Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (21 page)

She returned to her seat, grumbling under her breath and humming along to ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs In The Spring’, kicked her shoes off, put her feet up on the balustrade in front, and continued chuntering about how ‘Richard cut me dead’. I explained he was in company with HRH and we really ought to settle down for the film.

No sooner had the film started than I heard a gentle snoring coming from next to me and thanked goodness she’d fallen asleep. However, minutes later, there was a sudden and very loud cry, and Rachel sat bolt upright.

‘The bastards! They cut the close-up of my lovely Rex!’ she exclaimed.

Never had ninety minutes seemed so much an eternity as that evening, and afterwards we all went to the Savoy for the party. As any dutiful star/host would, Richard (with Elizabeth) stood at the entrance to receive all the guests
and, as I went through, Burton whispered, ‘Good luck, boyo,’ in my ear.

When the Toastmaster called for everyone to ‘Be upstanding’ as HRH entered, Rachel said, ‘I’m not bloody getting up!’ I dragged her to her feet, saying, ‘You will!’ through my clenched teeth, and really was beginning to regret ever accepting Rex’s invitation.

Meanwhile, the dancing started and a waiter came to our table to say Rex was on the phone for Rachel. He’d just come off after his play, in which he was starring with Elizabeth Harris (ex of Richard Harris) and asked how Rachel was behaving. I was suitably diplomatic and gentlemanly – and then he asked to speak to Burton.

At this time, Burton was dancing with HRH, and so I quietly stood behind them and coughed politely to attract his attention.

‘Oh, sorry boyo, you want to dance with ’er? Be my guest!’ he said as he pushed Princess Margaret towards me.

‘No, no ... I mean yes, I would, Ma’am, but no ... Richard,’ I said, ‘Rex is on the phone and wants to speak to you.’

‘Right-oh boy, look after things here, will you?’

I smiled politely ...

Rachel was a lovely lady and a wonderful actress, but a terrible handful. Rex was her second husband and she was Rex’s fourth wife. Rachel always had a great aversion to sailing, but every year Rex chartered a boat in the Mediterranean and took Rachel’s best friend with him for the trip – Elizabeth Harris ... Having discovered Rex’s affair with Elizabeth, Rachel divorced him in 1971. She was devastated after the divorce, moved to the States and tried to carry on, but it was reported that her alcoholism
and depression increased, eventually leading to her suicide in 1980, aged just fifty-three. It was terribly sad.

I continued to see Rex from time to time and he was always friendly towards me, apart from one day when I was staying with Leslie Bricusse in France. Rex had arrived (uninvited) two days earlier, after being besieged by the press at his house on Cap Ferrat following Rachel’s death. Leslie explained I’d been promised the guest room and the screenwriter Jack Davies, who lived next door, suggested Rex went to stay with him.

We all joined up for dinner at a restaurant one evening and I guess there were about six of us. Throughout the evening I felt rather guilty about Rex having to move and I decided that the least I could do was to get the bill for dinner, at which Harry Belafonte and his wife and James Baldwin had joined us, at my invitation. When we had finished, I proffered my American Express card and Rex came up from behind me, tore the card from my hand and threw it on the floor.

‘I don’t want your damned plastic!’ he shouted.

‘But I want to get dinner,’ I reasoned.

‘No! I don’t mind paying for YOUR friends,’ he snapped.

The next morning I was having breakfast in a pagoda in the garden at Leslie’s home, when Rex came across the lawn, sat down and looked at me, ‘I’ll get breakfast this morning ...’ I said, with a smile.

Curiously, Rex and David Niven just didn’t get on and Rex was always rather pissed off with Niv, saying, ‘He’s been on the Cap long before I arrived, yet he’s never invited me for dinner or a drink.’

Rex could be a rather mean-spirited man, to put it mildly and, unfortunately, a lot of people in the business had been treated badly or spoken to nastily by him at some point or
other, which was underlined when I joined Kirk and Anne Douglas, along with Greg and Veronique Peck, to see a play in LA one night. Claudette Colbert was co-starring in it with Rex. Afterwards, we went round to see Claudette and took her to dinner at Chasen’s Restaurant. But we didn’t ask Rex, I always felt a bit sniffy about that, but I’m afraid the Douglas’s had no time for him. I never needed to ask why.

Rex’s next wife was Elizabeth (Liz) Harris – she was the fifth of his six wives. I, of course, knew Liz through my sometime co-star Richard Harris, and she lived with Rex in a big house off Belgrave Square in London. She once told Richard (who told me) of their lifestyle. Rex would dress immaculately before taking the lift down from his bedroom to the first-floor dining room for breakfast. In fact, he’d take a good thirty minutes to dress, and would put on his cape and newly polished boots even if he was just popping to the corner to post a letter. After breakfast, he would call the butler in to discuss the wine list for lunch, then go upstairs to change, only to re-emerge a few hours later in his tweeds for his meal and to sample the wine. The shout would invariably go up, ‘How dare you serve me corked wine!’

Rex always sent the wine back in restaurants – and is the only person I ever knew who did the same at home too.

The butler, in what must have been a well-worn and quite frustrating routine, would have to ensure there were buckets of ice available at 11.45 a.m. and 5.45 p.m. in three different rooms in case Rex wanted a drink in any one of them. He insisted Liz dress for dinner every night too, even if they were eating in alone, and was of the firm belief that children should be seen and most definitely not heard, which made life a little tricky for Liz and her three sons. It might not surprise you to hear the marriage was short-lived.

Rex wasn’t regarded very warmly by those who knew him (or even knew of him) but I will say the one very decent thing he did do was look after my lovely friend Kay Kendall when she became ill. Kay and Rex had become an item in the mid-50s, when he was still married to Lilli Palmer, and when he discovered from her doctor that she was suffering from terminal myeloid leukaemia, he arranged a divorce from Lilli in order to marry Katie (as we all knew her) and care for her, on the understanding he’d remarry Lilli after Katie’s death. In the event, Lilli was also having an affair with Carlos Thompson and married her lover, so she and Rex never got back together.

Rex kept the illness from Katie, who believed she was suffering from an iron deficiency, and cared for her until she died aged just thirty-two. He often said one of his greatest pleasures was to ‘simply sit and admire Kay’.

Quite how Katie put up with him I’ll never know, but when Rex was starring in
My Fair Lady
on Broadway she used to have to stand at the side of the stage for every performance when he sang ‘I’ve grown accustomed to your face’ as he point blankly refused to sing it to his co-star Julie Andrews, whom he hated with a passion. He in fact suggested the song should be dropped, but the producers wouldn’t hear of it and so Rex said the only compromise would be if he could sing it to Kay.

Ironically, when he won the Oscar for the film version in 1964, he smiled widely as he dedicated it to his two fair ladies – Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn.

I got on very well with Peter Sellers and I knew three of his wives quite well, too. He was a solitary character though, always preferring to hide behind a mask, and consequently you never
really
got to know the real Sellers. This was, after all, the man who said, ‘To see me as a person on screen would be one of the dullest experiences you could ever wish to experience’.

Don’t ask me why Peter Sellers was attempting to paint my toenails at Cubby Broccoli’s house – I simply can’t remember.

Although a star of comedy films, Peter very desperately wanted to be a romantic lead, though knew he wasn’t classically good-looking. Sadly, he humiliated his first wife, Anne, when he told her about a great affair he was having with Sophia Loren, which was actually all in his head as there never was any romance with Sophia whatsoever. After divorcing Anne he met Britt Ekland at the Dorchester, as she was in London for a PR junket having signed a contract with 20th Century Fox. They married two weeks later. The marriage only lasted four years, as Britt couldn’t live with Peter and his violent mood swings any longer. A couple of years later he married Miranda Quarry and, though I didn’t go to the wedding, I was there for the honeymoon.

They were staying on the Cap Ferrat in the South of France, and I was staying at the same hotel while filming
The Persuaders!.

One day Leslie Bricusse was bringing Johnny Gold around the Cap to the bay of Villefranche in his Riva and I was on Sellers’ yacht. Sellers and I spoke with one of the customs patrol boats and, having supplied them with a few hundred cigarettes and a couple of bottles of Scotch, we suggested they pull Leslie over on the pretence of him coming into the bay too fast. From a safe distance aboard Sellers’ yacht we cried with hysterics as their boat was indeed pulled over and we could see Leslie’s face turning red with embarrassment as the officials produced this cargo of illicit contraband (supplied by us) from down below. Protesting his innocence, Johnny started waving a large white envelope around, which was addressed to Sellers from his London tailor.

‘We’re here to see Peter Sellers!’ he shouted, evidently
hoping that this information would be enough to secure their release.

Finally, when we couldn’t bear watching them any longer, we waved to the customs men to let the errant ‘pirates’ off. When they arrived on shore, Johnny gave the envelope to Sellers, who opened it only to reveal a big bag of some white powdered substance, together with a note saying it was a ‘gift for the honeymoon’.

That’s the closest I’ve ever come to being arrested, let me tell you.

That evening, back at the hotel, Sellers called us down to his room, and he was – shall we say – rather ‘far gone’ on the contents of his envelope, telling us his bed was a flying carpet and he was going to fly around the harbour – and asking if we would like to go with him ...

Talking of things potent, one of Peter’s good friends was Graham Stark. I worked with Graham on
The Sea Wolves
but he is most probably more fondly and famously remembered for his many appearances in the
Pink Panther
films with Peter, they were old mates and loved working together. In
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
Graham played an old Austrian innkeeper, and had the most wonderful – and often quoted – scene where Clouseau walked in to book a room and looked down at a little dog in the reception area.

‘Does your dog bite?’ asks Clouseau.

‘No,’ replies the old innkeeper, at which point Clouseau lowers his hand to stroke the ‘nice doggie’ and it attacks him.

‘I thought you said your dog does not bite?!’ exclaims Clouseau.

‘That is not my dog,’ replies the innkeeper.

Anyhow, filming the scene, director Blake Edwards announced, ‘Graham, Peter and I think that you’d look good if you smoked a Meerschaum pipe when we do this scene.’