Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown

by Moore, Roger

  Dinah told me that on their wedding day Davis said to her, ‘I can’t remember if you’re the third or fourth, but I’m sure you won’t be the last of my wives.’ It surprised few of us that she later filed for divorce – and was granted one, incredibly swiftly – on the grounds of ‘cruelty’. Happily, she later returned to acting and made one of my favourite films, The Railway Children, for Bryan Forbes at ABPC in Elstree in 1970.

  It was Lionel Jeffries who brought E. Nesbit’s acclaimed book to Bryan’s attention and said he’d adapted it as a screenplay; Bryan read it and said he’d love to make a film version. ‘But who should we approach to direct?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, actually ...’ offered Lionel, ‘I really rather fancied directing it myself.’

  Bryan readily agreed and the result was one of the finest British films ever made.

  Dinah’s daughter, Jenny Hanley, followed in her footsteps as an actress and in fact became a Bond Girl in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with the other fella. My favourite story from Jenny’s career is actually from when she co-starred with my old sparring partner Christopher Lee in Scars of Dracula, which at one point called for a blood-sucking bat to swoop down and remove her crucifix necklace in order that the evil Count could sink his teeth into her neck. Of course, back in 1970, there wasn’t any CGI and so the bat was brought to life as a model, which was operated by two prop men who were very much an item – and extremely camp with it.

  For the wide shots the bat was suspended on a wire and had to swoop down towards Jenny but the problems started when it swooped a little too low and bounced off her rather ample bosom. After a couple more ‘bouncing takes’ the whole cast and crew fell about in a terrible fit of giggles.

  My modelling days took me from Dinah Sheridan’s parents’ photographic studio and a selection of tank tops to the ‘hotspots’ of the British seaside. You may not be able to see them, but I bet I’m covered in goosebumps.

  ‘This prompted Sir Christopher Lee to walk on set and tell everyone they ought to take the film more seriously as, after all, Vlad the Impaler, upon whom Dracula was based, had been a real person and a little more gravitas – as befitting this noble figure – was called for,’ said Jenny.

  Of course, Christopher’s intervention only served to make everyone start giggling further, though they eventually managed to get the take, and moved on to the close-ups.

  ‘This meant the two prop men – who were dressed identically by the way – bringing the bat down to my eye level,’ Jenny told me. ‘One operated the wings and the other, with his arms wrapped around his partner, reached inside it to operate the mouth. They then started bickering about how fast the wings should move versus how fast the mouth should snap, and I fell about in a fit of uncontrollable hysterics.

  “That’s far too fast on the wings, dear!” said one.

  “No it’s not! You’re too slow on the mouth, dear. Move it faster – and squirt the blood!” suggested the other.

  “I’m not squirting any blood until you get the wings at the right speed.”

  “God you’re such a bloody diva!” It was impossible to take any of it seriously, let alone look terrified as a damsel in distress,’ Jenny concluded.

  Towards the end of my tenure as Simon Templar at ABPC Studios in Borehamwood in 1968, Hammer Films moved in on an adjacent stage with a film version of the hit West End play The Anniversary. It starred Hollywood grand dame Bette Davis, along with Sheila Hancock and James Cossins in support.

  Bette Davis was a formidable actress and a formidable force in the movie business. In the 1930s, for example, she took on the Hollywood Studios, accusing them of ‘slavery’ and saying they only ever offered her mediocre films to star in. She wasn’t to be messed with, and producers feared crossing her.

  A very talented, award-winning young director named Alvin Rakoff was signed (with whom I happily worked myself the following year on Crossplot) to helm this new Hammer production, and the British cast were told that Miss Davis was to command their utmost respect, but they were not to approach her directly on set. Furthermore, on her first day they were given instructions to gather around and applaud the star as she made her entrance.

  Within a few days it was clear Bette was not only standoffish with her co-stars but was even unwilling to engage in any form of dialogue with Alvin. ‘She was above taking or talking about direction of any kind,’ he said.

  She had the producers fire Alvin, very unceremoniously, after a week and hired in Roy Ward Baker to replace him. Shortly afterwards, the Director of Photography was fired after Miss Davis accused him of not lighting her properly, and she subsequently gave her own specific instructions on where lights should be placed.

  Sheila Hancock had the dressing room next door to Miss Davis’ and she was able to hear the conversations through the radiator pipes and – almost on a daily basis – heard whom Miss Davis demanded be sacked next.

  A decade later, Bette Davis landed at Pinewood Studios to make Death on the Nile and her reputation certainly went before her. When a call was placed to production designer Peter Murton (who happily designed The Man with the Golden Gun starring yours truly) saying, ‘Miss Davis would like to see him’, it was an ashen-faced Peter who turned to his assistant, Terry Ackland-Snow, and said, ‘Terry, you’ve worked with Bette Davis before ...’ Terry took a step backwards, wary of what his boss was going to say next, ‘... so be a dear and go see what she wants.’

  ‘Well, she did ask for you, Peter,’ Terry reasoned.

  ‘Yes, but tell her I’m out looking at locations. Go on, you go.’

  A nervous young Terry walked to the set and reported to the star.

  ‘Are you Peter Murton?’ she asked. Terry apologized that he wasn’t and that Peter was out on location.

  ‘They tell me he designed this set?’

  ‘Yes, he did, Ma’am.’

  ‘It is quite the most wonderful set I’ve ever been on, so please thank him.’

  Terry returned to the Art Department, where his nervous boss asked, ‘Well? What did she want?’

  ‘She loves the set!’ exclaimed Terry. Before he could say another word, Peter had grabbed his jacket and as he was halfway out the door he turned back to say, ‘I’d best get over there in that case!’

  But Bette had always been feisty – it wasn’t something that came with great age or experience. In her very first film, back in 1931, Bette starred with Humphrey Bogart in Bad Sister. They were on set one day when someone screamed out, ‘Move that broad to the other side of the room!’

  Well, our Bette wasn’t having any of that! ‘Don’t you ever call me a broad again!’ she declared, deeply insulted. Alas it turned out that a ‘broad’ is one of the biggest lights on set and they hadn’t been referring to her at all. But you can bet all the crew knew not to mess with Miss Davis!

  I remember they’d just opened a new restaurant at ABPC Studios in around 1964-5 and Bette Davis, who was filming The Nanny at the studio, came in one lunchtime and, to my great surprise, made a beeline for my table.

  ‘I’m Bette Davis,’ she said, as though she needed any introduction, and went on to tell me how she and her daughter loved watching The Saint on TV. My head swelled greatly, so much so that I’ve not got enough hair to cover it now, and a friendship was formed.

  I invited Bette to join Robert Wagner and I to the dog races at White City Stadium in west London – and she loved it. The idea of being able to dine, place bets and watch races every fifteen minutes, from our table, was like manna from heaven to Bette. She did rather well financially too. The dining room was in ‘sections’, with tables cordoned off from each other, and everybody was so preoccupied with looking at their racing forms, eating and placing bets that they never paid much attention to us, which I think Bette enjoyed hugely. She could be anonymous for once.

  Though as sweet and scintillating a dinner guest as she was, I also saw the other side of her character when she spoke to her assistant, snapping orders and instructions as
though he were some lesser breed of mortal. I certainly wouldn’t have wished to get on the wrong side of her.

  For as long as I can remember, rumours of an intense rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford abounded in Hollywood. I, like many others, put it down to their brilliant acting in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but no, there seems to have been a more sinister loathing that extended beyond the screen, although both denied it.

  During the filming of Baby Jane, Bette, the antagonist in the movie, was said to have actually made contact – in no uncertain terms – with Crawford during fight scenes, after which medical attention and stitches were required.

  It turned out that the reason for their lifelong hatred was the fact that Crawford’s second husband, Franchot Tone, was revealed to be the one true love of Bette Davis’s life. Davis had worked with Tone in 1935 on the film Dangerous. Complicating matters a bit further was Crawford’s bisexuality, and her declaration that although her husband wasn’t interested in Bette, she ‘wouldn’t mind giving her a poke’.

  They constantly tried to upstage and upset one another, from making back-handed compliments at The Oscars, ‘Dear Bette, what a lovely frock’, said Crawford when Bette was announced the winner of the best actress award, to when gossip columnist Louella Parsons first rumoured that they might star in a film together, ‘When hell freezes over’, said Bette.

  Years later, when Tone was struck down by cancer, Crawford – though by then divorced from him – took him in to her New York apartment and nursed him until his death.

  ‘Even when the poor bastard was dying, that bitch wouldn’t let him go,’ Bette said to the press. ‘She had to monopolize him even in death.’

  After Crawford died, Bette continued to rant about her. When asked why, she replied, ‘Just because a person is dead, doesn’t mean they’ve changed.’

  Bette gave one of her last TV interviews to Gloria Hunniford, while she was in London to promote a new book. Gloria – quite naturally – spent the first part of the interview paying homage to the actress, her films, roles and co-stars.

  Bette listened for a while before berating Gloria with, ‘When are you going to ask about my book, that’s the reason I’m here, isn’t it?’

  We’ve all thought it, but she said it. What a lady!

  Another wonderful actress and feisty lady was Lana Turner. I wrote about Lana in my autobiography, about the time in the early 1950s when she taught me how to kiss on the set of the movie Diane. I actually thought my technique was pretty good – I had already been married twice and hadn’t had many complaints in that department – but Lana taught me the new technique of ‘passion without pressure’ – what a lady she was! Of course, when she came to make Diane, Lana was already a huge Hollywood star with lots of classic films to her name – not to mention several husbands and lovers. However, I will also forever remember her for the day she told our producer on the film, Edwin Knopf, to ‘fuck off’, after a seemingly trivial difference of opinion on set. In fact, Eddie was so upset that he stormed directly off the stage and into my trailer, where he was sitting, pink-eyed, when I returned a short while later.

  ‘I’ve known Lana since she first walked onto this lot as a young girl,’ he said to me. ‘And now she speaks to me like that, in front of the whole cast and crew!’

  I returned to the set and asked Lana why she’d been so rotten to Eddie who was, as everyone who knew him will attest, a lovely guy. He’d also overcome disability, leaving him with only one arm, which endeared him to everyone even more.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she replied, matter-of-factly. ‘When I first came on this lot all the producers fucked me. So now I’m fucking them.’

  In 1962, Lana was making a film at MGM British Studios in Borehamwood. It was at the time of the really dense fogs – known as pea-soupers – that used to descend over London. Lana was married to Lex Barker at the time and he was visiting her on set one day when one of these fogs came down. The production called time early to enable everyone to get home safely.

  Lana and Lex left the studio in a chauffeur-driven car to head back to the Savoy Hotel in London, but a few miles down the road – at Apex Corner – the driver could barely see the front of the car, let alone anything else on the road ahead of him, and Lex, being the concerned husband he was, got out and said he would walk in front of the car until either the fog lifted or they reached the hotel.

  It must be about thirteen miles from there to the Savoy, but Lex dutifully paced it out and lead his wife to safety – or at least he thought so, until he went to open the door of the car and discovered it was another car all together that had somehow started following him and Lana was nowhere to be seen!

  And speaking of feisty ladies, they don’t come much feistier – or more fun – than Joan Collins. Some time ago in Hollywood, Joan was having a romance with Arthur Loew Jr of the cinematic dynasty (not of the Dad’s Army dynasty, as some newspapers mistakenly reported in saying she was the girlfriend of the former Captain Mainwaring).

  Anyhow, one night Joan was late for a ball in Hollywood, which she was attending with Arthur. Arthur had been brooding about her punctuality for some time, and this time he snapped, ‘You are fucking boring!’

  Two Mavericks and a Dynasty. With James Garner and Joan Collins – a veritable rose between two thorns – at an LA premiere in 1983.

  ‘And you are a boring fuck!’ snapped Joan, without a blink.

  Joan has a lovely turn of phrase, as does her sister Jackie, and I love reading their books and articles. Their father, Joe Collins, was a big theatrical agent in the 1950s and was, in fact, my wife Dorothy Squires’ agent, and I got to know him well. He was a very dashing, handsome man-about-town and Elsa, his wife, was a very graceful, classically beautiful woman who believed implicitly in Joan’s innocence. When Joan announced to Elsa that she wanted to marry Maxwell Reed, the man to whom she’d lost her virginity, Elsa said, ‘Darling, he’s an actor – and a spivvy sort of actor at that.’

  Maxwell Reed was six foot four and wore jackets with enormous shoulders in them, a trilby pulled down over his eyes and looked every bit the gangster. He boasted of connections in the London underworld too. But in total contrast to his large frame was his high pitched and squeaky voice.

  He had been offered a film contract with Alexander Korda in the mid-40s but was sent for voice coaching first as they wanted him to sound more like he looked – big, gruff and mean. When he returned with his squeaky shrill intact, Korda dropped him. It was then someone suggested he see a lady named Elsie who taught voice production, and she told Max that if he spoke with his chin pointing downwards, then he’d produce deep, round sounds.

  I was in the Army at the time I next bumped into Max in London. He was wearing an over-sized camel-hair coat, with a script under his arm and with his chin facing downwards he said, ‘Hello, old man, how are you?’

  He told me – in deep, rounded tones – that he was now under contract to Sydney Box and was on his way to a script conference, and just then he lifted his hand up – along with his head – to call for a taxi ... and all of a sudden his deep, rounded tones became a very high-pitched shriek again.

  I digress. Joan told her mother that she planned to marry Max and Elsa said, ‘But Daddy won’t allow that.’

  ‘Then I will live with him,’ Joan replied, with a flourish.

  Elsa told me that she never doubted it, and so, reluctantly, that’s why they agreed to the marriage.

  Joan told me years later that one day, Max called out from the bathroom of the flat they’d rented, ‘Joan! Have you been using my fucking mascara?’

  ‘No, I haven’t!’ came the reply.

  ‘Yes, you have!’

  ‘How do you know?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you always spit in yours, whereas I put it under the tap!’

  Sadly, the marriage was doomed from the start and ended in bitter divorce a few years later; ironically just as Joan’s career was taking off and her earning power was on the up. M
ax demanded a hefty settlement, claiming he had ‘discovered’ Joan. Having now been married five times, Joan says that she’s kissed enough frogs to have finally found her true prince in Percy Gibson, whom she married in 2002. They’re incredibly happy together and complement one another perfectly.

  Joan was aged just twenty-one when she was offered a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox in California. Darryl F. Zanuck, the rather tiny though incredibly randy boss of the studio, had seen her in Land of the Pharaohs, an epic set in the land of the pyramids, in which British stalwart Jack Hawkins played Pharaoh Khufu – inspired casting!

  Zanuck had a reputation for propositioning virtually every actress who crossed his path and he was struck by the image of a semi-clad Joan sporting a diamond in her naval. Sure enough, when he bumped into Joan in the corridor one day he pressed her up against the wall.

  ‘You haven’t had anyone till you’ve had me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the biggest and best and I can go all night.’

  Joan sensibly declined his kind invitation, though she did catch sight of what she had missed when she visited his office, as Zanuck had a life-sized mould of his manhood – in solid gold – in pride of place on his desk. I’ve never asked Joan whether the sight of it impressed her or otherwise, but do know that another famous Joan – Joan Crawford – was in his office on one occasion and Zanuck – gesturing to his mould – said, ‘Impressive, huh?’

  Without missing a beat, Joan Crawford replied, ‘I’ve seen bigger things crawl out of cabbages.’

  Zsa Zsa Gabor is perhaps better known for the number of her marriages rather than anything else, and I was once coupled with her by MGM – albeit platonically. It was the studio’s habit of partnering their contract artists with each other to attend events, premieres and dinners, purely for publicity purposes. I accompanied Zsa Zsa to one such premiere, and on to dinner afterwards. She was exquisitely beautiful, if a little large in the lower rear region I felt – well, not literally felt, you understand.