Niv: The Authorized Biography of David Niven (58 page)

THE STATUE
(Shaftel, 1970)
Virna Lisi, Robert Vaughn, Ann Bell, John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Hugh Burden. Produced by Joseph Shaftel and Anis Nohra; directed by Rod Amateau.

KING, QUEEN, KNAVE
(Wolper Pictures, 1972). German title,
Herzbube
.
Gina Lollobrigida, John Moulder Brown, Mario Adorf. Produced by David L. Wolper; directed by Jerzy Skolimowski.

VAMPIRA
(World Film Services, 1973)
Teresa Graves, Peter Bayliss, Jennie Linden, Nicky Henson,
Bernard Bresslaw, Freddie Jones. Produced by Jack H. Weiner; directed by Clive Donner.

THE CANTERVILLE GHOST
(HTV, 1974)
James Whitmore, Lynne Frederick, Flora Robson. Produced by Timothy Burrill; directed by Walter Miller.

PAPER TIGER
(Lloyd-MacLean Films, 1975)
Toshiro Mifune, Hardy Kruger, Ando, Ronald Fraser. Produced by Euan Lloyd; directed by Ken Annakin.

NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN
(Walt Disney, 1975)
Barbara Feldon, Don Knotts, Darren McGavin, Vic Tayback. Produced by Ron Miller and Joseph McEveety; directed by Norman Tokar.

MURDER BY DEATH
(Columbia, 1976)
Truman Capote, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith. Produced by Ray Stark; directed by Robert Moore.

CANDLESHOE
(Walt Disney, 1977)
Leo McKern, Jodie Foster, Helen Hayes. Produced by Ron Miller; directed by Norman Tokar.

DEATH ON THE NILE
(EMI, 1978)
Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Maggie Smith. Produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin; directed by John Guillermin.

ESCAPE TO ATHENA
(ITC Entertainment, 1979)
Roger Moore, Telly Savalas, Stefanie Powers, Claudia Cardinale, Elliott Gould. Produced by David Niven Jr and Jack Weiner; directed by George Pan Cosmatos.

A NIGHTINGALE SANG IN BERKELEY SQUARE
(S. B. Fisz Productions, 1979)
Richard Jordan, Oliver Tobias, Gloria Grahame, Elke
Sommer. Produced by S. Benjamin Fisz; directed by Ralph Thomas.

A MAN CALLED INTREPID
(Lorimer Productions Ltd, 1979)
Michael York, Barbara Hershey, Peter Gilmore, Nigel Stock, Flora Robson, Gayle Hunnicutt. Produced by Intrepid Productions; directed by Peter Carter.

ROUGH CUT
(Paramount, 1980)
Burt Reynolds, Lesley-Anne Down, Timothy West, Patrick Magee, Joss Ackland. Produced by David Merrick; directed by Don Siegel.

THE SEA WOLVES
(Uniprom International, 1980)
Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, Trevor Howard, Barbara Kellerman, Patrick Macnee. Produced by Euan Lloyd; directed by Andrew V. McLaglen.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
(working title,
Ménage à Trois
) (Golden Harvest, 1981)
Maggie Smith, Art Carney, Lionel Jeffries. Produced by David Niven Jr and Jack Haley Jr; directed by Bryan Forbes.

THE TRAIL OF THE PINK PANTHER
(MGM-United Artists, 1982)
Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner, Capucine, Joanna Lumley, Herbert Lom, Graham Stark, Burt Kwouk. Produced and directed by Blake Edwards.

CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER
(MGM-United Artists, 1983)
Robert Wagner, Herbert Lom, Joanna Lumley, Capucine, Graham Stark. Produced and directed by Blake Edwards.

Acknowledgements
and Bibliography

I must thank all four of David Niven’s children – David Junior, Jamie, Kristina and Fiona – for their wonderfully generous support and co-operation in giving me long interviews in Los Angeles, New York, Lausanne and Boston, answering numerous supplementary questions, providing photographs, and letting me see their father’s private papers in the archives of the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, as well as his British Ministry of Defence army records and his publishers’ records and files and for allowing me to quote from his books, letters, manuscripts and other documents. I owe a huge debt to the entire Niven family, from Niv’s ninety-six-year-old sister Grizel, who was living in London in 2003, to his daughter-in-law Fernanda and granddaughters Fernanda and Eugenie. Even so, this book is ‘authorised’ only in the sense that they have spoken to me remarkably openly and given me unrestricted access to Niven’s documents. Not one of them asked to read the text for approval before publication.

Niven’s closest surviving friends have also been incredibly kind and helpful: Lauren Bacall, Evie and Leslie Bricusse, William F. Buckley Jr, Pat Medina Cotten, Anastasia and Roddy Mann, Sir John Mills, Sir Roger Moore, Sir John Mortimer, Sir Peter Ustinov and Robert Wagner. So have many other actors, producers, directors and writers who worked with him: Ken and Pauline Annakin, Claudia Cardinale, Lesley Caron, Priscilla Dunn, Bryan Forbes, Charlton Heston, John Hurt, Euan Lloyd, Patrick Macnee, Michael Parkinson, Tony Randall, John Standing and Peter Viertel.

I am especially grateful to Sheridan Morley, who wrote Niven’s first biography in 1985,
The Other Side of the Moon
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson), was able to interview many witnesses who have since died and has generously given me permission to quote from those interviews. Equally helpful were Guy Evans and Tom McDonald of October Films, who have made a superb television documentary about Niv that is due to be transmitted when this book is published. Other invaluable TV sources were the three
Michael Parkinson Show
programmes on which Niv was interviewed and the BBC’s
Living Famously: David Niven
(2003).

I learned a great deal about Niven’s childhood, schooldays and early years from Hugh Boynton; John Bridgwood and Karen McGahey of Stowe School’s Old Stoics Society; Derek Cannon of St Hugh’s School, Carswell Manor, Faringdon; Reg Gadney; General Sir Charles Harington; Niv’s sons’ nanny Beryl Rogers; his brother-in-law, Andrew Rollo; Colonel Mike Samuelson and Jim Dearden of the Bembridge Sailing Club; Niven’s ninety-two-year-old school classmate Dudley Steynor and ninety-year-old school contemporary Frith Banbury. Brigit and Clemency Ames, Governor Hugh Carey and Andy Parlour, the author of
Phantom at War
, illuminated his war years and the twenty-three winters that he spent in Switzerland were described for me by David Bolton, Sue Bongard, Jane Del Amo, Hedi Donizetti, Martine and Ralph Fields, Alastair Forbes, Evan Galbraith, Ken and Kitty Galbraith, Patrick and Sussie Kearley, Gaynor Mazzone, the Rev. Arnot Morrison, Taki Theodoracopulos, Baroness Fiona Thyssen-Bornemisza, Coco and Jan Wyers, and Valerie Youmans. And some of the twenty-two summers that he lived in the South of France were described by April Clavell, the Hon. William Feilding, Virginia Gallico, Lord Hanson, Doreen Hawkins, Billie More, Kathrine Palmer and Andrew Vicari.

Niven’s career as a bestselling author was explained by Phil Evans, Kenneth Giniger, Alan Gordon Walker, Peter Israel, Michael Korda, Kate Medina, Walter Minton, Vivienne Schuster, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson and Sam Vaughan. Others who gave me invaluable interviews include Princess Salimah Aga Khan, Roxie Clayton, Joan Evans, Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, Tom
Hutchinson, Jess Morgan, Lady Christopher Thynn, Alexander Walker and Peter Watson.

For help in researching Niv’s private papers I am extremely grateful to Barbara Hall of the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles; to Samuel Goldwyn Junior and the Samuel Goldwyn Foundation for permission to quote from Sam Goldwyn’s letters; to Hamish Hamilton Ltd for permission to quote from Niv’s letters from his British publisher; to Curtis Brown Ltd for permission to quote from his letters from his literary agent; to Joanna Lumley and Sam Vaughan for permission to quote from their letters; and to W.W. Norton to quote e.e. cummings’ ‘who knows if the moon’s a balloon’.

I have also had help from Maurice Baird-Smith DFC; Ann Birch of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Records and Historical Department; Miss S. Bowry of the Departmental Records department of the Ministry of Defence; Lt-Col O. R. St J. Breakwell MBE and Jimmy Holland of the Turf Club; Mr and Mrs Clive Brown; Miss L. C. Burrows of the Ministry of Defence Army Medal Office; Sally Burton; Elaine Cleary of
The Times
; Minty Clinch; Kathleen Dickson of the British Film Institute; Benoit Favey; Margaret Flory; Enid Foster of the Garrick Club; Robert Gordon-Brown; the Hon. Nigel Havers; Camilla Hornby; Christopher Horton; Penny Junor; James Leasor; Hannah Lowery of Bristol University library’s special collections department; Brian MacArthur; George MacDonald Fraser; Mary-Ann McFarlane-Barrow; Dr Brian Miller; Clive Mitchell; Doug Munro; Dr Mark Nicholls; Nigel Reynolds; Liz Sanderson; Mary Sharp of the Carlton Club; Becky Shaw; Major W. Shaw of the Royal Highland Fusiliers and his assistants W. Gallagher and D. McMaster; Malcolm Shemmonds of the Bank of England; R. Smith of Boodle’s Club; Jill Spellman of the Conservative Party Archive at the Bodleian Library in Oxford; Mrs J. V. Thorpe of the Gloucestershire Record Office; Dr P. J. Thwaites, Andrew Orgill and Tracey Morgan of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst; Richard Webber; and Michael York.

Naturally I read all four of Niven’s published books:
Round the Rugged Rocks
(Cresset, 1951);
The Moon’s a Balloon
(Hamish Hamilton, 1971);
Bring on the Empty Horses
(Hamish Hamilton, 1975); and
Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly
(Hamish Hamilton,
1981). Three previous books about Niven provided invaluable signposts at the outset:
Niven’s Hollywood
by Tom Hutchinson (Macmillan, 1984);
The Last Gentleman: A Tribute to David Niven
by Peter Haining (W. H. Allen, 1984); and
The Films of David Niven
by Gerard Garrett (LSP Books, 1975).

For help with newspaper archives I am grateful to Steve Baker of
The Times
library, Gavin Fuller and Gerald Hill of the
Daily Telegraph
library, and Steve Torrington, the chief librarian of the
Daily Mail
. And thanks to the wonderfully helpful staff of the British Library at St Pancras in London I was able to consult hundreds of relevant books with astonishing speed, most notably the following:

Ken Annakin,
So You Wanna Be a Director?
(Tomahawk Press, 2001)

Noel Annan,
Roxburgh of Stowe
(Longmans, 1965)

Margaret Duchess of Argyll,
Forget Not
(W. H. Allen, 1975)

Mary Astor,
A Life on Film
(W. H. Allen, 1973)

Michael Astor,
Tribal Feeling
(Murray, 1963)

Lauren Bacall,
By Myself
(Jonathan Cape, 1979)

Peter Baker,
Confession of Faith
(Falcon Press, 1946)

Major-General David Belchem,
All in the Day’s March
(Collins, 1978)

Gertrude Bell,
Letters
(Ernest Benn, 1927)

A. Scott Berg,
Goldwyn
(Hamish Hamilton, 1989)

Shirley Temple Black,
Child Star
(Headline, 1988)

John Boyd-Carpenter,
Way of Life
(Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980)

Melvyn Bragg,
Rich: The Life of Richard Burton
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1988)

Eric Braun,
Deborah Kerr
(W. H. Allen, 1977)

Kate Buford,
Burt Lancaster
(Aurum Press, 2000)

M. E. Clifton James,
I Was Monty’s Double
(Rider, 1954)

Minty Clinch,
Burt Lancaster
(Arthur Barker, 1984)

Joan Collins,
Second Act
(Boxtree, 1996)

Juliet Benita Colman,
Ronald Colman
(W. H. Allen, 1975)

T. Comyn-Platt,
By Mail and Messenger
(Constable, 1925)

Roland Culver,
Not Quite a Gentleman
(William Kimber, 1979)

Nigel Dempster,
Dempster’s People
(HarperCollins, 1998)

Paul Donovan,
Roger Moore
(W. H. Allen, 1983)

Faye Dunaway with Betsy Sharkey,
Looking for Gatsby: My Life
(HarperCollins, 1995)

Brigadier John Durnford-Slater,
Commando
(G. Mann, 1953)

Steve Englund,
Princess Grace
(Orbis, 1984)

Douglas Fairbanks Jr,
A Hell of a War
(Robson Books, 1995)

Ian Fenwick,
Enter Trubshawe
(Collins, 1944)

Shirley Anne Field,
A Time For Love
(Bantam Press, 1991)

Suzanne Finstad,
Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood
(Century, 2001)

Gary Fishgall,
Against Type: The Biography of Burt Lancaster
(Scribner, 1995)

Michael Freedland,
Fred Astaire
(W. H. Allen, 1976)

——
The Goldwyn Touch
(Harrap, 1986)

Ava Gardner,
Ava
(Bantam Press, 1990)

Martin Gilbert,
Winston S. Churchill
(Heinemann, 1983)

Sarah Giles,
Fred Astaire
(Bloomsbury, 1988)

John Glatt,
The Ruling House of Monaco
(Piatkus, 1998)

Lionel Godfrey,
Cary Grant: The Light Touch
(Robert Hale, 1981)

Stewart Granger,
Sparks Fly Upward
(Granada, 1981)

Benny Green,
Fred Astaire
(Hamlyn, 1979)

George Greenfield,
A Smattering of Monsters
(Little, Brown, 1995)

——
Scribblers for Bread
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1989)

Nigel Hamilton,
The Full Monty
(Allen Lane, 2001)

Warren G. Harris,
Gable and Lombard
(Cassell, 1974)

——
Audrey Hepburn
(Simon & Schuster, 1994)

——
Natalie and R. J
. (Doubleday, 1988)

Rex Harrison,
A Damned Serious Business
(Bantam Press, 1990)

——
Rex
(Macmillan, 1974)

Jack Hawkins,
Anything for a Quiet Life
(Elm Tree, 1973)

Hugh Heckstall-Smith,
Doubtful Schoolmaster
(Peter Davies, 1962)

C. David Heymann,
A Woman Named Jackie
(Heinemann, 1989)

Charles Higham,
Brando
(Sidgwick & Jackson, 1987)

Charles Higham and Roy Moseley,
Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart
(New English Library, 1989)

——
Merle: A Biography of Merle Oberon
(New English Library, 1983)

James Hill,
Rita Hayworth: A Memoir
(Robson Books, 1983)

Lt-Col R. J. T. Hills,
Phantom Was There
(Edward Arnold, 1951)

Allan Hunter,
Faye Dunaway
(W. H. Allen, 1986)

Joe Hyams,
Bogart and Bacall
(Michael Joseph, 1975)

Sir Anthony Jenkinson,
America Came My Way
(Arthur Barker, 1936)

Alva Johnston,
The Great Goldwyn
(Random House, 1937)

Kitty Kelley,
His Way
(Bantam, 1986)

——
Jackie Oh!
(Ballantine, 1979)

Edward Klein,
All Too Human: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy
(Pocket Books, 1996)

John Kobal,
Rita Hayworth
(W. H. Allen, 1977)

H. Peter Kriendler with H. Paul Jeffers,
21: Every Day Was New Year’s Eve
(Taylor Publishing, 1999)

Gavin Lambert,
Norma Shearer
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1990)

Barbara Learning,
If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989)

Cole Lesley,
The Life of Noël Coward
(Jonathan Cape, 1976)

Joanna Lumley,
Stare Back and Smile
(Viking, 1989)

Alasdair Macdonald,
Stowe House and School
(W. S. Cowell, 1951)

Shirley MacLaine,
My Lucky Stars
(Bantam, 1995)

Patrick Macnee and Marie Cameron,
Blind in One Ear
(Harrap, 1988)

Peter Manso,
Brando
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994)

Robert Mark,
In the Office of Constable
(Collins, 1978)

Arthur Marx,
Goldwyn
(Bodley Head, 1976)

John Masters,
Bugles and a Tiger
(Michael Joseph, 1956)

Diana Maychick and L. Avon Borgo,
Heart to Heart With Robert Wagner
(Robson Books, 1986)

Graham McCann,
Cary Grant: A Class Apart
(Fourth Estate, 1996)

Jeffrey Meyers,
Bogart: A Life in Hollywood
(André Deutsch, 1997)

John Mills,
Up in the Clouds, Gentlemen Please
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980)

Kenneth More,
More or Less
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1978)

Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein,
Loretta Young
(Delacorte Press, 1986)

Eric Morris,
Churchill’s Private Armies: British Special Forces in Europe 1939–1942
(Hutchinson, 1986)

John Mortimer,
Murderers and Other Friends
(Viking, 1994)

Roy Moseley with Philip and Martin Masheter,
Rex Harrison
(New English Library, 1987)

——
Roger Moore
(New English Library, 1985)

Michael Munn,
Burt Lancaster
(Robson, 1995)

——
Gregory Peck
(Robert Hale, 1998)

Ken Murray,
The Golden Days of San Simeon
(MurMar Publishing, 1995)

Cathleen Nesbitt,
A Little Love and Good Company
(Stemmer House, 1977)

Barry Norman,
The Film Greats
(Hodder & Stoughton/BBC, 1985)

Barry Paris,
Audrey Hepburn
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)