Living With Miss G (23 page)

“I said, ‘Howard? Why I don’t know. Well, where is he?’”
“We all got out to look. Howard was lying flat on his back behind the car.
Was he dead? No, he wasn’t dead. He had blacked out. We sat him up and got
him to his feet. He said that he was fine. We brushed him down. No
explanations. As usual, his suit had seen better days. Then he got into the
driving seat and drove us to the Beachcomer. We all went on talking non-stop.
Howard was quiet. We ate all the oriental goodies, and Howard drove us home.”
At the time we never quite worked out what happened. We thought he may
have had a black-out because of the many plane accidents he had been in. He
rarely tied his shoelaces so he could easily have fallen and hit his head on the
fender. Now from Miss Katharine Hepburn’s later revelations we know some of
the reasons for Howard Hughes’ eccentric behavior.
Miss G never ever saw Howard again after that night. He married Jean
Peters in March 1957. I believe the marriage lasted about thirteen years before
Jean filed for divorce in 1970. Howard just went on being a perpetual enigma
until the end of his most mysterious life.
Around this time Miss G and I took a trip to see how MGM studios were
faring out at Culver City. Half the studios were empty, and they told us it was
the same at Warner, Paramount, Universal, and all the other major studios.
“Christ, Rene,” said Miss G. “At least we saw the best of it. Who’d have
expected fabled Hollywood to close down like this?”
Of course, it didn’t. Movie-making was simply moving into the hands of
independent producers and independent stars. They were making movies all
right, particularly in Britain, France, Italy and Spain. Hollywood never really
returned to the eminence it had held since the early twenties.
The film MGM had Miss G lined up for following
The Little Hut
and her
loan out for
The Sun Also Rises
was
The Naked Maja
. This time they were
renting her out to an Italian company–Titanus Films. Variety magazine
accurately described Miss G as the “gold seam that lined the financial package.”
You could say that again. MGM made millions. Miss G got ninety thousand
dollars.
Miss G had no option but to grin and hate it and count the weeks before her
contract with MGM ran out. Between us, she was adamant that she was going to
spin out the making of
The Naked Maja
long enough for that to happen. It
wasn’t even difficult. The charming Italians backing Titanus Films seemed to
think that films were made by divine intervention. It took them a considerable
time to work out that they weren’t.
But long before the contracts for
The Naked Maka
were even signed, Miss
G made one of the most dangerous mistakes of her whole life.

Miss G was now firmly based in Spain but ricocheting occasionally
between Madrid, London, Paris, Rome, New York, and California. I was
holding down the fort at Bappie’s hillside house in Hollywood. Walter Chiari
had his own artistic career to look after but was spending more and more time as
Miss G’s major escort and bed partner. Unfortunately whenever Frank arrived
on the scene he had to relinquish both posts. A demotion he did not much care
for.

Luis Miguel was now married to Lucia Bose, and they were spending
much of their time at Luis Miguel’s finca. Miss G was still closely involved in
Madrid’s bullfighting circles and had no intention of quitting her senior position
with the aficionado in-crowd. Little did she know how quickly it would come to
a spectacular and career-threatening finale.

She was invited to visit a huge ranch down near Seville. Its wealthy owner
was renowned for breeding the great fighting bulls used in the corridas. She was
invited to visit for a celebrated and revered tradition called a “torea a caballo,”
which was the testing of young bulls for the courage and spirit they were
expected to display in future appearances in the bullring.

It was staged on the ranch in a specially built bullring which was a much
smaller circle than the huge arenas of Madrid and Seville and surrounded by
only a modest tier of seats. At intervals a feisty young bull would be released
into the ring to spot a horseman leisurely circling its perimeter. The young bull
would be affronted– enraged. What was this pain-in-the-derriere doing
confronting him? With a stamp of hooves and a flourish of horns, he would
charge, determined to toss horse and rider into the next county. The horseman
and his steed were experienced and wily. The rider was armed with a long lance
with a tip of solid, black rubber. Its use was not to injure the bull, but together
with expert manipulation of the house to fend him off. After a lot of energy
expended in forays and violent collisions with the barricade, the young bull, his
courage exhibited and charted, would be shooed back into his ringside pen by
the cape swirling handlers.

It was a fascinating spectacle and a time honored festival attended by many
of the bullfighting community. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of speculation,
a lot of betting, and a lot of noise.

“Then,” she said, remembering the occasion with vivid clarity, “I got the
buzz. All my so-called friends started dropping hints, little taunts. ‘Hey, Ava,
you’re so keen on bullfighting. Why don’t you have a go? Nothing to it. A
couple of circles of the ring and that’s it. Just hang on and the horse will do the
rest.’”

I said to her with alarm, because I had also witnessed one hell of a lot of
bullfights and knew a bull was dangerous from the time it could stand on four
legs, “Miss G, you must have been out of your mind. Luis Miguel would never
have allowed you even to get on the bloody horse, let alone go into the ring.
You’ve never ridden. You know nothing about horses, let alone bulls.”

“Dead right, Rene. But Louis Miguel wasn’t there, and I was. I was also
full of booze, and booze makes you do stupid things. I could hear the onlookers
picking up the idea. ‘Ava’s going to ride. Ava’s going to ride.’ I’d got my
audience. How could I disappoint them? ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll give it a try.’”

“They helped me up into the saddle. ‘Hold the reins like this. Hold the
lance like this. When you see the bull, just point the lance at him, and the horse
will heave him aside.’”

“I went sailing around the ring a couple of times and felt pretty good. Then
they let the bull out and the rest got very confused. I saw the bull come charging
across the ring. I think it came straight at the horse. I think the horse reared up
and the bull went underneath him. All I really knew was that I was shot straight
over the horse’s head. I remember the bang as my face hit the dirt. Then I was
out cold. I remember feeling people picking me up and carrying me somewhere.
Then I was dazed, but beginning to function again. I felt bashed up but okay. I
was taken back to the farm and it was only when I looked in the mirror and saw
my face that I said, ‘Christ, what is that?’”

As Miss G would soon find out, “that” was a hematoma, a blood-infused
lump the size of a large plum on her left cheek.
Miss G went on remembering. “We left next morning to fly from the local
airstrip back to Madrid. The famous owner was waiting there with a large bunch
of flowers. With difficulty, I stopped Bappie from stuffing them down his
throat.”
“You were set up?”
“Completely, honey. A professional cameraman had been positioned
correctly. The entire ‘Have-a-go-Ava’ crowd had been briefed. I don’t suppose
they were trying to injure me, just joining in the fun. Nobody cared very much
what might happen. The magazine,
Paris Match
, paid seventy-five thousand
dollars for a set of pictures showing the incident from start to finish. Christ
knows what it fetched syndicated around the world. I was the fall guy, darling.
The mug!”
Someone or some clique had set up the entire affair, but it was a very long
time before Miss G could raise the courage to face the cameras again.
The famous British surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe, who had operated
upon hundreds of badly burned pilots and who she was advised to see, became a
great friend of hers during this period. He insisted, “Don’t touch it with a knife.
Don’t have it operated on. It will disappear. I promise you, it will disappear.
Heat treatment and that’s all. It will take time. You must be patient. Wait!
Wait!”
Frank, trying to be helpful, gave her the name of a famous New York
plastic surgeon. Miss G went on. “I got an appointment and went to see him. He
said, ‘You should have come to me earlier; however, I can remedy it with one
small operation.’ With hardly a pause he added, concerning his fee, ‘I have a
new hospital branch opening in New Mexico. They would appreciate a donation
of one million dollars.’”
Miss G smiled without much mirth at the memory. “I should have told him
the place to stick his million dollars was the same place I should have told that
famous bull breeder to stick his lance.”
Miss G started her next picture convinced that her face was ruined
forever—a conviction she maintained for years to come. It was total nonsense
figuring only in her fertile imagination. For the blemish left by the facial
hematoma was too small to notice. Anyway, she need not have worried. That
next movie called for a far larger exposure of Ava Gardner’s flesh than a spot on
her cheek. It’s title,
The Naked Maja
, made that clear.
Prior to the beginning of this picture Miss G and I were quite certain we
were authorities on the life and times of the great Spanish painter Francisco
Goya. I do not suppose the art world would have confirmed this supposition, but
we didn’t care about that. We adored Goya. We’d become familiar with his
work during our first Spanish period when we spent weeks constantly returning
to the Prado, prowling its corridors with our eyes out on beanstalks. Francisco
Goya gripped the imagination and the hearts of us both.
To start with, his great canvases of the Spanish Royals stopped us in our
tracks. Those long, shallow faces framed by black curling locks were enthralling
and mesmerizing. Those full lips, black mustaches, sword-pointed beards, those
cruel, long-nosed faces, contemptuous and arrogant, looked out at you with
chilling comprehension. Among them was the face and full length figure of
Ferdinand the Seventh, the tyrant who forced Goya to flee from Spain in order
to save his life.
Kings, queens, princes were all royal masters perpetuating decadent
luxury. Their navies were looting gold from the New World, their Jesuit priests
burning and destroying ancient civilizations and always enriching their mighty
empire. One could understand from Goya’s portraits that the females were only
minor players. They were imprisoned in the same sumptuous attire–silks, laces,
stiff jewel-laden brocades–but they were bland, moon-faced creatures exhibiting
few signs of the sexuality that had produced their children. The children were
dressed in the same raiment, wooden as marionettes.
Goya had preserved them in pigment forever. But he did more than just
give the royal line immortality. Progressing from the patronage of the court, he
mirrored the horrors of his time, the massacres, firing squads, executions, and
the misery of the common people in the series of paintings, engravings and
cartoons. It was really ironic that his consummate artist’s fame should rest to
some degree on a reclining portrait of the Duchess of Alba in the nude.
“I’ll bet,” observed Miss G before the movie started, “that Goya never
dreamt that MGM was waiting for him two hundred years in the future. I also
bet you that some smart ass producer had his thought of the year when he saw a
reproduction of that painting. Gee, a masterpiece and history! Who can say it is
pornography? A beautiful dame stark naked on a bed; superimpose the face of a
super sexy actress on top of that body…now let’s think.” I joined in the laughter
as we synchronized in, “Ava Gardner!”
It should have been made in Madrid, but the aristocratic Albas who were
still in power got wind of the idea. Who could blame them for being horrified at
the thought of great-great-great Auntie Alba about to be exhibited without her
nightie? They accepted that she had been revealed naked for two hundred years,
but that was art. Who could anticipate what that scarlet woman, Ava Gardner,
might do with her portrayal?
Certainly one of their high-voltage friends rang General Franco and blew
the whistle, knowing of the Spanish dictator’s support for hereditary principles
and Spanish dignity. The film company got the message. The location was
moved to Italy, and the project was inherited by Titanus Productions. Titanus
was operated by two charming Italians, probably intrigued by the title and the
thought of Ava Gardner in the nude. Unfortunately, they had very little
understanding of the production needs and costs of a movie like
The Naked
Maja
, and the film came close to collapse. It was rescued when United Artists
became interested. MGM guaranteed distribution and made a binding agreement
that Ava Gardner would play the Duchess of Alba.
Miss G thoroughly enjoyed another stay in Italy. She made her
headquarters in Rome. Walter Chiari was a constant companion, and she saw
more of that beautiful country than ever before. Every few days a newspaper
would report that Ava and Walter were planning marriage, but Miss G was quite
certain that Walter himself was spreading this news. No church bells were heard.
Walter was very useful to her, but never at any moment did Miss G contemplate
getting hitched for the fourth time.
Eventually the shooting of
The Naked Maja
commenced, directed by
Henry Koster. Miss G looked totally dreamy in black lace mantillas and
beautiful gowns designed by Fontana. Anthony Franciosa played Francisco
Goya. They got on well together. Miss G thought he was a very nice guy and a
very fine actor. Tony thought the same way about her. He did get disturbed
when the Italian newspapers, in between announcing Miss G’s imminent
marriage to Walter Chiari, informed their readers that Tony and Miss G were
having an affair. As Tony was securely married to Shelley Winters at that time,
he was not amused.
Tony was a method actor. Miss G didn’t know what a method actor was.
Tony spent a lot of time researching Francisco Goya’s background. Tony
understood that Francisco Goya was a passionate man, an eloquent man, and at
times a manic, screaming man, right or wrong. Tony wrapped himself in all
those emotional skins of feeling. Miss G talked about this with a slightly worried
look on her face.
“God Almighty, Rene, there we are on the set, cameras ready to roll and
where’s Tony? He’s behind a bit of scenery sticking his finger down his throat
to make himself nearly sick and groaning and moaning to get his self in the right
psychological mood. Jesus, sometimes it’s more like a wrestling bout than a film
scene.”
I think Miss G tended to exaggerate, but the script was so soap-like, the
dialogue so moronic that Tony’s ambitious interpretations were wasted on the
sheer banalities of the scenes.
Miss G also suffered for far different reasons. “That very first scene was in
a church. The church was full of Goya’s paintings. Goya was standing there
with a smile on his face. All the crew and cast were Italian. The script was in
English. Many of the Italian cast didn’t speak English. They learned their lines
in what they thought was English, but I couldn’t understand a word. I didn’t
know when a sentence ended and when it was my turn to talk. I stood there like
a deaf mute ruing every scene. Director Henry Koster, who had a script, knew
where the Italian gobbledygook started and where it ended. He thought I was
either drunk or daft. This created problems, but,” Miss G paused to raise a
slender finger to emphasize her command of the situation, “What was I to do? I
decided not to listen to their words, but to watch their lips. When they stopped
moving their lips I smiled, scowled, looked worried, stupid or whatever the
script called for and shoved in my return lines. Thank God, I could understand
Tony in the big scenes.
One thing that did impress Miss G mightily was the work of Giuseppe
Rotunno, the cinematographer. “Rene,” she cried, “Giuseppe is the greatest. I’ve
been photographed by the best in the business–Freddie Young, Jack Cardiff,
Norbert Brodine and dozens of others–and Giuseppe is right up in their class. He
is the one who got permission from the Spanish authorities to film all of Goya’s
masterpieces in the Prado. He and his set designers put all the color into
The
Naked Maja
. It won’t win any Oscars for its performers, but Giuseppe should
get one for his photography. Baby, when we are free of MGM we will try and
get Giuseppe for our first movie.”
Miss G mused for a few seconds. “I guess you could conclude, Rene, that
we tampered with the history of poor old Francisco in quite a significant way.
There we were playing two romantic young lovers. Agreed, the Duchess was
certainly Goya’s patron and certainly posed in the nude for him, but they were
definitely never young lovers. There’s Goya trying to fight a corrupt Court, a
hypocritical Church, and the Spanish Inquisition always threatening to torture
him. I am being slowly poisoned by priests in black robes. Naturally there is a
good old movie ending as I am lying in Goya’s arms whispering my closing
line, ‘Look for me in every Spanish face.’ Considering the fact that every
Spanish face has been looking at me in the nude for God knows how long,
seems a bit difficult to understand.”