THIRTY-FIVE

In October 1967, Peter and Sammy Davis roared through the streets of London’s Soho on matching minibikes, dodging traffic and waving to gawking onlookers. Sammy’s license plate read “SALT 1”; Peter’s read “PEPPER 1.” They were on their way to Alvaro’s, a trendy discotheque on King’s Road in Chelsea, and the club was having to turn away dozens of neck craners every week once the word got out that Lawford and Davis were regulars.

The pair were in London to Star in Salt and Pepper, a James Bond takeoff developed by Peter for Chrislaw, and they set the English capital on its ear. “Swinging London” was the epicenter of the “youth- quake” that was radically transforming the world’s tastes in fashion and popular music. Peter and Sammy were much taken by all the experimentation with drugs, sexual freedom, and personal style. “It’s stimulating, frightening, fun,” Sammy told a reporter.

It was ironic that Peter and Sammy — old enough at forty-three and forty-one to be the parents of most of the “revolutionaries” — had become such a media rage. As one journalist noted, “Every newspaper from the Sunday Times to the Daily Sketch has come out with details of Salt and Pepper. . . . The entertainment columns of the daily press and feature pages of the color magazines are having a scoop day.” The excitement was created largely by the formidable reputations of the pair as former Rat Pack swingers and by Peter’s aura as the former brother-in-law of a martyred U.S. president. But there was another reason why Peter’s presence caused a stir — as Graham Stark, one of Salt and Pepper’s British costars, recalled: “I always rather held the boy in esteem. He was a young Englishman who had gone to Hollywood, and anyone at MGM was a star to us. We grew up on Judy Garland, anything by Arthur Freed — and Lawford was involved. He actually kissed June Allyson on-screen — I could have killed him!” At Alvaro’s — where the two went every Saturday for lunch — Peter and Sammy were surrounded by some of the would-be hippest young people in London, who hung on their every word and treated them as entertainment icons. Before long the two men had co-opted the mod look for themselves. They wore their hair long, grew pork-chop sideburns (Peter’s were gray), and donned Nehru jackets, bell-bottoms, and love beads. Peter had slimmed down again and wore blue jeans with a patch on the back that read, “Get your shit together.” Peter and Sammy thought it all made them look more youthful and “with it,” and many of their London admirers agreed. Others thought they were making fools of themselves.

Just as Peter and Sammy had adopted the self-conscious hipness of the Rat Pack, they now embraced the sixties mod style wholesale, complete with swinging parties, flower-child jargon, and experimentation with LSD and marijuana. Peter considered marijuana a godsend, a way to get high without drinking and further damaging his liver. Earlier, he had been adamantly opposed to any kind of drug use and had lectured Molly Dunne about its evils. “I was smoking marijuana long before Peter was,” she recalled. “He didn’t want me to smoke in the beach house. He’d say, ‘Don’t you smoke that stuff in here. Go outside!’ And then he becomes this drug addict!”

Graham Stark went to some wild parties thrown by Peter and Sammy. “Sammy took up residence at the Mayfair in the Maharajah’s suite and we were all invited up there at various times,” Stark recalled. “There was a lot of action, girls falling out of cupboards. And why not? They were both big film stars and all those little darlings just loved them.”

The “free love” aspects of the mod scene appealed mightily to Peter. Among the many pretty young women who “fell out of the cupboards” was one who belonged to Sammy. “Sammy had found this beautiful little model, a white girl,” Milt Ebbins recalled. “He fell in love with her, and they were living together while they were filming Salt and Pepper. Peter stole her away. Sammy came to me and said, ‘That fucker, I’ll never talk to him again.’ I asked Peter, ‘What did you do?’ And Peter replied nonchalantly, ‘I stole his girl.’”

Peter and Sammy patched it up, and in between all the swinging, there was a movie to make. The idea for the film had come to Peter after a friend had referred to him as “salt” and Sammy as “pepper.” He decided to turn it around and commissioned a script in which he would play Chris Pepper and Sammy would be Charlie Salt, a couple of nightclub owners in London who get involved in Bondlike intrigue, replete with comic bobbies, a car with a machine gun for an exhaust pipe, and all the requisite chases. Milt Ebbins got the go-ahead from United Artists executives for Chrislaw to produce the project after Michael Pertwee wrote a script they liked. Ebbins was named the film’s producer, his first such assignment, and Sammy and Peter were named executive producers.

It was a difficult baptism for Ebbins. With a relatively small budget, he had hoped to film the London street scenes in Soho. But the congestion caused by sightseers prompted London police to ban the shooting and forced him to reconstruct Soho on the back lot at Shepperton Studios in Boreham at a cost of sixty thousand pounds ($144,000).

Ebbins was soon confronted with another, more serious problem. “Peter was the world’s worst businessman,” he recalled. “He always made decisions based on his emotions. He hired people because he liked them, not because they were necessarily right for the project.” When it came time to hire a director for Salt and Pepper, Peter wanted Richard Donner, who at that point had directed only one minor film and some episodic television. Peter and Sammy had appeared in a Wild, Wild West episode Donner had directed, and Peter liked him.

Ebbins was skeptical, but when Peter insisted he agreed to hire Donner. “He’s an incredibly successful director now,” Ebbins recalled. “He’s made Superman, Lethal Weapon — but in 1967 he wasn’t ready. When the UA executives saw Donner’s cut, they decided to reedit the film without his input. It cost us fifty thousand dollars to fix it.”

According to Donner, the fault was not his. “I had a bad time on that film,” he recalled. “Sammy and Peter were very undisciplined and there was a lot of cutting up. We’d have an eight o’clock call and they’d show up at noon, hung over from whatever it was they had ingested the night before. It was terrible for me, and I had no way of controlling them because they were the producers. What was I going to do, fire them?”

Donner quickly discovered that when Peter and Sammy did show up they usually didn’t have much of an idea of what was in the script for the day’s shooting. Instead, they would improvise conversations, do bits of business that had little to do with the plot. Donner decided to let them go off on as many tangents as they wanted. “I figured when I cut the picture I could just take all that extraneous stuff out.

But then they fired me two weeks after we finished shooting. I was so angry at Peter at that point that if I’d found him it would have made the papers.”

Despite everything, Donner and Peter remained friendly and later went into business together, with a group of other partners, in The Factory, an exclusive, trendy discotheque in West Hollywood. “There was a bit of hero worship in my feelings for Peter,” Donner recalled. “The women just flocked to him. It was unbelievable. I always wanted to be a pilot fish to Peter’s shark — you know, the little fish that hangs on to the shark and eats up anything that falls out of its mouth? Peter had so many gorgeous girls around him I was content with his overflow. I did very well through him.”

Critical reaction was mixed when Salt and Pepper was released in September 1968. Most reviewers thought the film a waste of Sammy’s talents, and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner was hard on Peter for never seeming “quite sure as to whether he is supposed to be James Bond, Mr. Lucky or Peter Lawford.” Variety summed things up by noting, “This is not a picture for thinking audiences.”

But Salt and Pepper did well at the box office. It was number nine nationally its first week and set attendance records in some theaters — so good a showing that a year later Peter and Sammy were given the green light by United Artists for a sequel, One More Time, again written by Michael Pertwee and again produced by Milt Ebbins. In this version, Peter would play not only Chris Pepper but his wealthy, snobby twin brother, Lord Sydney, as well.

Richard Donner was never considered to direct One More Time, because Peter had someone else in mind — Jerry Lewis, who had been a friend since his days as half of the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy team and who had recently used Peter in his picture Hook, Line and Sinker.

Milt Ebbins’s reaction to the suggestion, Ebbins recalled, was “Jerry Lewis?” United Artists was equally against hiring Lewis, who hadn’t directed a successful movie in years, but Sammy and Peter were adamant, and in the end the UA executives relented — after warning Ebbins, “You’re gonna have trouble.”

The trouble began immediately. “Lewis came in to work on the script,” recalled Ebbins, “and he brought in a writer who he paid to completely rewrite it. Then he threw out the rewrite and hired Michael Pertwee, who wrote the first script, to write another one. And all the time the cash registers were ringing.”

When the company arrived in London to begin shooting, Lewis told the producer he wanted to use three cameras. Although Ebbins knew that Jerry’s idea would cost the production three times the expense of one camera in film alone, he agreed when Lewis promised to stay within budget. Then the director wanted to use the television system whereby it is possible to look at each take as it’s filmed. “That’s gonna cost us eighty thousand dollars!” Ebbins exclaimed. Milt called a meeting with UA executives over the issue, and when Lewis promised to pay any cost overruns out of his own pocket, UA approved the review-as-you-go system. Once the cameras were installed, Ebbins asked Lewis to test them before he began to shoot. “Milt,” he replied, “you’re telling me about my business.”

“Jerry,” Ebbins pleaded, “just test the cameras. That’s all I ask.” Lewis finally agreed that he would, but he never got around to it, and shot for half a day before he realized that there was something wrong with the lenses and he hadn’t gotten a single foot of usable film.

A few days later, as Lewis was setting up to shoot a fight scene, the art director asked to speak to Milt. “Mr. Ebbins,” he said. “I must tell you that Mr. Lewis insists on using antique furniture in this scene. Antiques cost a fortune and we can’t insure them for what they’re really worth, only what it would cost to buy newly manufactured furniture. I can make new furniture right here at the studio that will look just like antiques and nobody will know the difference.”

Ebbins spoke to Jerry about it, and Lewis was furious. “Christ, Milt!” he exploded. “You’re telling me how to do my goddamn job again!” Finally, after much cajoling, Ebbins convinced Jerry to let the art director make the “antiques.”

“So he did the fight scene,” Ebbins recalled. “In the first thirty seconds, a guy threw a punch and the other guy fell down and broke a table and three chairs! Luckily, the art director had made up some extras. Jerry Lewis didn’t say a word to me.”

The filming proceeded through one stressful confrontation after another, with Ebbins struggling to keep costs down and Lewis continually threatening to send them sky-high. After the principal photography was completed, Lewis insisted on editing the film without showing anyone a working print for review. The result, Ebbins remembered, was “awful. He had Peter and Sammy doing Martin and Lewis. Peter left the screening room, went into [United Artists executive] Herb Jaffe’s office, and started to cry. Jaffe wanted to burn the negative.” The studio gave Ebbins the chance to recut the film himself, and he spent three weeks holed up with the editor. One More Time was finally released in June 1970, and at least one critic found it a “perfectly respectable, oddly endearing little film.” The Los Angeles Times thought Peter’s performance in the dual role his “best . . . in quite some time.” But the overriding reaction was summed up by the critic for the London Sunday Mail: “One More Time has one of those excruciating plots where everyone on screen is killing himself trying to be funny, and everyone in the audience is dying with embarrassment, disbelief and boredom.”

IN THE FALL OF 1967, immediately after completing Salt and Pepper, Peter traveled to Rome to appear with Gina Lollobrigida, Shelley Winters, Janet Margolin, Phil Silvers, and Telly Savalas in Melvin Frank’s Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, a romantic comedy that would receive mixed reviews.

The shooting in Rome went without incident for Peter, but offscreen he became involved in romantic misadventures straight out of an Italian sex farce. The first of these involved his costar Gina Lollobrigida, who at forty had lost little of her voluptuous sex appeal or fiery Latin temperament.

During filming, the buxom seductress made a strong play for Peter. She invited him to her home for a romantic candlelight supper and made it quite clear that she was interested in more than just a friendly dinner. Nervous, Peter made a beeline for the door the minute he finished his dessert, leaving Lollobrigida to wonder what had gone wrong. Gina extended several more invitations to him, which he declined. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked friends. “Or is there something wrong with me? What is it?”

Princess Ira von Furstenberg was more aggressive, but no more successful. Another formidable, lusty woman, she was the ex-wife of the Spanish prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe. During the 1960s, she made twenty-six Italian films, and a friend described her as a woman who would “rather be Marilyn Monroe than the queen of England.” The princess invited Peter to her palatial villa in Rome for dinner, and when he arrived, there was nothing but candlelight illuminating the entire house. After dinner, as Peter later told Milt Ebbins, “she went after me like a hawk. She got me on the couch and I couldn’t get out of there!”

According to Ebbins, Lollobrigida and Furstenberg had scared off their prey. “Peter was petrified of strong, aggressive, larger-than-life women. He was afraid of not performing well. He could have had Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Gina Lollobrigida, but he was afraid. He couldn’t risk going to bed with those women and having them get up and say, ‘What the hell was that?’”

Younger, more submissive, star-struck girls who were likely to be impressed with Peter’s stature and less likely to humiliate him in an awkward situation — these were the women who appealed to him. And Janet Margolin filled the bill on all counts. Pretty and slim, her long straight brown hair parted in the middle, Margolin had created a sensation in 1962 in her screen debut as an emotionally disturbed adolescent who falls in love with another troubled youth (Keir Dullea) in Frank Perry’s David and Lisa. Her career would never fulfill that initial promise, but she would remain a well-regarded actress.

Peter was very taken with her, and the two were photographed holding hands during late-night strolls along the Via Veneto, he in a Nehru jacket and turtleneck sweater, she in a plaid skirt, sweater, and leather jacket. He was also seen about the same time (and wearing the same outfit) doing the town with the black singer Lola Falana, but Margolin was the girl who captured his heart.

Soon Peter was on the phone to Ebbins. He said that he was in love with Janet Margolin and was going to marry her. “Are you crazy?” Milt asked.

“This is the real thing, Milt!”

“Have you slept with her?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“You must be nuts wanting to marry a twenty-four-year-old girl!” “Well, maybe — but that’s what I’m gonna do.” Peter did propose to Margolin, and afterward he again called Ebbins. “Do you believe it?” he asked via transatlantic telephone. “She turned me down.” “What reason did she give you?”

“She didn’t really say. I guess I’m too old for her.”

Peter turned forty-four in September 1967, but he wasn’t too old for many other younger women. His sexual and romantic involvements for the rest of his life were to be almost exclusively with girls half his age or younger — as young as seventeen in one case. This new predilection of Peter’s may have begun as still another emulation of Frank Sinatra, who in 1966 married twenty-one-year-old Mia Farrow, the close-cropped, sylphlike star of TV’s Peyton Place. (“I always knew Frank would wind up in bed with a boy,” Ava Gardner sniffed.)

But there was clearly more to it than that. By now, Peter’s sexual tastes had taken a distinct turn toward the kinky. Because of the ever-present threat of impotence, he preferred watching two women have sex to performing intercourse with either of them and risking embarrassment. He found that he could reach orgasm only after prolonged fellatio — sometimes several hours. And he had begun to experiment with sadomasochism. He feared that he could not broach these sexual activities to women like Gina Lollobrigida or Ira von Furstenberg without risking ridicule.

Young girls were a different matter. Everywhere he went, they buzzed around him like hummingbirds. They’d stare at him in restaurants and slip him their numbers as they walked by his table. Back in shape, still marvelous looking, he was attractive to women who had no idea who he was. For those who did know, the attraction was often irresistible.

When he made his choice the young woman usually felt very special indeed. Here she was, on the arm of a handsome man who had been next to greatness, one who treated her like a queen, was solicitous of her every whim. But what would begin as the biggest thrill of her life more often than not ended in disillusionment.

Arthur Natoli, a bluff, street-smart man, had replaced Chuck Pick as Peter’s chauffeur-companion in 1967, and he was puzzled by Peter’s sex life. “I used to call Peter’s bedroom the Rocky Horror Room,” Natoli recalled. “I always wondered just what went on in there.”

Natoli got his answer when he introduced a young woman to his boss on the condition that if she slept with Peter, she tell Arthur what went on. She promised she would.

The next morning, Natoli picked the girl up. “Boy, that was an experience,” she said as she hopped into his car.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you,” she said.

“Hey! We had a deal!” Natoli protested. “Tell me!”

“Well,” the girl began haltingly. “The first thing he did was put his pecker between his legs and close them, so it looked like he didn’t have one. Then he told me to lick him there and pretend he’s a girl.16 Then he wanted to watch me make it with another girl. That I didn’t mind, but when he told me to tie him up and whip him, I walked out of the room. I’m not into that kind of stuff.”

16 In notebook/diary entries of Marilyn’s published in the 2010 book Fragments, Marilyn wrote, “Peter wants to be a girl — he wants to be me.”