Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown

by Moore, Roger

  ‘When actors get old like you, Greg, they get mouths like flounders and can pull their lower lip over their forehead,’ he said. As he spoke, Don moved his chair, and the grating of iron against the tiled floor startled the dog, which leapt off Veronique’s lap and right under Rickles’ chair, getting snagged between the floor and chair leg as it did so. It let out such a cry. Greg placed his cutlery down, signalled to his wife and they both stood up, picked up the dog, and went home. He simply couldn’t take any more.

  Other times, Greg and I played tennis or poker, or sat around telling jokes over a Jack Daniels or two. Whenever Kristina gave me a birthday party at Le Dome in West Hollywood, on what is called The Strip, Greg and Veronique were always the first to arrive and we picked up our conversation as though the intervening months had never occurred. I remember on one occasion at the end of the 1990s, Greg said he’d wound back on film work and was greatly enjoying taking his ‘pony and trap’ around theatres, whereby he’d sit on a stage and tell stories from his life and career. I always remembered the phrase ‘pony and trap’ and when I was invited to take part in a small tour in 2012 to help promote my last book Bond on Bond (copies still available in all good book shops) I thought of Greg, and readily accepted. I took my pony and trap out again in 2013 – who’d have thought this boy from Stockwell would not only become an author, but a raconteur with his own stage show? I’ll keep going until they find me out!

  Our mutual friend, David Niven, was a happy constant in much of my life, and I shared many dinners with him over the years and played audience to his wonderful stories. Of course, we all knew most of them were exaggerated, borrowed or downright lies – but he told them so well. I remember one such story about how Errol Flynn and he (along with Niv’s new girlfriend) went out boating one day from LA.

  Miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean they started water-skiing (according to Niv he had introduced the sport to America!) and Flynn decided to cut Niv free and sailed off so that he could get to know the girl for himself. Niv then told us how, with only two skis for buoyancy, he swam miles back towards the shore – pursued by sharks if you please – until he was rescued by Ronald Colman.

  Well, another one of those ‘is it quite true?’ stories came when Niv shared a house in Malibu with notorious bad boy Errol Flynn, which they called ‘Cirrhosis by the Sea’. One of their regular visitors was the actor John Barrymore, who used to sit in his favourite chair and smoke his pipe, looking out on to the ocean. By all accounts, after John Barrymore died he was taken to the Utter McKinley Funeral Directors store on Sunset Strip, which had a clock with a long swinging arm in the window ominously counting down time.

  One evening, Niv and some friends broke in and retrieved the body, took it home, sat it in Barrymore’s favourite chair ... and awaited Errol’s return home!

  Flynn’s book, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, was going to be made as a film by Roy Huggins, who was a producer at Warner Bros during my contract years there, and Roy wanted me to play Flynn. Alas, Errol had what you might best say was a ‘difficult’ relationship with Jack Warner, the famed studio head, stemming from the time when one of Jack’s brothers suffered a heart attack after a big argument with Flynn. One day shortly afterwards, Jack walked into the dining room of the studio and noticed a new English writer who had joined the staff who had an uncanny resemblance to Flynn.

  ‘Get that son of a bitch out of here!’ Jack exploded. ‘He looks like Flynn!’

  ‘But it’s not Flynn,’ someone said.

  ‘I don’t care! He looks like Flynn. Get him out!’

  I probably didn’t help matters myself when I was called in for a meeting with old Jack Warner to discuss the role.

  ‘I understand Roy wants you to play Errol Flynn?’ said the great man.

  ‘Yes, it’s a part I’d love,’ I replied.

  ‘I also understand he calls me a thief in his book?’

  ‘Well, aren’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘Son of a bitch – I won’t make the movie!’

  Meeting over.

  I only met Errol Flynn once – when I was understudying David Tomlinson and Geoffrey Toone in The Little Hut. David was going out with a girl who he knew had been in a relationship with Flynn some years earlier, so on hearing Flynn was coming to town, David thought he’d have a little fun with his love and faked a telegram:

  ‘Darling. Am coming to London. Let’s pick up where we left off. Love Errol.’

  It didn’t take long for the young lady to twig it was Tomlinson who had sent it, and she told Flynn about the gag when he landed in town.

  ‘I’ll fix the son of a bitch,’ said Flynn.

  Flynn was a huge, tall, very imposing man and he arrived at the Lyric Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue, just in time to stand in the wings with his sleeves rolled up for when David glanced in his direction ... and Flynn was glaring at him wildly. Terrified, David couldn’t get his lines out for the next five minutes!

  Charmer though he undoubtedly was, Flynn also loved to fight – and I mean fists flying, down and dirty, slugging it out. In fact, he loved fighting to such an extent that he was often to be found sparring with a professional fighter, just to keep himself in shape.

  Another legendary slugger was the director John Huston, and the story goes that one night, fed up and bored at yet another Hollywood party, Huston and Flynn decided to retire to the garden and knock seven bells out of each other. They were on good terms, there was no issue between them, they just wanted a fight. So for a goodly part of the rest of the evening, the other guests were treated to the sounds of the pair of them, toe to toe, knocking each other around the garden – at the end of which they both wound up in hospital for repairs!

  Another great actor with a fondness for the bottle was Robert Newton, who was a wonderful Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist as well as an unforgettable Long John Silver in Treasure Island. Legend has it he once walked the length of the corridors at Denham Studios with his honourable member for Wapping hanging out while under the influence.

  Newton had an unfortunate way about him when sloshed, and while making a film with Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle he upset them in a way only Newton could. Later that day he got a call from his agent saying that unless he turned up the next morning sober, on time and apologized, he’d be fired.

  At 8.30 a.m., Wilcox and Neagle appeared on set and Newton was nowhere to be seen, but suddenly they heard him coming down from the gantry, rather unsteadily, on a ladder.

  ‘I am told that I have to apologize to you both for my unseemly behaviour yesterday, well I’d love to but am afraid I cannot.’

  With that he walked off the set and out of the picture.

  I remember one time when I was in LA with my then wife, Dot Squires, Trevor Howard phoned from the Beverly Hills Hotel and said he was with Newton.

  ‘Bobby, come here,’ said Trevor. ‘I want you to speak to Dorothy Squires, a great artist!’

  Bobby came on the phone and slurred, ‘Madam, I admire all your paintings.’

  There’s one more story about Bobby Newton that always makes me smile. He was appearing in a play in London’s West End and towards the end of the run one Saturday night the curtains didn’t rise. The audience was getting more than a little restless when suddenly there was a commotion behind the curtain and a pair of shoes appeared at the base. The audience went quiet, the curtain parted and Bob’s face appeared through it.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen!’ cried the star. ‘The reason this curtain hasn’t risen is because the stage manager has the fucking impertinence to suggest that I am pissed!’

  One actor I’ve always admired – in fact I’ve always been a little envious of – is Peter O’Toole, as I would have dearly loved to have played Lawrence of Arabia. I wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good as him mind, and I did get to know him later.

  Michael Caine once told me a story of when he was cast to understudy O’Toole in the play The Long and the Short and the Tall at the Royal Court Theatre, in London. One Saturday n
ight after the show O’Toole invited him to a restaurant. Eating a plate of egg and chips was the last thing Michael says he remembered, before he woke up in broad daylight in a strange flat.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked O’Toole, holding his aching head in his hands.

  ‘Never mind what time it is! What fucking day is it?’ came the reply from a similarly slumped O’Toole.

  It turned out to be five o’clock on Monday afternoon – and the curtain was set to go up at eight. They rushed to the theatre, where the stage manager told them the restaurant owner had been in and had banned them from his establishment – for life. Michael was about to ask what they’d done when O’Toole whispered, ‘Never ask what you did. It’s better not to know ...’

  O’Toole was legendary for his boozing and that probably wasn’t helped when in his first film, Kidnapped, he starred alongside Australian actor Peter Finch – an even mightier drinker, if that were possible.

  Shooting in Ireland, they were refused a drink because it was after closing time, so the stars decided to buy the pub and wrote out a cheque there and then. After an all-night drinking session, and having sobered up a little, they later rushed back to the pub and were mightily relieved the landlord hadn’t cashed the cheque.

  By all accounts O’Toole and Finchie remained friends with the publican and when he died his wife invited them to his funeral. Both men sobbed loudly at the graveside, and an overcome Finchie eventually had to turn away ... only for his face to change from one of sadness to one of confusion as he realized they were at the wrong funeral – their friend was being buried 100 yards away!

  I always admired Peter O’Toole; legendary boozer he may have been but he was also a legend in front of the camera and a good dancer by the looks of things.

  Richard Harris had a fairly well-earned reputation as a hell-raiser – he certainly lived life to the maximum, that’s for sure. I first became aware of his ‘personality’ when I was making The Saint at Elstree. Harris was over at Pinewood shooting a film called The Heroes of Telemark with Kirk Douglas.

  The director, Anthony Mann, had originally been signed to direct Spartacus some years earlier but he and Kirk Douglas didn’t get on, and so Mann was replaced by Stanley Kubrick. Mann had also previously worked with Richard Harris and they didn’t get along too well either, so bringing them all together wasn’t perhaps the best of ideas.

  Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris were very jealous of each other and were constantly arguing about who the ‘star’ was. I remember my friend, publicist John Willis, telling me that their demands became increasingly ridiculous – to the point of seriously affecting the production. For instance, Harris rolled up at the studio one day with a tape measure, measured Douglas’s trailer and then announced he was going home – apparently it was a few inches bigger than his – leaving the cast and crew with nothing to do until a longer trailer was found and brought to the studio. On another occasion, Kirk Douglas fired his chauffeur after an argument and Richard Harris immediately turned round and hired him.

  Doris Spriggs – who went on to become my personal assistant for twenty-nine years – worked on Heroes in the production department and told me that they were nearly run out of town when they were filming on location in Norway at a lovely old Norwegian church. The church had survived the worst ravages of World War II, only to be burned to the ground by the English film crew when an arc light overheated after being left on overnight. Compounding matters further, all the extras marched through the town dressed in full Nazi uniform thinking nothing of the effect it might have on the elderly inhabitants, who were convinced the Reich had risen once more.

  Things got worse between the two stars when they moved on location to Rome, and one evening attended a film premiere there. Earlier in the day, the British papers ran a story about all the childish behaviour and petty rivalry between them, and Harris was understandably furious. When he saw John Willis in the foyer of the cinema, he pushed everyone else out of the way and demanded to know who leaked the story. John said nothing so Harris threatened to hit him, and would have done had they not been pulled apart.

  But then, ironically, on the last day of shooting back at Pinewood, both Douglas and Harris were in the corridor walking towards each other – a bit like the scene from High Noon – and John Willis found himself right in between them. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ John said to me. ‘As they met, they shook each other’s hands like they were old friends and walked off to their dressing rooms!’

  In the late 1960s, Richard Harris divorced his wife Elizabeth, and afterwards Elizabeth sent him a bird in a silver cage, with the message, ‘Here’s one bird that will never get away.’ In turn, he sent her an antique cowbell saying: ‘Wherever you go, I’ll now be able to hear you.’

  I always try to help out an old friend where I can, and such was the occasion when Rex Harrison called me one day to ask a favour. Rex was starring in a play in Oxford in 1969 and couldn’t therefore attend the London premiere of Staircase – a film he had made with Richard Burton – so he asked if I would escort his then wife, Rachel Roberts. I agreed and duly arrived at the Connaught Hotel, where she was staying, and called up to her room to say I was ready with the car.

  ‘Come up to the room, darling,’ said Rachel.

  Conscious of time, I went upstairs and found the door open, and there inside stood Rachel in her petticoat – one breast hanging below her brassiere and the other above – with another lady in the room, sipping champagne.

  ‘Come in and have a drink, darling!’

  ‘No, no, Rachel, I’ll wait in the bar,’ I said, making a hasty escape from what I thought might turn into a sticky situation. After what seemed like an age, she came down, I leapt up and bounded across to the door.

  ‘Time for another drink?’ she asked.

  ‘We really ought to go, Rachel.’

  ‘Nonsense! There’s always time for another drink, darling,’ she said, dragging me back to the bar.

  Eventually we got away from the hotel and drove to the premiere. When we pulled into Haymarket, where the premiere was being held, a whole hoard of photographers converged around the car as I opened the door for Rachel to step out.

  Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts – there were always fireworks when these two were involved.

  ‘Here, get a picture of my boyfriend!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll make you famous, Roger!’

  I rather hurriedly pushed my inebriated friend into the theatre, just as she screamed, in her strong Welsh lilt, ‘Are they ’ere?’ She wasn’t referring to the Royal party, which, in this case, was Princess Margaret, but rather to the Burtons – Richard and Elizabeth were due to attend.

  ‘No,’ I said, as I hushed her from screaming further and pushed her through to our seats in the dress circle. After a few minutes, Richard and Elizabeth arrived and the Grenadier Guards started playing music. At almost the same moment, Princess Margaret arrived at her seat and, before I could restrain her, Rachel shouted, ‘I’ve got to say hello to my Richard!’ and, with that, clambered over everybody, including Her Royal Highness, much to Burton’s great embarrassment.

  She returned to her seat, grumbling under her breath and humming along to ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs In The Spring’, kicked her shoes off, put her feet up on the balustrade in front, and continued chuntering about how ‘Richard cut me dead’. I explained he was in company with HRH and we really ought to settle down for the film.

  No sooner had the film started than I heard a gentle snoring coming from next to me and thanked goodness she’d fallen asleep. However, minutes later, there was a sudden and very loud cry, and Rachel sat bolt upright.

  ‘The bastards! They cut the close-up of my lovely Rex!’ she exclaimed.

  Never had ninety minutes seemed so much an eternity as that evening, and afterwards we all went to the Savoy for the party. As any dutiful star/host would, Richard (with Elizabeth) stood at the entrance to receive all the guests and, as I went through, Burton whispered, ‘Good luck, boy
o,’ in my ear.

  When the Toastmaster called for everyone to ‘Be upstanding’ as HRH entered, Rachel said, ‘I’m not bloody getting up!’ I dragged her to her feet, saying, ‘You will!’ through my clenched teeth, and really was beginning to regret ever accepting Rex’s invitation.

  Meanwhile, the dancing started and a waiter came to our table to say Rex was on the phone for Rachel. He’d just come off after his play, in which he was starring with Elizabeth Harris (ex of Richard Harris) and asked how Rachel was behaving. I was suitably diplomatic and gentlemanly – and then he asked to speak to Burton.

  At this time, Burton was dancing with HRH, and so I quietly stood behind them and coughed politely to attract his attention.

  ‘Oh, sorry boyo, you want to dance with ’er? Be my guest!’ he said as he pushed Princess Margaret towards me.

  ‘No, no ... I mean yes, I would, Ma’am, but no ... Richard,’ I said, ‘Rex is on the phone and wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Right-oh boy, look after things here, will you?’

  I smiled politely ...

  Rachel was a lovely lady and a wonderful actress, but a terrible handful. Rex was her second husband and she was Rex’s fourth wife. Rachel always had a great aversion to sailing, but every year Rex chartered a boat in the Mediterranean and took Rachel’s best friend with him for the trip – Elizabeth Harris ... Having discovered Rex’s affair with Elizabeth, Rachel divorced him in 1971. She was devastated after the divorce, moved to the States and tried to carry on, but it was reported that her alcoholism and depression increased, eventually leading to her suicide in 1980, aged just fifty-three. It was terribly sad.

  I continued to see Rex from time to time and he was always friendly towards me, apart from one day when I was staying with Leslie Bricusse in France. Rex had arrived (uninvited) two days earlier, after being besieged by the press at his house on Cap Ferrat following Rachel’s death. Leslie explained I’d been promised the guest room and the screenwriter Jack Davies, who lived next door, suggested Rex went to stay with him.