Life’s a Scream

I sat at the window of my twentieth-floor suite in the Hilton and looked out at the scene below. Across the road in Hyde Park the Household Cavalry were out exercising their horses. In Park Lane red buses and London cabs cruised up and down endlessly. I thought of my father and his love of England and decided I didn’t want to live anywhere else. Steffka, however, was still in Madrid. She had come to London for a couple of weeks at Easter and we had rushed around sightseeing, but now it was June. I had to see her.

I rang her and asked how she felt about living in England. She was excited by the prospect, although neither of us thought about the fact that she was now a Spanish speaker and there would be a lot of catching up to do when she attended an English school. Maria was also surprisingly willing to come to London, amazing me as usual with her positive attitude. I went to an estate agent, told them my requirements and caught the plane to Madrid to help pack up our belongings. At last a decision had been made. I would no longer have to stay awake all night wondering what my next move should be. Any doubts that I had made the right decision were quashed by an incident in Spain.

We decided that we were going to have a combined home-coming and farewell party, and invited several friends and a couple of American film technicians, who for some reason were still working in Madrid. Just before everyone arrived, Maria suggested that we probably wouldn’t have enough wine. She was going to fetch some but as she was in the middle of cooking dinner Steffanie volunteered. She was five now and used to running errands. The wine shop was just across the plaza. I was a bit doubtful but I hadn’t been around much lately and didn’t want to knock back the confidence she had built up living with Maria. Steffi scooted off and I watched her from the balcony. I grinned down at her and waved as she stopped and turned suddenly, but she didn’t look up. She was staring at something at the bottom of the building, which I couldn’t see. Suddenly there was a bang. I knew instantly that it was a gun shot. Breathless, my heart thumping in my chest, my head spinning, feeling helpless at my sixth-floor vantage point, I watched and prayed for what seemed like an eternity. Slowly Steffanie looked up at me. She was unhurt.

‘A man fell down after the bang . . .’ she said, confused, not knowing what actually had taken place. I pulled her into my arms and rushed to the flat. Without letting go of her I hauled the suitcases from the wardrobe and started packing.

We later learned that the shot had killed a man walking through the colonnades alongside the building. It was one of the first political killings by ETA, the Basque Separatists, in Spain. It horrified me utterly that my child had been so close to a murder. I didn’t care that the estate agent in London hadn’t had time to find us a place to live. I wanted to leave Spain immediately. Poor Maria was left to sort out everything but I felt I had no choice. I couldn’t bear to think of Steffka in danger.

We arrived at the London Hilton that night and stayed for a week before renting an attractive flat in Barkston Gardens in Kensington. It was just for a year but I assured myself we’d have a house organised for ourselves by then. Maria joined us a couple of weeks later and we felt whole again.

I went to Las Vegas for the press showing of Where Eagles Dare. I was on such a high that when Kohner, my American agent, called me in my luxurious suite and said I had a TV series on offer I just turned it down. Me, with an international blockbuster film, and they were offering me TV! No one at that time who had just done a massive action film for MGM would consider TV. It was movies I wanted.

From Vegas I went to the Persian Film Festival in Tehran, where I met the Shah and Farah Diba. A lot of us had flown out from England, including Christopher Lee. At dinner my friend Baharam Soltani told me that Christopher Lee’s godfather, Eric Swift, had been one of the prince’s tutors years before and asked if Christopher and I would like to come to Isfahan to visit his palace. He wanted to show Chris the many pictures of the prince with Christopher’s godfather. I’ll never forget walking the long corridors of the palace with Chris and Baharam, looking at the many photographs. Christopher Lee is one of the most erudite and entertaining people I’ve ever met. He has a beautiful voice, full of expression, and has the most incredible tales to tell, many about his exotic family.

Back in Tehran, a couple of ‘heavies’ came to my hotel. One of them dangled a velvet bag under my optimistic nose, then emptied its contents into the palm of his hand. ‘Diamonds!’ he exclaimed. ‘From his eternal Highness, the Shah Reza Pahlavi. He asks the pleasure of your company for dinner tomorrow night at Golestan Palace. Please, will you do him the honour and accept his gift? There will be just the two of you. His Royal Highness awaits most anxiously your reply.’

Christopher was obviously the main man with the brains so I stuck close to him and we enjoyed a lot of invitations. Gregory Peck and Sergei Bondartchuk, the Russian director of War and Peace, were also in the party. Gregory kept mistaking me for Lee Grant who wasn’t even there. I wasn’t amused and so he continued doing it to wind me up. Bondartchuk gave me the opportunity to parade my Russian. I tried to get him to talk about the making of his film, War and Peace, my favourite picture of all time, flattering him outrageously. Though incredibly polite, he was obviously unimpressed.

The Iranian Festival Committee took us to the Shah’s sister Shams’s palace. An illuminated glass dome in the middle of the desert, from the bus it looked like a SciFi set. We had travelled for hours and finally pulled up at an ugly, barbed-wire gate where we were put through the third degree. The barbed wire and the guns of uniformed soldiers boarding the bus were unnerving me and I asked to be taken back to my hotel in Tehran. Our guide smiled a lot, and tried to reassure me that the questioning was routine and that everything would be all right.

We had to relinquish our passports before advancing through more barbed-wire fences across wasteland towards the lighted dome in the far distance, where we were greeted by yet more armed guards. I guess the revolution that dethroned Shah Reza Pahlavi a few years later wasn’t as unexpected as it seemed at the time.

Things picked up when we entered the dome. There were beautiful trees under a perspex roof and birds flying around. A massive staircase covered in thick red carpet and fat golden rope balustrades led to the upper floor. The sumptuously dressed servants gave out gold goblets and kept the champagne flowing. Tired of ‘ooing’ and ‘aahing’, I grabbed a plate of finger food and joined Gregory Peck and Sergei Bondartchuk on one of the steps of the wide staircase. We’d hardly spooned the caviar before a servant came along and told us not to sit there. We tried to ignore him but he got quite huffy and accused us of being so uncoordinated that we’d spill something on the carpet. We thought it pretty funny. Here we were, buried in the sort of opulence you could only get with the Arabian Nights, in the land of the Persian carpet, and we were being warned off dribbling on the mat.

Back in London Bondartchuk came to my house for dinner. The old smoothie told me that I cooked the meanest plate of borscht he’d eaten in his life. He invited me to study at the Soviet Film Institute in Moscow where he was one of the top instructors. Although it would have been a fantastic experience for me, I couldn’t possibly go to Moscow. My big mouth had got me into trouble already in a Communist country. Now I was a mother and wouldn’t take the risk. I smiled and said I had absolutely no time to study in Moscow. I was working, working all the time.