The Fun – and Feisty – Leading Ladies
WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED IN HOLLYWOOD IN 1954, reporting for duty at MGM, Grace Kelly was also under contract to the studio. I remember sitting in publicist Dore Friedman’s office one morning when the door burst open, and in came Grace, fuming that she’d just seen the posters for Green Fire – a film she’d made with Stewart Granger – and that the studio had superimposed Grace’s head onto Ava Gardner’s body.
‘I do not have tits like that!’ she shouted.
The studio liked to ‘sex up’ their posters, in order to sell the films, all in the very best possible taste, of course.
Dore Friedman, incidentally, told me he was invited to accompany someone to one of the ‘pledge luncheons’ that used to be held at Romanov’s restaurant in LA. All the studio heads were there – Zukor of Paramount, Jack Warner, Zanuck from Fox etc. – and it suddenly dawned on poor Dore what was happening.
Zanuck stood up and said, ‘I pledge $250,000!’
‘Then I will pledge $300,000!’ shouted Adolph Zukor ... and so it went on, with them all trying to outbid one another.
As they came around to Dore, he wasn’t sure quite how far his $65 weekly pay cheque would stretch and, thinking on his feet, he declared, ‘The same as last year!’, which gained a great round of applause.
When asked about Grace Kelly, all the male directors and executives at MGM would tell you how much they fantasized about doing things only men and women can do together with her. She was unquestionably one of the most desirable women in Hollywood. William Holden and Ray Milland, two of the film world’s most unrepentant lotharios, were said to be ‘out of their minds’ with passion for her.
I found myself seated next to Grace at dinner one evening at Hollywood hairdresser Sydney Guilaroff’s house. The conversation started turning to politics, of which, as a young Brit, I knew very little, and Grace said to me, ‘You know, Roosevelt sold us down the river.’ I’m afraid I had no idea what she was talking about, and for some time after that I often kicked myself for not being able to continue the conversation.
Some years later, when I became a regular visitor to the South of France and she had become Princess Grace of Monaco, she invited me up to the Grimaldi family’s farm retreat, Roccagele, in the hills high above Monte Carlo, and that’s where I first met Prince Albert who I guess was eleven or twelve. He struck me as being a very quiet and shy young man, who took great pleasure in showing me the many animals around the farm.
Grace wasn’t at all stuffy as her royal status would have entitled her to be had she wished. Far from it, she had a mischievous sense of humour, a glint of naughtiness in her eye and a great passion for limericks – especially saucy ones.
I may not have known a great deal about US politics in the early days, but I did know that Grace Kelly was one of the most desirable women in Hollywood.
Grace was a very precious gift to Monaco, albeit for too short a time.
Talking of Ava Gardner, she was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood when I arrived at MGM in the 1950s. In fact MGM’s publicity department was reportedly sending out three thousand photos of Ava each week. A decade earlier, Louis B. Mayer himself had signed Ava, reportedly saying after viewing her screen test, ‘She can’t act. She can’t talk. She’s terrific!’
After a few years of fairly nondescript roles, it was her part in the 1946 film The Killers that really launched her as a star. The studio gave her Norma Shearer’s old dressing-room suite, the largest on site, with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and the actual dressing room itself, lined with mirrors, light bulbs and wardrobes – it was certainly befitting of her new standing.
Ava was a very funny and pithy lady, though was, perhaps, equally well known for her sexual conquests and husbands as much as her films. She was married three times in all, to Mickey Rooney (himself an MGM contract artist when they met), Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra; and her high-profile affairs included those with Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, George C. Scott and Robert Mitchum. In fact, legend has it that it was while filming My Forbidden Past in 1951, that she was first attracted to co-star Mitchum, who was himself under contract to Howard Hughes, with whom Ava had been romantically linked.
Mitchum telephoned his boss. ‘Do you mind if I go to bed with Ava?’ he asked.
‘If you don’t,’ Hughes replied, ‘they’ll think you’re a pansy.’
In her autobiography, though, Ava stated that Sinatra was the real love of her life. They’d actually met when Ava was an eighteen-year-old starlet, newly arrived in Hollywood, but, despite describing her as ‘smoulderingly sexy’, Frank thought she was just too young at the time. Five years later – by which time she was not only divorced from Rooney but also from her second husband, bandleader Artie Shaw – they met again and there was a huge mutual attraction. Soon after, Frank left his wife, Nancy, for her.
The whole story caused a huge scandal among the Hollywood establishment, and the scandal was happily fuelled by gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, not to mention within the Catholic Church, and among Frank’s fans. Ava was portrayed as the femme fatale who had stolen Frank away from his family.
Frank’s career suffered both critically and commercially, but Ava used her considerable influence to get him cast in what was to be his Oscar-winning role in From Here to Eternity in 1953. That film, and the award that followed it, revitalized both Frank’s acting and singing careers. He was soon re-established as the world’s top recording artist.
During their six-year marriage, Ava became pregnant twice, but had abortions. ‘MGM had all sorts of penalty clauses about their stars having babies,’ she later said. Sadly, the marriage didn’t last, as Ava pursued other, younger, lovers while on filming locations in Europe when Frank was working in Hollywood. It broke his heart, it really did.
In the early 1990s, Tina Sinatra, Frank’s daughter from his first marriage, produced a TV movie about her father. There was obviously still a feeling of great bitterness over her parents’ split, as Tina chose the most beautiful actress she could find to play Nancy but when it came to casting someone to play Ava – the greatest Hollywood beauty of all – the part went to a rather plain-looking actress.
A very dear friend from my earliest acting days was Dinah Sheridan. Dinah’s parents ran a photographic studio, Studio Lisa, in Welwyn, where I used to do some of my modelling work, and I’ll forever remember her for giving me a lift back to London in her car after a photographic assignment – and saving me the valuable train fare. Sadly, I never had the chance to actually work with her, as in the 1950s she married John Davis, the feared head of the Rank Organisation, and he forbade her ever to act again as, ‘no wife of his should work’.
Dinah told me that on their wedding day Davis said to her, ‘I can’t remember if you’re the third or fourth, but I’m sure you won’t be the last of my wives.’ It surprised few of us that she later filed for divorce – and was granted one, incredibly swiftly – on the grounds of ‘cruelty’. Happily, she later returned to acting and made one of my favourite films, The Railway Children, for Bryan Forbes at ABPC in Elstree in 1970.
It was Lionel Jeffries who brought E. Nesbit’s acclaimed book to Bryan’s attention and said he’d adapted it as a screenplay; Bryan read it and said he’d love to make a film version. ‘But who should we approach to direct?’ he asked.
‘Well, actually ...’ offered Lionel, ‘I really rather fancied directing it myself.’
Bryan readily agreed and the result was one of the finest British films ever made.
Dinah’s daughter, Jenny Hanley, followed in her footsteps as an actress and in fact became a Bond Girl in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with the other fella. My favourite story from Jenny’s career is actually from when she co-starred with my old sparring partner Christopher Lee in Scars of Dracula, which at one point called for a blood-sucking bat to swoop down and remove her crucifix necklace in order that the evil Count could sink his teeth into her neck. Of course, back in 1970, there wasn’t any CGI and so the bat was brought to life as a model, which was operated by two prop men who were very much an item – and extremely camp with it.
For the wide shots the bat was suspended on a wire and had to swoop down towards Jenny but the problems started when it swooped a little too low and bounced off her rather ample bosom. After a couple more ‘bouncing takes’ the whole cast and crew fell about in a terrible fit of giggles.
My modelling days took me from Dinah Sheridan’s parents’ photographic studio and a selection of tank tops to the ‘hotspots’ of the British seaside. You may not be able to see them, but I bet I’m covered in goosebumps.
‘This prompted Sir Christopher Lee to walk on set and tell everyone they ought to take the film more seriously as, after all, Vlad the Impaler, upon whom Dracula was based, had been a real person and a little more gravitas – as befitting this noble figure – was called for,’ said Jenny.
Of course, Christopher’s intervention only served to make everyone start giggling further, though they eventually managed to get the take, and moved on to the close-ups.
‘This meant the two prop men – who were dressed identically by the way – bringing the bat down to my eye level,’ Jenny told me. ‘One operated the wings and the other, with his arms wrapped around his partner, reached inside it to operate the mouth. They then started bickering about how fast the wings should move versus how fast the mouth should snap, and I fell about in a fit of uncontrollable hysterics.
“That’s far too fast on the wings, dear!” said one.
“No it’s not! You’re too slow on the mouth, dear. Move it faster – and squirt the blood!” suggested the other.
“I’m not squirting any blood until you get the wings at the right speed.”
“God you’re such a bloody diva!” It was impossible to take any of it seriously, let alone look terrified as a damsel in distress,’ Jenny concluded.
Towards the end of my tenure as Simon Templar at ABPC Studios in Borehamwood in 1968, Hammer Films moved in on an adjacent stage with a film version of the hit West End play The Anniversary. It starred Hollywood grand dame Bette Davis, along with Sheila Hancock and James Cossins in support.
Bette Davis was a formidable actress and a formidable force in the movie business. In the 1930s, for example, she took on the Hollywood Studios, accusing them of ‘slavery’ and saying they only ever offered her mediocre films to star in. She wasn’t to be messed with, and producers feared crossing her.
A very talented, award-winning young director named Alvin Rakoff was signed (with whom I happily worked myself the following year on Crossplot) to helm this new Hammer production, and the British cast were told that Miss Davis was to command their utmost respect, but they were not to approach her directly on set. Furthermore, on her first day they were given instructions to gather around and applaud the star as she made her entrance.
Within a few days it was clear Bette was not only standoffish with her co-stars but was even unwilling to engage in any form of dialogue with Alvin. ‘She was above taking or talking about direction of any kind,’ he said.
She had the producers fire Alvin, very unceremoniously, after a week and hired in Roy Ward Baker to replace him. Shortly afterwards, the Director of Photography was fired after Miss Davis accused him of not lighting her properly, and she subsequently gave her own specific instructions on where lights should be placed.
Sheila Hancock had the dressing room next door to Miss Davis’ and she was able to hear the conversations through the radiator pipes and – almost on a daily basis – heard whom Miss Davis demanded be sacked next.
A decade later, Bette Davis landed at Pinewood Studios to make Death on the Nile and her reputation certainly went before her. When a call was placed to production designer Peter Murton (who happily designed The Man with the Golden Gun starring yours truly) saying, ‘Miss Davis would like to see him’, it was an ashen-faced Peter who turned to his assistant, Terry Ackland-Snow, and said, ‘Terry, you’ve worked with Bette Davis before ...’ Terry took a step backwards, wary of what his boss was going to say next, ‘... so be a dear and go see what she wants.’
‘Well, she did ask for you, Peter,’ Terry reasoned.
‘Yes, but tell her I’m out looking at locations. Go on, you go.’
A nervous young Terry walked to the set and reported to the star.
‘Are you Peter Murton?’ she asked. Terry apologized that he wasn’t and that Peter was out on location.
‘They tell me he designed this set?’
‘Yes, he did, Ma’am.’
‘It is quite the most wonderful set I’ve ever been on, so please thank him.’
Terry returned to the Art Department, where his nervous boss asked, ‘Well? What did she want?’
‘She loves the set!’ exclaimed Terry. Before he could say another word, Peter had grabbed his jacket and as he was halfway out the door he turned back to say, ‘I’d best get over there in that case!’
But Bette had always been feisty – it wasn’t something that came with great age or experience. In her very first film, back in 1931, Bette starred with Humphrey Bogart in Bad Sister. They were on set one day when someone screamed out, ‘Move that broad to the other side of the room!’
Well, our Bette wasn’t having any of that! ‘Don’t you ever call me a broad again!’ she declared, deeply insulted. Alas it turned out that a ‘broad’ is one of the biggest lights on set and they hadn’t been referring to her at all. But you can bet all the crew knew not to mess with Miss Davis!
I remember they’d just opened a new restaurant at ABPC Studios in around 1964-5 and Bette Davis, who was filming The Nanny at the studio, came in one lunchtime and, to my great surprise, made a beeline for my table.
‘I’m Bette Davis,’ she said, as though she needed any introduction, and went on to tell me how she and her daughter loved watching The Saint on TV. My head swelled greatly, so much so that I’ve not got enough hair to cover it now, and a friendship was formed.
I invited Bette to join Robert Wagner and I to the dog races at White City Stadium in west London – and she loved it. The idea of being able to dine, place bets and watch races every fifteen minutes, from our table, was like manna from heaven to Bette. She did rather well financially too. The dining room was in ‘sections’, with tables cordoned off from each other, and everybody was so preoccupied with looking at their racing forms, eating and placing bets that they never paid much attention to us, which I think Bette enjoyed hugely. She could be anonymous for once.
Though as sweet and scintillating a dinner guest as she was, I also saw the other side of her character when she spoke to her assistant, snapping orders and instructions as though he were some lesser breed of mortal. I certainly wouldn’t have wished to get on the wrong side of her.
For as long as I can remember, rumours of an intense rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford abounded in Hollywood. I, like many others, put it down to their brilliant acting in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but no, there seems to have been a more sinister loathing that extended beyond the screen, although both denied it.
During the filming of Baby Jane, Bette, the antagonist in the movie, was said to have actually made contact – in no uncertain terms – with Crawford during fight scenes, after which medical attention and stitches were required.
It turned out that the reason for their lifelong hatred was the fact that Crawford’s second husband, Franchot Tone, was revealed to be the one true love of Bette Davis’s life. Davis had worked with Tone in 1935 on the film Dangerous. Complicating matters a bit further was Crawford’s bisexuality, and her declaration that although her husband wasn’t interested in Bette, she ‘wouldn’t mind giving her a poke’.
They constantly tried to upstage and upset one another, from making back-handed compliments at The Oscars, ‘Dear Bette, what a lovely frock’, said Crawford when Bette was announced the winner of the best actress award, to when gossip columnist Louella Parsons first rumoured that they might star in a film together, ‘When hell freezes over’, said Bette.
Years later, when Tone was struck down by cancer, Crawford – though by then divorced from him – took him in to her New York apartment and nursed him until his death.
‘Even when the poor bastard was dying, that bitch wouldn’t let him go,’ Bette said to the press. ‘She had to monopolize him even in death.’
After Crawford died, Bette continued to rant about her. When asked why, she replied, ‘Just because a person is dead, doesn’t mean they’ve changed.’
Bette gave one of her last TV interviews to Gloria Hunniford, while she was in London to promote a new book. Gloria – quite naturally – spent the first part of the interview paying homage to the actress, her films, roles and co-stars.
Bette listened for a while before berating Gloria with, ‘When are you going to ask about my book, that’s the reason I’m here, isn’t it?’
We’ve all thought it, but she said it. What a lady!
Another wonderful actress and feisty lady was Lana Turner. I wrote about Lana in my autobiography, about the time in the early 1950s when she taught me how to kiss on the set of the movie Diane. I actually thought my technique was pretty good – I had already been married twice and hadn’t had many complaints in that department – but Lana taught me the new technique of ‘passion without pressure’ – what a lady she was! Of course, when she came to make Diane, Lana was already a huge Hollywood star with lots of classic films to her name – not to mention several husbands and lovers. However, I will also forever remember her for the day she told our producer on the film, Edwin Knopf, to ‘fuck off’, after a seemingly trivial difference of opinion on set. In fact, Eddie was so upset that he stormed directly off the stage and into my trailer, where he was sitting, pink-eyed, when I returned a short while later.
‘I’ve known Lana since she first walked onto this lot as a young girl,’ he said to me. ‘And now she speaks to me like that, in front of the whole cast and crew!’
I returned to the set and asked Lana why she’d been so rotten to Eddie who was, as everyone who knew him will attest, a lovely guy. He’d also overcome disability, leaving him with only one arm, which endeared him to everyone even more.
‘Sweetheart,’ she replied, matter-of-factly. ‘When I first came on this lot all the producers fucked me. So now I’m fucking them.’
In 1962, Lana was making a film at MGM British Studios in Borehamwood. It was at the time of the really dense fogs – known as pea-soupers – that used to descend over London. Lana was married to Lex Barker at the time and he was visiting her on set one day when one of these fogs came down. The production called time early to enable everyone to get home safely.
Lana and Lex left the studio in a chauffeur-driven car to head back to the Savoy Hotel in London, but a few miles down the road – at Apex Corner – the driver could barely see the front of the car, let alone anything else on the road ahead of him, and Lex, being the concerned husband he was, got out and said he would walk in front of the car until either the fog lifted or they reached the hotel.
It must be about thirteen miles from there to the Savoy, but Lex dutifully paced it out and lead his wife to safety – or at least he thought so, until he went to open the door of the car and discovered it was another car all together that had somehow started following him and Lana was nowhere to be seen!
And speaking of feisty ladies, they don’t come much feistier – or more fun – than Joan Collins. Some time ago in Hollywood, Joan was having a romance with Arthur Loew Jr of the cinematic dynasty (not of the Dad’s Army dynasty, as some newspapers mistakenly reported in saying she was the girlfriend of the former Captain Mainwaring).
Anyhow, one night Joan was late for a ball in Hollywood, which she was attending with Arthur. Arthur had been brooding about her punctuality for some time, and this time he snapped, ‘You are fucking boring!’
Two Mavericks and a Dynasty. With James Garner and Joan Collins – a veritable rose between two thorns – at an LA premiere in 1983.
‘And you are a boring fuck!’ snapped Joan, without a blink.
Joan has a lovely turn of phrase, as does her sister Jackie, and I love reading their books and articles. Their father, Joe Collins, was a big theatrical agent in the 1950s and was, in fact, my wife Dorothy Squires’ agent, and I got to know him well. He was a very dashing, handsome man-about-town and Elsa, his wife, was a very graceful, classically beautiful woman who believed implicitly in Joan’s innocence. When Joan announced to Elsa that she wanted to marry Maxwell Reed, the man to whom she’d lost her virginity, Elsa said, ‘Darling, he’s an actor – and a spivvy sort of actor at that.’
Maxwell Reed was six foot four and wore jackets with enormous shoulders in them, a trilby pulled down over his eyes and looked every bit the gangster. He boasted of connections in the London underworld too. But in total contrast to his large frame was his high pitched and squeaky voice.
He had been offered a film contract with Alexander Korda in the mid-40s but was sent for voice coaching first as they wanted him to sound more like he looked – big, gruff and mean. When he returned with his squeaky shrill intact, Korda dropped him. It was then someone suggested he see a lady named Elsie who taught voice production, and she told Max that if he spoke with his chin pointing downwards, then he’d produce deep, round sounds.
I was in the Army at the time I next bumped into Max in London. He was wearing an over-sized camel-hair coat, with a script under his arm and with his chin facing downwards he said, ‘Hello, old man, how are you?’
He told me – in deep, rounded tones – that he was now under contract to Sydney Box and was on his way to a script conference, and just then he lifted his hand up – along with his head – to call for a taxi ... and all of a sudden his deep, rounded tones became a very high-pitched shriek again.
I digress. Joan told her mother that she planned to marry Max and Elsa said, ‘But Daddy won’t allow that.’
‘Then I will live with him,’ Joan replied, with a flourish.
Elsa told me that she never doubted it, and so, reluctantly, that’s why they agreed to the marriage.
Joan told me years later that one day, Max called out from the bathroom of the flat they’d rented, ‘Joan! Have you been using my fucking mascara?’
‘No, I haven’t!’ came the reply.
‘Yes, you have!’
‘How do you know?’ she asked.
‘Because you always spit in yours, whereas I put it under the tap!’
Sadly, the marriage was doomed from the start and ended in bitter divorce a few years later; ironically just as Joan’s career was taking off and her earning power was on the up. Max demanded a hefty settlement, claiming he had ‘discovered’ Joan. Having now been married five times, Joan says that she’s kissed enough frogs to have finally found her true prince in Percy Gibson, whom she married in 2002. They’re incredibly happy together and complement one another perfectly.
Joan was aged just twenty-one when she was offered a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox in California. Darryl F. Zanuck, the rather tiny though incredibly randy boss of the studio, had seen her in Land of the Pharaohs, an epic set in the land of the pyramids, in which British stalwart Jack Hawkins played Pharaoh Khufu – inspired casting!
Zanuck had a reputation for propositioning virtually every actress who crossed his path and he was struck by the image of a semi-clad Joan sporting a diamond in her naval. Sure enough, when he bumped into Joan in the corridor one day he pressed her up against the wall.
‘You haven’t had anyone till you’ve had me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the biggest and best and I can go all night.’
Joan sensibly declined his kind invitation, though she did catch sight of what she had missed when she visited his office, as Zanuck had a life-sized mould of his manhood – in solid gold – in pride of place on his desk. I’ve never asked Joan whether the sight of it impressed her or otherwise, but do know that another famous Joan – Joan Crawford – was in his office on one occasion and Zanuck – gesturing to his mould – said, ‘Impressive, huh?’
Without missing a beat, Joan Crawford replied, ‘I’ve seen bigger things crawl out of cabbages.’
Zsa Zsa Gabor is perhaps better known for the number of her marriages rather than anything else, and I was once coupled with her by MGM – albeit platonically. It was the studio’s habit of partnering their contract artists with each other to attend events, premieres and dinners, purely for publicity purposes. I accompanied Zsa Zsa to one such premiere, and on to dinner afterwards. She was exquisitely beautiful, if a little large in the lower rear region I felt – well, not literally felt, you understand.
At one point Zsa Zsa was married to George Sanders, he was husband number three of nine I think, but she was also having a great affair with Rubirosa (aka Mr Ever Ready). Porfirio Rubirosa was a Dominican diplomat whose reputation as a playboy far exceeded any political accomplishments and was only matched by stories of his sexual prowess. His larger-than-average penis actually inspired restaurant waiters to name the gigantic pepper mills ‘Rubirosas’. Many women, and some men, have assured me he was indeed built like a stallion, and his penchant for rich women saw him marry heiresses Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton among three other wives.
George was obviously aware of something going on between his wife and the playboy and returned home one day, just before Christmas, propped a ladder up against the bedroom window and caught the duo in mid-service. The ensuing flash of a camera bulb quite put Rubirosa off his stroke, and there was a mad scramble out of the bed as George gently descended his ladder, and let himself in through the front door to wait at the foot of the stairs.
Zsa Zsa and Rubirosa sheepishly descended.
‘Merry Christmas, Zsa Zsa ... and to you Rubi,’ he said in his deliciously wonderful sardonic voice, before leaving. They divorced the following April, and Rubirosa continued his womanizing ways elsewhere.
Zsa Zsa had followed her younger sister Eva to Hollywood, and it was Eva I knew better, having worked with her in The Last Time I Saw Paris. I was having a cup of coffee with her in her trailer one day, between set-ups, and Bill Shanks the First Assistant Director appeared and said, ‘Eva, you’re in the next shot.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ she said, leaping up and taking off a diamond ring the size of a baseball. ‘I didn’t have this on in the last shot, Bill. Would you look after it for me?’
‘I’ll put it in my trouser pocket,’ Bill suggested. ‘Is it worth much?’
‘About $50,000,’ replied Eva.
‘Oh my god!’ shouted Bill. ‘Someone will cut my goddamn leg off for it!’
‘Don’t worry, dahlin’,’ she replied. ‘It was only two nights’ hard work.’
That was the difference between her and her sister – Zsa Zsa would have said it was ‘only one night’s hard work’.
Eva was very down to earth and nothing really fazed her. One day, while on the road publicizing a film, Eva was staying in a fairly grand hotel suite that had an interconnecting door with her publicist’s room. They were due to appear at a television studio, so the publicist knocked on said door at the designated hour, entered and stood patiently waiting for Eva in her sitting room. Moments later, Eva, having thought she heard something, walked into the room absolutely naked apart from multiple layers of jewels.
Without missing a beat she spread her arms, gave a twirl and said, ‘Well, Jeffrey? How do I look?’
Shelley Winters always had a great reputation for being good fun on set. We made a film together called That Lucky Touch in Belgium in 1975, and late one evening in the depths of winter we were preparing for a night shoot. The set-up was that I was to be filmed hanging around outside on a window ledge and then had to go off to a field somewhere – the details escape me but it was bloody cold. Consequently, my wardrobe man had procured all manner of thermal underwear for me. At one point, Shelley walked in to my dressing room to discuss something, and noticed all my long johns and vests hanging over the chair.
‘What are all those?’ she asked.
‘My warm underwear,’ I replied.
‘If it’s going to be cold, then I want some as well,’ she said, and picked up a selection of mine.
In the film, Shelley was playing Diana, the brassy wife of the American General (played by Lee J. Cobb) and she certainly stole every scene she was in – along with making an indelible imprint on my memory when she alighted, in character, from the General’s car on our location wearing a lovely, warm fur coat. Just as she stepped out of the car she flashed at us – wearing nothing underneath apart from rolls of ample flesh all held in place by my white thermals.
Shelley Winters eyes up my socks – after all, she’d already taken my long johns ... At the Garrick Club in London for a party after filming That Lucky Touch in 1975, with (front row, l to r) Shelley, Lee J. Cobb, Susannah York; (back row) Jean-Pierre Cassel, Sydne Rome and Raf Vallone.
Shelley had a great sense of humour. One evening we were shooting in a chateau and while we were waiting for everything to be set up, Lee and half the crew – and yours truly – were playing poker. Lee was a great card enthusiast. Enter Shelley Winters, sweet-faced and innocent.
‘Oh! What’s this game?’ she asked, in wonderment.
‘Poker,’ Lee replied.
‘Oh, I think I played that once. May I join in?’ she asked with bashful sweetness.
Lee beckoned her to pull up a chair, and within thirty minutes she’d cleaned us all out! We knew never to play with her again.
A few years later, an up-and-coming young director, no doubt still wet behind the ears, was considering Shelley for a role in a film and asked her to audition. Now, you don’t ask stars of Shelley’s calibre to audition: you invite them to lunch to discuss a role, but you don’t ask them to come in and read! If anybody had suggested that to me, I’d have told them where to shove their script. But Shelley loved to work and – somewhat surprisingly to those around her – agreed to meet the director at his office and run through some lines. She duly reported, but arrived carrying an enormous bag over one shoulder.
The director gave the usual flannel about being delighted she had come in to read, and how he’d heard nothing but great things about her. He suggested they go through a scene but as Shelley sat down, she opened her bag, rummaged around in it for a bit, pulled out an Oscar statuette and put it down on the desk. Then she rummaged around again, and pulled out a second Oscar statuette.
‘So,’ she asked. ‘Do I still need to audition?’
Diana Dors was perhaps the Rank Organisation’s most glamorous blonde bombshell in the 1950s and 60s – and often regarded as the British Marilyn Monroe. She told the most hilarious story of returning to her hometown of Swindon to open a local fair, where the Mayor was due to introduce her to the gathered crowds but was conscious of not messing up his welcoming speech, in which he intended to refer to Diana by her birth name of Diana Fluck. He didn’t want to fluck it up, you see.
The fair was about to commence and the rather nervous dignitary took to the podium. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘Today we are joined by a star of the big screen – and someone we are very proud to say was born in Swindon. You know her today as Diana Dors, but Swindon knows her better as – Diana Clunt!’
Diana wet herself with laughter.
Oh, and another story about Diana Dors was related to me by my old neighbour from Denham, Jess Conrad. Occasionally Jess would accompany Di to cabaret functions, as she liked to have someone to present her with a big bouquet after her act – as well as help ensure the money was paid up front. ‘Always get the money when you arrive,’ she told Jess, ‘as afterwards you’re introduced to friends, family and the champagne comes out ... and everyone forgets about the business.’
Anyhow, this one particular evening they arrived at a club and were shown into the manager’s office and after the usual, ‘Hello ... what a thrill it is ...’ etc., the manager showed them his prized plant. Well it wasn’t so much a plant, Jess said, as a triffid-like vine, and he proudly described how rare it was, how unusual that one should survive in such a climate and so on.
‘Lovely,’ said Di, feigning interest. ‘But shall we do the business side of the deal, darling?’
After paying the money over, the manager said his office was to be Di’s dressing room and that she should come and go as she liked. There was just one small snag, which Di hadn’t realized until a few minutes before she was due to go on stage: there was no en suite bathroom. Come the time that she did realize, in her full outfit, made-up and looking a million dollars, she suddenly also realized that she was desperate to gain some relief, but didn’t want to have to walk through the assembled crowd to go to the loo – what would that do to her big entrance a couple of minutes later?
Ah, dear Diana Dors, a bundle of fun and a force to be reckoned with. I look a little concerned that the moose is going to take off, while Carol Hawkins looks on, bemused.
‘Well, what can we do?’ asked Jess, in a panic. ‘They’re all standing outside the door waiting for you.’
Di looked around the room and spotted the plant. I won’t go into the detail but I’m sure you know where this story is going ...
‘And you thought a horse could pee!’ laughed Jess to me some time later.
After her cabaret, Di went back into the manager’s office for a glass of champagne but there was a bit of a kerfuffle as she found the manager almost in tears, leaning over his prized plant, which was no longer growing vertically but was lying, lifeless, horizontal across the floor.
‘Oh, we won’t stay, Jess,’ said Di matter-of-factly. ‘We’ve got a long drive home.’ And with that they made their escape – they were in hysterics all the way!
I can’t resist a toilet story, if you’ll forgive me for dwelling in the smallest room for a moment more, and this one involves Tallulah Bankhead, a hugely successful American actress whose fame was such that, for example, she was the first choice to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (only for her thirty-six years to appear a few too many when the decision was made to switch from black-and-white to glorious Technicolor, and instead the role went to Vivien Leigh, a mere decade younger ...).
Anyhow, fame aside, Tallulah was notorious for being mean with money and the story goes that she was in a lavatory in Hollywood and discovered there was no paper. With that she knocked on the wall of the next cubicle and pushed under a $10 bill.
‘Can you split that for two fives?’ she asked her neighbouring occupant.
Actually, Tallulah was deported from Britain in the early 1930s, reportedly after having worked her way through most of the boys – and many of the Masters – at Eton public school, and Scotland Yard declared her a menace.
Incidentally, when the opening night of the London musical Gone with the Wind (which starred June Ritchie and not Miss Bankhead, but don’t let that get in the way of me telling a good story) was marred by an obnoxious young actress and a horse that relieved itself onstage, Noel Coward was in the audience and was heard to say, ‘If they’d stuffed the child’s head up the horse’s arse, they would have solved two problems at once.’ He did have such a way with words!
As I started this chapter with a feisty – and fun – princess, I think it only right that I should end it with another one ... And you know how I like to drop the odd royal name here and there, when I can.
I first met Princess Lilian of Sweden on a visit to Stockholm for UNICEF, my first visit to the country, in fact, and Ingvar Hjartso, my liaison and contact in Sweden, had arranged a visit to the Royal Palace. The King and Queen were away at the time, so left Princess Lilian to meet with me. I discovered that she had in fact been born in Wales and had been a model, at one point married to actor Ivan Craig. She met Prince Bertil of Sweden when she was in her twenties and they fell in love, but it was many years before they were given permission to marry. Prince Bertil’s elder brother, the future King, had died very young, when his son and heir was only one year old, meaning if the reigning monarch died before the child, Carl Gustav, came of age, Bertil would have to assume the role of Prince Regent – and him being married to a commoner, and a divorcee, was not something the constitution would allow.
With Princess Lilian, the Duchess of Halland, a wonderful lady and a great friend.
However, when Carl Gustav did come of age and ascended directly to the throne, he granted Bertil and Lilian permission to marry in 1976.
Princess Lilian was greatly loved by the Swedish nation and deservedly so as she had a wonderful sense of fun, as well as duty, as I discovered when we went to lunch at a restaurant in the old town. I must admit that I sat rather stiffly for the first ten minutes, until the Princess pointed at my wine glass and said, ‘Will you hurry up and bloody well skol me as a lady can’t drink in this country until she is skoled!’
We became firm friends, and my wife Kristina also knew Princess Lilian through her oldest friend Ewa Wretman, who was married to the great Swedish cook Tore Wretman. Ewa, Tore and the Princess spent many happy times together at their holiday homes in the South of France.
And while I’m ‘princess name-dropping’, with Princess Anne at a Wildlife Fund Gala in 1970.
Tore Wretman, by the way, became a great friend – and was another person with a fascinating backstory. He began his career in the kitchen at the age of sixteen as an apprentice at the Hotel Continental in Stockholm; he swiftly moved to positions at the Opera Bar in Stockholm and then Maxim’s in Paris, where he learned all about French cuisine under legendary chef Louis Barth.
When war came Tore spent a few years in the United States where, in 1941, he signed on a Finnish cargo ship for the return trip home. However, the ship was boarded by the British fleet near Iceland and Tore was taken to the Orkney Islands then on to London until 1943, when he was finally able to return to Sweden and a job as head waiter at Operakällaren – without doubt the finest, and my favourite, restaurant in Stockholm. In 1945, aged only twenty-nine, Tore was able to buy his own restaurant and, later, went on to take over Operakällaren. He became the favoured chef of the Royal Family and, in particular, Princess Lilian.
Whenever Kristina and I were in Stockholm we would meet the Princess for tea and would also enjoy many dinners together. Sadly, the last few years of her ninety-seven-year life were complicated by illness and she was forced to withdraw from public life. We were unable to attend Princess Lilian’s funeral in 2013, despite the Swedish press reporting we were there, but we were able to attend her memorial service in the September, where we all shared our many immensely happy and fond memories of our times with the Princess.
With my two bodyguards on my spiritual – and literal – home turf: Pinewood Studios, where I’ve kept an office for over forty years.
