Living With Miss G (29 page)

I could have butted in there to tell Tennessee that Miss G was polishing up
her performance as only a really committed actress could. Miss G never could
stand or wish to understand method acting. Hers was a purely natural
performance. I decided the time was not right, and it was not my place.
Tennessee had already heard about our other freshening up activity. “I
understand that Ava’s just spent a lot of time at these beauty spas. I’ve already
met Ava. She is great. I love her.” A touch of exasperation had entered his
voice as he went on, “but if she comes out of this film looking beautiful, the
whole point of her part will be lost.”
I could have intervened with another valid point here, but I didn’t. Before
we started any film Miss G, aided by my gentle persuasion that if she didn’t get
up I was going to start singing, went into strict training. No booze, no sex, no
cigarettes, no late nights; only health and strength. She was to be a clean-living,
home-loving girl. She arrived at the studio or on location nervous as a kitten, but
as fit as an Olympic athlete, and ten times more beautiful. Of course, what
ninety-nine percent of movie directors wanted from her all through her movie
life was a beautiful, sexy, sinful lady. Miss G may have been great as Lady
Macbeth or Florence Nightingale or Eleanor Roosevelt, but no one wanted her
to play those roles.
Now Tennessee Williams wanted her to play dowdy. Sure she could do it,
but it would be a special sort of dowdy—Ava Gardner dowdy. Tennessee had
other objections as he went on without any conviction. “I believe she can do it,
but it will be a battle getting it out of her. I want her to work with a real southern
accent. She’s picked up a phony accent in Hollywood. That’s no good.”
I’ve got to say, I’ve always admired Mr. Huston’s self-control. He was just
as famous as Tennessee and far more worldly in a director’s province. Most
directors would have hit Tennessee over the head with a baseball bat. John did
not take the slightest umbrage. He knew Tennessee understood the complexities
of both their crafts but that power lay in the hands of the director to blur or
obliterate the original conception. And contractually John retained that power.
Tennessee also knew John was fair. If Tennessee made his point convincingly,
and if it made sense, John would accept it.
John exchanged the position of drink and cigarette for the fifth time which
meant that his glass was empty. He made his recognizable wave of fingers
towards the bar, and a waiter hurried over to refresh everybody’s drinks.
“Tennessee,” he said slowly, “Ava Gardner is a Tar Heel from North
Carolina. As you know, that means someone who sticks to his position in the
battle line. They put shoes on her and took her to Hollywood, but basically she
hasn’t changed a bit. She’s still a Tar Heel at heart. She’s very happy picking up
her North Carolina accent again. She is much happier than she was with that
MGM crap. I cast Ava because I know her, not because of any performance she
has given. I can tell you, Tennessee, Ava can belt it out, as well as belt it down,
given the chance. You’ll see. You’ll see a very fine actress at work.” Tennessee
looked slightly distressed.
“John, you have poured syrup over her. She’s got to be unsweetened and
brought back to earth. She must reflect the world, and the world is hard. To be
successful, the play must remain a tragedy, a tragedy. Make Ava sweet and
loving, hang on a happy ending, and you will destroy the whole thing.”

One morning about midway through filming Miss G began the day
shrieking blue murder, “Lies, lies! Rene, have you seen these headlines?” She
brandished a Mexican newspaper, “Lies, rubbish!”

Oh God, I thought. The story’s broken. Our scandal is revealed. The
Mexicans are insulted. My Spanish was terrible, but by the size of those black
headlines, I could guess they said something awful, like “Famous Actress Ava
Gardner Shares Love Nest with Two Beach Bums” or perhaps “Shameless
Behavior by Hollywood Film Star.”

“They are saying,” yelled Miss G, “that Emilio Fernandez and I are
engaged to be married!”
Relief overwhelmed me, and I said, “Is that all?”
“Is that all?” shrieked Miss G, “I hardly know the bum.”
She was right. We scarcely knew Senor Emilio, although we had heard
about some of his exploits, especially about the first time he met Elizabeth
Taylor. The love affair between Elizabeth and Richard Burton had ignited when
they first worked together in the movie
Cleopatra
and had achieved headlines in
every part of the world. The news that a plane carrying the lovers was about to
arrive at Mexico City’s airport caused huge crowds to assemble there. First into
the aircraft as the steps were placed into position, shrugging off all attempts at
interference, raced this huge, black-mustached Mexican in Poncho Villa
sombrero with silver-cased revolvers dangling from either holster. He glared
along the aisle until he spotted Elizabeth sitting next to Richard. He then rushed
towards her, seized her by the arm and tried to tug her from her seat to go with
him.
There was complete pandemonium! Was this a revolution or an attempted
kidnapping? Not bothering to consider either possibility, Richard tried to thump
him and missed. Elizabeth screamed, and passengers froze in their seats.
Officials arrived, and peace was restored.
Apparently Emilio was an associate director on
The Night of the Iguana
who had been appointed by John Huston to escort Liz Taylor safely through the
crowds. Emilio, as usual, had adopted a direct approach. Richard threatened to
kill him if he ever approached Liz again. Liz smiled and said she understood the
mistake. John admitted that, indeed, Emilio was an old friend of his. He had
hired him to satisfy the Mexican law which specified that a certain number of
nationals must be employed on any film made in Mexico.
“Emilio’s weakness,” said John affably, “is his tendency to shoot people he
doesn’t like.”
As far as we were concerned, Emilio’s only duties consisted of being seen
occasionally on the set, much more often in the bar, and always giving the eye to
any attractive female who appeared in his vision. That included Miss G, so we
always steered clear of him. We also harbored serious suspicions that it was
Emilio himself who had started the marriage rumors rolling.
The world’s press picked up the story with alacrity. Cables arrived from
Hollywood, New York, Sydney, Paris, London, and from anywhere and
everywhere seeking to discover the identity of this mysterious Emilio Fernandez
who had captured Ava Gardner’s lonely heart. Emilio became a national
treasure. Pressed for action by an enraged Miss G, MGM’s press departments
issued loud and vehement denials. These quieted the foreign press, but the
delighted Mexican papers wouldn’t let go, and even when they did, it was with a
final flurry of national pride.
“Jesus Christ, Rene,” Miss G squealed, “they’ve slanted their stories to
indicate that bloody Senor Emilio Fernandez changed his mind about marrying
me.” Oh well, it gave us something to laugh about.
Not all the Mexican press, however, were obsessed with such trivia. From
the time we arrived some of the more left-wing papers had been smoldering
about the decadence of the aliens who came to Puerto Vallarta to indulge
themselves in drink, drugs, and a lay-about life. Now the finger pointed directly
at us: Puerto Vallarta people are being criminally despoiled of their land, their
beaches, and their way of life. Children of ten to fifteen are being introduced to
sex, drink, drugs, vice, and carnal bestiality by gangsters, nymphomaniacs, and
heroin-sniffing blonds.
I must say, I thought that was a bit harsh if it referred to our hard-working
group of movie makers. I didn’t think for a second that Miss G was despoiling
the lives of her boat boys. They all seemed to be having a very good time
together.
I will admit that we all seemed to drink far too much. Miss G, I know,
thoroughly approved of Richard Burton’s cry, “Who’s ever heard of a movie
being made without a bar? A bar is ethnic to movies, part of our culture.” That
statement was probably invented during one of Richard’s night sessions when,
ignoring Liz’s most tender appeals, he refused to leave the bar at all.
“Back to Puerto Vallarta, no!” he would roar. “Should I risk breaking my
bloody neck going down those steps? No! Risk falling overboard in the dark?
No! There’s good company here. Good conversation, plenty of bedrooms to fall
into a few yards away, and no distance to get on the set next morning.”
Miss G adored Richard and normally would have accepted his advice, but
she had her boat boys always ready to ferry us home.
During our time in Mexico, Miss G was pleased about the friendship she
struck up with Deborah and Peter Viertel. The friendship between us and John
Huston we took for granted, and we all gave him credit for his astute cunning in
lumping us together in these intimate relationships. Miss G had always shied
away from mixing very much with the rest of the cast in her movies outside
studio hours, but now for the first time since I had known her, I actually heard
her discussing the trade of acting, the penalties of fame and the excitement of
anticipation about working each day. Usually she brushed those aspects aside. It
was just a job like any other.
Miss G had known Peter Viertel in her early Hollywood years. They had
played tennis together, dined together and were good, but never intimate,
friends. Like Miss G, Peter loved swimming and snorkeling, but he’d never tried
waterskiing. Miss G introduced him to the sport, and often they would cut white
swathes across the blue water of Los Muertos Beach together. Occasionally all
shifted back to their house for drinks and a little chat. It was always a nice time.
Our friendship with Richard and Liz was of a different character. Liz and
Miss G were old friends, but the addition of Richard to Liz’s life created a new
dynamic. There was a serenity attached to Deborah and Peter but an air of
conflict within the Liz and Richard household. Liz had been married three times
before she met Richard, and he had been married only once to Sybil. One had to
admire John Huston’s skill in casting people with real problems into
counterparts in the movie with fictional problems. Miss G was in the clear,
having arrived in Puerto Vallarta footloose and fancy free. As I’ve hinted before,
the boat boys, provided by John, were always waiting for her slightest command
or a little “flirt”, as she called it, to embellish her characterization. Richard,
however, had arrived loaded down with guilt and inner conflict, perfectly
typecast to assume the Reverend Shannon’s fictional sins of flesh, drink and the
devil. Indeed, he was able to enlarge his portrayal with his own virile
Welshness, and a dark, brooding, melancholic quality the Welsh call “hiraeth.”
Liz on the surface seemed quite untroubled by events and was, as usual,
ravishingly beautiful. She was immensely attached to and protective of Richard,
even when he talked belligerently about their private affairs in public—even
making jokes about their chances of getting married. Elizabeth had brought her
six-year-old daughter to Puerto Vallarta. She was a lovely little girl with
incredibly turquoise blue eyes, dark lashes, and an air of innocence like her
mother’s. Not that I am saying that Liz’s eyes in those days were all that
innocent, and in the diminutive bikinis she wore (a different one every day, I
swear), she was gloriously provocative.
Miss G, with her usual candor about such matters, later said of Liz’s allure:
“I’ve known Liz for ages, through Mickey in the first place because he worked
with her when she was in her teens in National Velvet. I knew her when her
little breasts started sprouting. I remember they swelled very quickly, and she
didn’t do anything to push them down either. I don’t blame her. She had a tiny
waist like I did. We used to compare sizes. I was twenty-three when I made
The
Great Sinner
with Gregory Peck, and Irene designed a special corset that we
pulled into nineteen inches, but that was a bit tough, so I guess I must have been
a regular twenty-one inches at the time. I had a thirty-four cup and hips to
match—not bad. Liz was about the same.”
Without a part in the film, Liz was able to plan a leisurely routine. She
caught the launch
Taffy
every day at noon and arrived in Mismaloya in time for
lunch. She was quite happy to chat with any newsman about her present and
future plans, and they were around for the entire two months. Even when
Michael Wilding, her second husband and father of her first two children, turned
up as an agent for the firm that represented Richard Burton, she was not the
slightest bit fazed. Liz always managed to keep her previous husbands in
perspective, knowing that earlier love affairs were not nearly as intriguing as
present ones.
Never before had I seen Miss G go overboard about the sheer magnetism
and talent of any actor as she did with Richard Burton. Oh yes, she recognized
him as a sexpot all right with that shock of black hair, those electric blue eyes,
that raddled complexion, that powerful muscular figure, and that resonant, lucid,
evocative voice. Miss G adored every note.
Miss G knew Richard was not for her, though. She had her own inviolable
set of rules and ethics about such things. Never steal a best friend’s husband or
boyfriend. That was Rule One. Rule Two was that there were always more than
enough males around anyway. Even so, after she had spent close to eighteen
years in the movie business playing opposite a whole bunch of talented
gentlemen, Richard blew in against her with the force and freshness of a Pacific
Ocean hurricane. I think it also had something to do with John Huston’s original
premise. You were there in Mexico in an old run-down hotel called Costa
Verde. It was all real and believable, and certainly Richard Burton as the
drunken old sot Reverend Shannon was both real and believable.
Born in the valleys of Wales, son of a Jenkins coal miner, part of a brood
of seven young Jenkinses, from childhood Richard was bright, boisterous, and
determined. As a schoolboy, his talents were recognized by Philip Burton, a
gentle, gifted Welshman and BBC radio producer. With father Jenkins’
agreement he adopted Richard, took him into his own home, and changed not
only his name, but his entire life. Richard won a scholarship to Oxford
University and never looked back. As an orator, he was matchless. His memory
was astonishing. Out would pour Shakespeare, the Bible, or a dozen poets from
the Elizabethan era to Dylan Thomas, for whom he had a great respect. Yet there
was nothing conceited about Richard’s performances. He was modest and
appreciative of anyone who cared to join in. He had a wonderful bouncing sense
of humor always on tap.
“He’s such an original,” Miss G exclaimed about him. “He is such a goddamned assertive, aggressive, certain-he-is-right male chauvinist Welshman.
When he talks, the world listens, and the bugger never stops talking.” Miss G’s
voice was rising with excitement. “When we are rehearsing, he draws me out in
a way I’ve never experienced before. He makes the dialogue sound so natural
that I answer instinctively, and then discover that it is the dialogue. What about
that then?”
Often Miss G was Richard’s friendly American target, but she could take
care of herself. I think it had something to do with the love-hate conflict in their
parts as Shannon and Maxine that they carried forward into their off-camera
sessions.
“Now Ava, me old darling,” started Richard in a fake Irish accent on a
particular night in the bar, “I bet you’ve never heard Irish singing or a Welsh
choir belting it out in your whole life. I mean what do they know about singing
in the soft green undergrowths of North Carolina?”
“More than you will ever know,” answered Miss G, sweetly.
“In the Welsh coal mines, lass, the miners are winched up the shaft
harmonizing in Welsh hymns loud enough to knock down the Houses of
Parliament. Do those simple farmers growing their cotton and tobacco crops go
to work with a song on their lips? The Welsh valleys are stuffed with tin-roofed
chapels that thunder with the rage of hymns and the denunciation of sin.”
“Honey,” Miss G replied in the molasses-sweet North Carolina accent she
was using for her part as Maxine, “let me tell you, Wales isn’t the only place
where the preacher men sound off. When I was a little girl growing up, everyone
was too busy to take me to Sunday school, so my little black friend Elsa Mae,
about eight, same age as me, we’d sneak out to the Black Holy Roller church
nearby. Baby, you sure did get good singing and good preaching there. We were
all sinners doomed to flaming hell. That used to frighten the shit out of Elsa Mae
and me, but we clutched hands and decided we wouldn’t steal any more
watermelons from other people’s fields, and I think it influenced me into trying
to have a good time as long as I could before I was consigned to the flames. And
talking about great hymn singing, you ever heard of Mahalia Jackson?”
Richard threw his hands up as if he’d been struck by a divine revelation–
half Burton, half the Reverend Shannon–“Ava, my darling, now we’ve reached
common ground. Who has not heard of the great Mahalia?” And heaven’s
above, there was no way of stopping or upstaging this man because he’s off
singing in full voice, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let us rejoice and
sing.”
And by golly, within a few seconds the song was taken up by the whole
bar. They knew the tune if they didn’t know the words. They were on their feet,
some banging their glasses on the table, and Richard was conducting an
uproarious sing-along. It was fun, really fun. I’ve never known a film crew and a
horde of totally different people have such a good time together in such an
unlikely place. Remember, I’m talking with hindsight. If you can recognize
happiness when it’s happening, you are doubly fortunate. Let me tell you that
both Miss G and I knew that we were very happy on so many of those evenings.