Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (2 page)

Today at the Film Festival there are more stars than you can shake a stick at, all grappling for publicity on the red carpet. It’s not an experience I enjoy anymore and my last foray to the festival was as a guest of Tom Hanks for
The Ladykillers
premiere in 2004. That night, the festival organizers kindly arranged for a car to take us, and a PR person to guide us along the line of waiting photographers and into the Grand Auditorium. However, when we emerged after the film and our job had been done there was no such PR person to assist us, nor was there a car – there was, however, a bus to the party in Juan-les-Pins.

The story of my life – I arrive by limo and get sent home on a bus!

I should warn you that there might possibly be the odd rude word in the pages ahead, not uttered by my lips I hasten to add, but by those of other people I have associated with; and while I know the majority of broadminded readers will take it in their stride, I am conscious of receiving a letter following the publication of my earlier effort, from a lady who said she’d never read so much filth in her life and my continual mentioning of four-letter words disgusted her to the point she’d never watch one of my films again. I have to admit that the immediate halving of my fan base is something that has weighed heavily on my mind ever since.

So,
Last Man Standing
, an odd title for a book of tales from Hollywood and beyond, I grant you, but it works for me as I write these stories. Many of the folk you’ll encounter in these pages have shuffled off this mortal
coil now – some great stars, some legendary directors, all great friends of mine from a career that spans almost seven decades. Where did that time go? How did that happen? And where on earth does one start with a book like this ...?

Well, ladies first, obviously ...

Lana Turner as Diane de Poitiers curtsies to me, Prince Henri, in our 1955 film
Diane
. Lana was always full of surprises.

CHAPTER 1

The Fun – and Feisty – Leading Ladies

W
HEN
I
FIRST ARRIVED IN
H
OLLYWOOD 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.