David Niven (27 page)

After six weeks holidaying in Bermuda, the Nivens returned to Los Angeles where Goldwyn refused to see David who, in a sulk, took Hjördis to England and finally began work on
The Elusive Pimpernel
in September, two months behind schedule. Filmed in England and France, it took six months to shoot. David disliked playing the part because, he said, ‘it was like being in a musical pantomime without the music.' That wasn't too surprising because originally Goldwyn and Korda had planned to make a musical version of
The Scarlet Pimpernel
but had changed their minds and decided to take out the musical numbers and hoped that Pressburger and Powell could turn it into a film of high adventure. David objected to the script as it was obvious that there were cues for each song left in it, and so there was some hasty rewriting.

He enjoyed working with Jack Hawkins again, and he did manage to get Robert Coote a decent supporting role. But he didn't attempt to get a part for Michael Trubshawe who complained to me that Niven had been ‘pretty mean about that'.

Hjördis defended David, telling me, ‘He had no idea if Trubshawe could even act and he wasn't going to risk getting him a part and then finding he was an embarrassment.'

David actually began to have high hopes for
The Elusive Pimpernel
, as he explained years later. ‘Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell knew they had a silly script and so they actually made it as a satirical picture. It was a sort of satire on costume pictures, which I thought was wonderful, but nobody got it. They opened it at the Venice Film Festival where nobody understood it, so Korda cut the film and opened it in London in what he thought was a more straightforward and conventional version, and the critics there hated it even more.'

It was finally premiered in Britain on 1 January 1951. David Lewin wrote in the
Daily Express
, ‘It must be one of the most expensively dull films
we have made in this country for years. David Niven plays the Scarlet Pimpernel with the sheepish lack of enthusiasm of a tone deaf man called to sing solo in church.'

In
Punch
, Richard Mallett wrote, ‘I never thought I should feel inclined to leave a Powell and Pressburger film before the end, but I did here.'

But the British public loved it. Goldwyn hated the picture, calling it ‘the worst picture I have ever seen in my life', and he refused to release it. Korda sued Goldwyn who counter-sued. Goldwyn had the film re-edited and released in America in 1955 as
The Fighting Pimpernel
– and it was a success.

But that success came too late to save David from a series of embarrassing co-starring roles, the first opposite 20-year-old former child star Shirley Temple in
A Kiss For Corliss
, a film intended to appeal to a teenage audience. It appealed to no one in particular. ‘Poor David Niven!' said the
Sunday Chronicle
. ‘Only a really great star could save a picture in which he scarcely appears at all.'
The Star
observed, ‘It's a tiny part for David Niven but he provides a few moments of quiet humour in a raucous picture.'

Niven told me, ‘Goldwyn loaned me out for a Shirley Temple teenage pot boiler as punishment. The only good thing about it was all my scenes were shot back to back because they had started without me and they had to get all my scenes shot quickly. I'd arrive in the morning and be told which scene we were doing, and I was really rather difficult and told them I wasn't prepared for whatever scene it was. I didn't do myself any favours as I wanted to get the bloody film over with.'

David tried to mend bridges with Goldwyn in early 1948. ‘I wrote to Goldwyn and begged his forgiveness because I'd realised I'd behaved so badly but he didn't even reply to my letter. That's when I thought it was time I went freelance. I went to see Goldwyn [on 22 July] and told him that frankly we didn't see eye to eye anymore and asked if I could be released from my contract which still had another two years to run. He simply flicked his intercom button and said, “Give Niven his release as from today. He's through.” And that was it. I was unemployed.'

He didn't find going freelance as easy as he had thought. Suddenly there was no work for him, and he was using up his money at an alarming rate. He was convinced that Goldwyn had his PR men put the word out that he was difficult and the result was that producers were unwilling to cast him.

Finally, in 1949, he was offered a part by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in a Mario Lanza musical,
The Toast of New Orleans
. It was Lanza's first film although the real star was Kathryn Grayson as an opera singer. David was billed below them as Grayson's manager.

‘There wasn't much for me to do as the whole film was about Kathryn
Grayson and Mario Lanza singing to each other,' David told me. ‘But I got on fine with Mario.'

David was drinking more than usual, according to Hjördis. ‘It didn't help that Mario Lanza drank a lot too,' she said, ‘so the both of them were getting smashed at lunch time. The difference between them was that Lanza would fall asleep halfway through the afternoon while David appeared cold stone sober. He'd continue to drink at home, and I joined him. We were both drinking, and while he could handle it, I couldn't. I was becoming an alcoholic.'

After the Lanza picture, David didn't work for months, so he began trying his hand at writing a novel which he called
Round the Rugged Rocks
. It was about an English soldier who leaves the Army after World War II and heads for America where he sells liquor in New York, gets involved in indoor horse racing, heads for Bermuda and winds up in Hollywood as a film star. It was clearly semi-autobiographical, and anecdotes that Niven had been telling for years were included.

After a long period of ‘resting', he landed a film early in 1950,
Happy Go Lovely
, a British attempt to make a Hollywood musical. In March he rented the Pink House out and sailed with his family on the
Queen Mary
to England to make the movie for A.B.P.C. His co-stars were Vera-Ellen and Cesar Romero. David found a house to rent close to Buckingham Palace and he also bought a huge country pile, Wilcot Manor in Wiltshire, not far from Huish where Primmie's ashes were buried. Hjördis said that it was obvious to her that David couldn't stay away from Primmie ‘even in death'. Primmie was, said Hjördis, ‘a ghost who would haunt me forever'.

She also thought that there really were ghosts at Wilcot Manor. ‘The house was haunted,' she told me. ‘There is the ghost of a monk there, and I saw the spirits of two nuns rowing a boat on the lake.'

I asked her if she had been drinking. ‘No, no,' she said, ‘but I did drink
after
seeing the nuns.' She laughed; she really did have a sense of humour.

David had also talked about the ghosts. ‘The poor monk had been driven out of his monastery by Henry VIII and he haunted the bedroom on the top floor,' he said. ‘We didn't live there for very long.'

David Jnr went off to boarding school, and David went to numerous London clubs, living as though he were a millionaire. He paid for his expensive lifestyle from his fee for
Happy Go Lovely
. ‘I really rather liked doing that picture,' he told me. ‘The script wasn't wonderful but I liked working with Vera-Ellen and Romero. We made of it what we could. And we had a good director, Bruce Humberstone, who was also imported from America. It was almost like making an American movie except we shot it at Elstree and had a large British supporting cast.'

Among the supporting cast was Gordon Jackson who I interviewed a number of times, one of them being in 1983 on the set of the TV series
The Professionals
, shortly after David had died. Jackson said, ‘David Niven was a joy. He seemed to be having a good time and was always telling funny stories. He was always after the girls. He could charm the pants off girls – literally. They all fell for him. He had quite a few of the girls working on the film, and an affair with a famous actress.'

Many of David's friends would later accuse Hjördis of being unfaithful to him and of driving him to infidelity. But it was David who was unfaithful to her. The trouble with Niven was that he couldn't stay faithful to one woman for long.

During his long stay in England he looked up an old friend, Jamie Hamilton, who had become a publisher. He told him about the novel he had written, but it was another publisher, Cresset Press, that agreed to publish
Round the Rugged Rocks
, paying Niven a small advance.

The critics didn't care for
Happy Go Lovely
although they almost unanimously agreed that Niven was the best thing about it. The
Daily Mail
had little that was good to say about the film itself but commented, ‘Yet Mr Niven, back on top of his form after a series of disappointing pictures, is an excellent light comedian.'

The
Spectator
noted, ‘David Niven's charm helps enormously to blind one to the picture's defects.'

The
Daily Mirror
was delighted that Niven was ‘rediscovered as a light comedian with a delightful portrayal'.

David returned to Hollywood in October and was delighted to receive a call from MGM. ‘I went to see Pandro C. Berman who was one of Metro's top producers, and he said he had this wonderful film for me,
Soldiers Three
, with a wonderful cast – Stewart Granger, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Newton and Cyril Cusack. I read the script and I thought, just a minute, this is
Gunga Din
but without Gunga Din. And it was. So I thought, oh well, the pay is okay, and the cast were nice people.'

Soldiers Three
was, as Niven realised, a re-working of the Kipling novel and the movie of
Gunga Din
which he'd lost out on thanks to Errol Flynn. It would be redone again later as a Western,
Sergeants Three
starring Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack.

David had to accept third billing below Stewart Granger and Walter Pidgeon. Granger had just established himself as a major new star in Hollywood with
King Solomon's Mines
. He and Niven became great friends, and I had the pleasure of dining with them in 1979. They recalled their first film together.

‘I thought the script was so terrible I asked Cary Grant to take a
look, and he said just to do the best I could and get it over with,' said Granger.

‘I've done that on almost all my films,' said Niven.

‘Do you remember what you said about it when I complained about it?'

‘Take the money and run?'

‘Not quite,' said Granger. ‘You said, “It may be shit and not very good shit but we have to do it so let's just be cheerful about this shit.”'

‘That's the best way to deal with shit, I find.'

‘Do you remember our director, Tay Garnett?'

‘He was the best audience we had,' replied David. ‘He laughed at every scene. What a shame the paying audience weren't made up of millions like him.'

‘He was convinced it was the funniest comedy script he'd ever read. He laughed at every scene,' said Granger.

‘Maybe he was crying.'

When I interviewed Granger in 1980 when he was in London promoting his autobiography, he told me, ‘I loved working with David. I thought of him as a big Hollywood star but he was my supporting actor in this, and I couldn't understand why. I asked him what he was doing in it, and he said, “Earning some much needed money, old bean.” He was in it just for the money. I didn't know then how hard up he was. I thought he was rich. He always behaved and lived as though he were rich. But by Hollywood standards he was struggling.'

The film is actually quite an enjoyable romp, set in India in the 1890s. The
Daily Mail
called it, ‘a knock-about comedy' and added, ‘Kipling fans will probably have a fit but my guess is that it will have many people in fits of laughter.'

Variety
felt that the comical antics ‘enliven the film's footage and save it from missing altogether. Granger is very likeable in his comedy role. Niven also is good as the slightly stuffy aide who leads the pants-losing patrol.'

The film wasn't a huge hit, but I think it's worth taking a look at, if you get the chance.

‘In the early 1950s, I was accepting any old rubbish being offered to me,' David told me later. One of the worst, made in 1950, was
The Lady Says No!
in which he was a chauvinist magazine photographer chasing a best selling feminist authoress who gives up her ideals for his love. It was premiered on 6 January 1952 and was slated by the critics and then ignored by the public.

Towards the end of 1950 he accepted another film purely for the money. This was
Appointment with Venus
, filmed in early 1951 in Britain. Niven was actually perfectly cast because he was back in a World War II
British Army uniform with a mission to rescue a pedigree cow from one of the German occupied Channel Islands.

‘It was a comedy,' he recalled. ‘I'm not sure that it was actually funny.'

The American critics were especially bemused by it. ‘The humour sometimes wears a bit thin,' noted
Time
. The
New Yorker
pointed out that it was ‘an English film [which] sets out to be a farce and then gets so earnest about itself that it winds up as a kind of blurred melodrama. Since the liberation of a well bred cow struck me as being too elfin a notion I may have missed some of the humour.'

The Times
spoke up on behalf of the Brits, observing that the picture combined comedy and adventure, ‘always a tricky mixture for a film to handle, but
Appointment with Venus
manages it skilfully enough even if the joke itself is a trifle faded. Still, it is pleasant to see Mr Niven going about his work.'

In the cast was an upcoming English actor called Kenneth More who told me, in one of a number of interviews I did with him, ‘I think David is a wonderful chap. He was very nice to everyone. He was a star then, and I was just getting started.'