David Niven (23 page)

He recalled, ‘Barbara was a sweet lady to work with and she knew I was still grieving, but she was a tough little actress and she said to me, “Come on David, let your emotions do the job for you,” which was in some ways rather harsh but also good advice. Most people who lose someone they love can go to work and usually their work has nothing to do with what they have gone through in life, but acting can be a mirror on your life. It was for me, at that time. But I didn't deal with it at all well. I couldn't use the “method”. I'm sure Marlon Brando could have done wonders in the same situation, but I was just barely able to remember my lines and hit my marks. Barbara helped me through it, but the film wasn't good, and neither was I.'

I actually found
The Other Love
to be an engaging film, with an excellent performance by Stanwyck and a sympathetic and moving performance from Niven. It was a good B-movie.

Throughout his life, Niven often criticised Goldwyn for pushing him into films that were barely more than good B-movies and taking the loan-out money, but David had to admit that Goldwyn could sometimes be very generous and even paternal. ‘Goldwyn gave me a very generous bonus when I made the film with Stanwyck. He didn't have to do that but he wanted to show me that he wasn't just hiring me out for the sake of making money from me. He wanted
me
to make money from me too. I was getting $3,000 a week from Goldwyn and he was paid just $15,000 for my loan-out, so when he then gave me an extra $7,000, he was actually out of pocket.'

David asked Sam Goldwyn to keep him working. He was prepared to do anything to keep his mind busy. It was easy for Goldwyn to loan him out to other studios, but what he wanted to do for David was find him a film that would really be a special picture built specifically around him and he began preparing what was intended to be a star vehicle for David which might actually propel him into the top league of major stars.

Loretta Young recalled, ‘Sam Goldwyn had a marvellous film he was getting ready for David called
The Bishop's Wife
. I remember Sam saying to me, “I am really fond of David, and I think he knows it, but I'm also trying to keep everyone under contract to me working. They all deserve my
attention. But I do like David very much and sometimes I wish we could just enjoy our relationship without the work getting in the way. Money spoils relationships.” Sam meant it. All through the war David wrote to Sam, and Sam wrote back. Not like a father and son but more like an uncle and favourite nephew. Sam was delighted when he came up with
The Bishop's Wife
and David was happy for the first time since losing Primmie.'

The Bishop's Wife
was the whimsical tale of a Protestant bishop who prays to God to help him find the money to build a cathedral and also to save his troubled marriage. An angel in a suit and tie turns up but the bishop doesn't recognise him as a celestial being, especially when the bishop's wife begins to fall for him. David was to play the plum role of the angel and Cary Grant the bishop.

Then, suddenly and cruelly, David had the role taken from him. He recalled,

I loved the story. I thought it was charming and I felt that it would be a quality production. Then one day, before production began, Goldwyn called me to his office and said, ‘Look, David, I'm sorry, but Grant is insisting he play the angel.'

I said, ‘Oh come on, Sam, you promised the part to me. It's the best part in the picture.'

He said, ‘I know, David, but Grant is the bigger star.'

‘Then what the hell am I playing?' I asked, and he said, ‘The bishop,' and I swore very badly and said he can stick the bishop where the sun doesn't shine.

I was mad, upset, disappointed, but Goldwyn said, ‘The bishop is a wonderful role, David. It's unlike any other part you've played. I think you would be perfect as the angel but I also think you are perfect as the bishop.' And he said all the right things and pressed all the right buttons, and when it came down to it, I was under contract and had no choice in the matter unless I wanted to go on suspension without pay.

I was as mad as hell at Grant for taking my part away from me, and I let him know it. I do love Cary, and he's a lovely man, but he's also given to moments of selfishness – I suppose we actors all are – and he said to me, ‘I'm sorry David, but I'm not cut out to be a bishop whereas you could be a bishop
or
an angel. Hell, I bet you could even play the wife,' and he laughed, but I wasn't laughing.

I said, ‘Oh come on, Cary, that's bullshit and you know it. You only want the part because it's the best in the picture,' and he sucked on his cheek and then said, ‘You're right, it is. That's why I want it.'

I sulked through much of the filming, but that was okay because the
bishop is a pretty miserable old bugger anyway. They even greyed me up for the part to make me look older. They said I didn't look distinguished enough. The director, William Seiter, asked me to remove my moustache. I went to Goldwyn and said, ‘Sam, I'll play this bloody bishop and I'll turn up on time every morning and I'll know all my lines, but I won't shave my moustache off for all the tea in China,' and he said, ‘That's exactly how I feel, David, and I'm letting William know that the moustache stays.'

There were times when Goldwyn was my biggest ally. But I also thought he could have told Cary Grant he couldn't play the angel. It sounds childish, I know, but I really needed that role, and Cary Grant bullied Goldwyn into giving it to him, and I thought Goldwyn had more backbone than that. And I thought Cary Grant had more humanity.

Loretta Young, who played the bishop's wife, was probably one of David's greatest allies. She said, ‘When Cary Grant got the role of the angel, David was deeply upset. I sat him down and said, “Do you believe in God?” He said, “I'm not a religious man. I feel that if there is a God He's let us all down by allowing Germany to kill millions.” I said to him, “I do believe in God and I believe in angels and I believe in men of God. But you don't have to play the part as a man of God. You just have to play the part as a man who has asked God for His help and is disappointed when he believes his prayers are unanswered. You can
do
this, David.” And he did. It's one of his best performances.'

She also scolded Cary Grant for taking David's role. ‘I told him he was selfish, and he said, “Yep, you're right, I am.” Then I said, “You're also heartless.” He said, “Guilty!” Then I said, “Don't you care about how David feels right now?” and he said, “Of course I do, but we're making movies. We're not doing missionary work in the Congo.” And then he said, “Just you wait and you'll see David give a wonderful performance, and the three of us will make this movie the best it can be.” And he was right.'

Filming such a modest little story didn't go well. Two weeks into the shoot, Goldwyn fired William Seiter and replaced him with Henry Koster and filming had to start all over again at some cost, but from then on it proceeded smoothly. David, however, was in a bad mood, especially with Cary Grant. Loretta Young recalled, ‘In many scenes David had to look daggers at Cary. Oh my, those daggers were very real at times. I said to David, “You really do look at Cary as though you'd like to knock his block off,” and he said, “That's because I do.” David wasn't happy.'

Niven had another gripe about Grant. ‘I went back home to fight for my country,' he told me. ‘Grant stayed in Hollywood to get rich and famous. I wasn't too sympathetic towards him when Goldwyn told him he wasn't masculine enough in the part of the angel. He went into a sulk about that. I'm sorry that Cary and I didn't get along on that picture.'

The Bishop's Wife
has the reputation of being a failure. It wasn't. It was a huge success when released in 1947 and was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and selected for the Royal Command Film Performance in Britain. But the critics hated it. The
Daily Herald
complained, ‘Mr Niven's jaunty, moustached bishop and Cary Grant as an angel are equally unbelievable.' The
News Chronicle
said, ‘It is the Protestant comeback to the deadly successful R.C. propaganda of
Going My Way
and
The Bells of St Mary's. The Bishop's Wife
surpasses in tastelessness, equals in whimsy and in technique falls well below those crooning parables. It is really quite a monstrous film.'

Variety
liked it. ‘While a fantasy, there are no fantastic heavenly manifestations. There's a humanness about the characters, even the angel, that beguiles full attention.' It must have irked David when
Variety
said that Cary Grant ‘has never appeared to greater advantage', while it seemed less satisfied with Niven's performance, saying it was ‘played straight but his anxieties and jealousy loosen much of the warm humour gracing the plot'.

The film is a fine example of one that succeeds despite the critical backlash. Today it stands up well and, with its Christmas time setting, makes for perfect old fashioned festive film entertainment, a judgement generally reserved for
It's a Wonderful Life
which was, ironically, a box office bomb when released the year before
The Bishop's Wife
.

Around this time, David embarked on a new career – writing monthly reports from Hollywood for the
Daily Express
in Britain. He was known for giving amusing interviews, and he felt he might try his hand at turning his seemingly endless supply of stories into what he described to me as ‘a nice little earner. The
Express
was willing to pay for my stories, and I was happy to write them and get paid.' They were written in the form of open letters to Michael Trubshawe. As Sheridan Morley noted, these articles were the start of what would become his second and most successful career, as a writer who chronicled the professional and social life of Hollywood.

He began his articles, ‘Dear Trubshawe,' but Trubshawe, reading the articles in England, was irked that David rarely wrote real letters to him. ‘I was becoming more of a joke,' Trubshawe told me in 1984. ‘I didn't much care for that. I wrote to David and told him how I felt, and I got a letter back saying, “My Dear Trubshawe, you mustn't feel that way.” But I did. I felt I was being used. I wouldn't have minded if he made the effort to
write to me, or even get me the occasional part in his films.' Trubshawe was hoping to become an actor, and he couldn't understand why Niven didn't help him out. I think Trubshawe was more miffed about that than anything else, and I think David was finding it tiresome getting hints from Trubshawe to help get him acting work when David was, in fact, struggling to rebuild his own career.

After writing several articles, Niven found that his Californian friends were growing tired of having to pass on the studio gossip for his benefit, and he realised he couldn't carry on as a columnist
and
be a Hollywood actor, so just before Christmas 1946 he stopped his series of open letters to Trubshawe and concentrated on his acting career which he felt needed all the help it could get.

At least he halted his sexual rampage when, in March 1947, he settled into what seemed like a very steady and serious relationship with Rita Hayworth.

‘Some people were surprised that they seemed to suit each other so well,' Ava Gardner told me, ‘but I thought they were perfect for each other. Rita was really a very sweet girl and she had a wonderful sense of humour. She was also on the rebound from her marriage to Orson Welles. I'm not sure you could say David was actually on the rebound as he'd been rebounding all over Hollywood for months.'

I had another dinner with David and Ava in 1979 in the same restaurant in West London as four years earlier, and during this one, the conversation turned briefly to Rita, and also to David's attempts to seduce Ava which occurred during the months immediately following Primmie's death although no mention of that fact was made.

I simply sat and listened as these two wonderful people played verbal ping pong across the restaurant table. They talked of Rita having been a ‘star-fuck', which I took to mean she was the sexual target of the men in Hollywood who could make or break her. It was, I understood, an occupational hazard for all female newcomers to Hollywood, and Ava said that she herself had been invited onto every casting couch in town, to which David said, ‘And how many did you grace?'

She said, ‘None of your goddamn business. Jesus, every actor, director and studio head was trying to get in my pants.'

‘They were very popular pants,' said David.

‘Well, honey, you were one of those trying to get in them.'

‘Yes, I was rather keen,' said David.

‘Keen? You were persistent to say the least.' She laughed loudly.

David coughed and said, ‘I must admit, it's all a little vague in my memory now. Tell me, did I succeed?'

‘
Nooo
!' Ava screamed, getting quite hysterical. ‘You wouldn't take no for an answer.'

‘Was that at the Coconut Grove?'

‘I can't remember where the hell it was, honey, but we were dancing.'

‘I think that was the first time we met.'

‘Maybe it was,' said Ava, ‘but if it was, you weren't wasting time.'

‘I'm sure I was the perfect gentleman.' He winked at me and said, ‘Of course, perfection is in the eye of the beholder.'

That made Ava laugh even louder and she said, ‘You were too damn drunk to be a gentleman.'

‘Oh dear, was I?'

‘You were trying to ask me to dance, and you kept saying, “Would I care to dance with you, Miss Gardner?”'

‘I didn't.'

‘You did. I swear. You never said, “Would
you
care to dance with
me,”
but “Would
I
care to dance with
you
, Miss Gardner?” I never forgot that.'