fifty years earlier, she craved the limelight: Talk about me in good terms or bad, just talk about me.
Bankhead was worshipped by British lesbians, who watched her every move and manner and followed her everywhere. They gathered by the hundreds to welcome her at train stations. When the actress suddenly decided to cut her long hair herself, they followed her example; at the end of her performances, in lieu of flowers, they tossed handfuls of hair onto the stage.
Toto and Tallulah met in London in 1934. The attraction was mutual and immediate. To outsiders, the two women seemed as strange and fascinating as iridescent underwater creatures armed with venomous stingers. Unpredictable and narcissistic, infatuated with their own originality, they loved to be seen together. They could be as appealing as they were repellent. The liaison was short-lived, lasting only a few months, and was not unlike the relationship Toto had with Alexis Mdivani—a momentary pleasure without commitment. Tallulah Bankhead eventually returned to America, of course, and Toto would always cherish the time they had spent together.