by Ingrid Pitt
I agreed before I could think about it. While I dressed I mulled over the word ‘circuit’. I soon found out what he meant. Clint had discovered that you could take your own bike around the circuit at Brands Hatch. He was excited. I was trying to think of a way out. The trouble is that I’m too much of a coward to take the coward’s way out. Clint did a few exploratory laps, then came back to the pits. Resignedly I swung my leg over the saddle and was struggling to put on my helmet when my prayers were answered. Elliott Kastner stormed up to us in a fury. He ranted on about insurance while Clint unsuccessfully smothered an enormous grin. Kastner then turned on me and accused me of leading Clint astray, while behind him, Clint gave me a cheeky smile and continued to act like a naughty schoolboy.
Towards the end of shooting Elizabeth turned up at MGM Studios in Borehamwood where we were filming interiors. There had been a lot in the papers about this fabulous diamond Richard had bought her. For some reason she seemed to want to show it off. She had the whole shooting match laid on for her unscheduled visit: photographers, security guards, outriders. I guess she was making a point – but I’m not sure what it was. We were all gathered around admiring this huge rock. Elizabeth slid it off her finger and proffered it to me. ‘Want to try it on, darling?’ she said silkily. Ah! That was her point.
I wasn’t about to make enemies so I slipped it on my finger and said lamely, ‘Do I have to give it back?’
She smiled even more brightly and said, ‘Of course you do, darling.’
It was the first time I had really understood what subtext meant. She was still under the impression that I was after Richard and the stunt with the diamond had been devised to put me in my place. I pushed the dialogue further: ‘Aren’t you frightened someone might steal it?’
‘That’s why you have bodyguards, darling.’
Match point, I think.
Elizabeth’s big moment was undermined when Clint rushed in and shouted that his wife Maggie had had a baby. That was the end of work for the day. Everyone decamped to the Thatched Barn a mile up the road and champagne flowed freely. At one point a runner from the studio appeared with the request that we return to the set forthwith, to which Richard resonantly replied, ‘Bugger off!’ He was in his element, having a hell of a time. I was all for going back but he swung me on to his lap and said, ‘You’re not going anywhere. I’ve not finished with you yet!’ I could feel Elizabeth’s piercing violet eyes trying to burn holes in my brain but I had been at the champagne for long enough not to care.
Peter O’Toole turned up – he had an instinct for this sort of bash – and he and Richard, drunk as skunks, bawled Shakespeare at each other, much to the amusement of everyone else, until they were both so pissed they could hardly remember their names, let alone the Bard’s couplets. Clint seemed a bit bemused by it all. I don’t think he was a big drinker and can never remember him being the worse for wear. Clint always treated me like a gentleman, never making any improper advances.
In spite of the truce that I had managed to negotiate with Elizabeth, Richard still tried his hardest to give the inaccurate impression that something was going on between us.
Perhaps Elizabeth would have been mollified if she had been in the back of Richard’s Roller after the last day of proper shooting. We were all a bit depressed, as is often the case when filming’s over. For a few brief weeks or months everyone bonds closely, then the last page of the script is scored through, the sets are struck and everybody goes off to make new bosom pals and promises of lifelong friendship. I was sitting between Richard and Clint, and wondering if I would ever be in such august company again. The mood was sombre but also almost sacred. Then Clint leaned forward. ‘Shall we tell her?’ he asked Richard. Rich was slumped in the corner, almost asleep.
‘Tell me what?’ I asked.
‘Might as well,’ Richard mumbled.
‘What?’ I demanded.
Clint grinned. He had a mischievous sense of humour. ‘Richie and I had a bet,’ he said mysteriously.
I was getting exasperated. ‘What sort of bet?
‘Who’d get you in the sack first,’ Richard said, joining in the fun.
I knew they were only teasing me. I wanted to giggle but kept a straight face. ‘Who won?’ I asked innocently.
That floored them. They looked at each other, then burst out laughing. I wonder if they sorted it out later?
Where Eagles Dare was Elliott Kastner and Alistair MacLean’s most successful movie. I think Brian Hutton’s direction contributed to its success, as did Ron Goodwin’s fantastic theme tune. It has become a classic, one of the best war films ever made. I am proud to have been part of it.
Twenty-Three
I sat at the window of my twentieth-floor suite in the Hilton and looked out at the scene below. Across the road in Hyde Park the Household Cavalry were out exercising their horses. In Park Lane red buses and London cabs cruised up and down endlessly. I thought of my father and his love of England and decided I didn’t want to live anywhere else. Steffka, however, was still in Madrid. She had come to London for a couple of weeks at Easter and we had rushed around sightseeing, but now it was June. I had to see her.
I rang her and asked how she felt about living in England. She was excited by the prospect, although neither of us thought about the fact that she was now a Spanish speaker and there would be a lot of catching up to do when she attended an English school. Maria was also surprisingly willing to come to London, amazing me as usual with her positive attitude. I went to an estate agent, told them my requirements and caught the plane to Madrid to help pack up our belongings. At last a decision had been made. I would no longer have to stay awake all night wondering what my next move should be. Any doubts that I had made the right decision were quashed by an incident in Spain.
We decided that we were going to have a combined home-coming and farewell party, and invited several friends and a couple of American film technicians, who for some reason were still working in Madrid. Just before everyone arrived, Maria suggested that we probably wouldn’t have enough wine. She was going to fetch some but as she was in the middle of cooking dinner Steffanie volunteered. She was five now and used to running errands. The wine shop was just across the plaza. I was a bit doubtful but I hadn’t been around much lately and didn’t want to knock back the confidence she had built up living with Maria. Steffi scooted off and I watched her from the balcony. I grinned down at her and waved as she stopped and turned suddenly, but she didn’t look up. She was staring at something at the bottom of the building, which I couldn’t see. Suddenly there was a bang. I knew instantly that it was a gun shot. Breathless, my heart thumping in my chest, my head spinning, feeling helpless at my sixth-floor vantage point, I watched and prayed for what seemed like an eternity. Slowly Steffanie looked up at me. She was unhurt.
I screamed, ‘Run! Run into the house! Run!’
She ran and I rushed to the lifts to gather her close to me. Through our sobs, I asked, ‘What happened?’
‘A man fell down after the bang . . .’ she said, confused, not knowing what actually had taken place. I pulled her into my arms and rushed to the flat. Without letting go of her I hauled the suitcases from the wardrobe and started packing.
‘What are you doing, Mama?’ she asked.
‘We’re leaving Spain. Now!’
We later learned that the shot had killed a man walking through the colonnades alongside the building. It was one of the first political killings by ETA, the Basque Separatists, in Spain. It horrified me utterly that my child had been so close to a murder. I didn’t care that the estate agent in London hadn’t had time to find us a place to live. I wanted to leave Spain immediately. Poor Maria was left to sort out everything but I felt I had no choice. I couldn’t bear to think of Steffka in danger.
We arrived at the London Hilton that night and stayed for a week before renting an attractive flat in Barkston Gardens in Kensington. It was just for a year but I assured myself we’d have a house organised
for ourselves by then. Maria joined us a couple of weeks later and we felt whole again.
I went to Las Vegas for the press showing of Where Eagles Dare. I was on such a high that when Kohner, my American agent, called me in my luxurious suite and said I had a TV series on offer I just turned it down. Me, with an international blockbuster film, and they were offering me TV! No one at that time who had just done a massive action film for MGM would consider TV. It was movies I wanted.
From Vegas I went to the Persian Film Festival in Tehran, where I met the Shah and Farah Diba. A lot of us had flown out from England, including Christopher Lee. At dinner my friend Baharam Soltani told me that Christopher Lee’s godfather, Eric Swift, had been one of the prince’s tutors years before and asked if Christopher and I would like to come to Isfahan to visit his palace. He wanted to show Chris the many pictures of the prince with Christopher’s godfather. I’ll never forget walking the long corridors of the palace with Chris and Baharam, looking at the many photographs. Christopher Lee is one of the most erudite and entertaining people I’ve ever met. He has a beautiful voice, full of expression, and has the most incredible tales to tell, many about his exotic family.
Back in Tehran, a couple of ‘heavies’ came to my hotel. One of them dangled a velvet bag under my optimistic nose, then emptied its contents into the palm of his hand. ‘Diamonds!’ he exclaimed. ‘From his eternal Highness, the Shah Reza Pahlavi. He asks the pleasure of your company for dinner tomorrow night at Golestan Palace. Please, will you do him the honour and accept his gift? There will be just the two of you. His Royal Highness awaits most anxiously your reply.’
I was still young and juicy, and easily insulted by someone offering to pay for their entertainment, so I came over all pompous and told them to get lost. The mistakes of youth!
Christopher was obviously the main man with the brains so I stuck close to him and we enjoyed a lot of invitations. Gregory Peck and Sergei Bondartchuk, the Russian director of War and Peace, were also in the party. Gregory kept mistaking me for Lee Grant who wasn’t even there. I wasn’t amused and so he continued doing it to wind me up. Bondartchuk gave me the opportunity to parade my Russian. I tried to get him to talk about the making of his film, War and Peace, my favourite picture of all time, flattering him outrageously. Though incredibly polite, he was obviously unimpressed.
The Iranian Festival Committee took us to the Shah’s sister Shams’s palace. An illuminated glass dome in the middle of the desert, from the bus it looked like a SciFi set. We had travelled for hours and finally pulled up at an ugly, barbed-wire gate where we were put through the third degree. The barbed wire and the guns of uniformed soldiers boarding the bus were unnerving me and I asked to be taken back to my hotel in Tehran. Our guide smiled a lot, and tried to reassure me that the questioning was routine and that everything would be all right.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard that crap before.’
We had to relinquish our passports before advancing through more barbed-wire fences across wasteland towards the lighted dome in the far distance, where we were greeted by yet more armed guards. I guess the revolution that dethroned Shah Reza Pahlavi a few years later wasn’t as unexpected as it seemed at the time.
Things picked up when we entered the dome. There were beautiful trees under a perspex roof and birds flying around. A massive staircase covered in thick red carpet and fat golden rope balustrades led to the upper floor. The sumptuously dressed servants gave out gold goblets and kept the champagne flowing. Tired of ‘ooing’ and ‘aahing’, I grabbed a plate of finger food and joined Gregory Peck and Sergei Bondartchuk on one of the steps of the wide staircase. We’d hardly spooned the caviar before a servant came along and told us not to sit there. We tried to ignore him but he got quite huffy and accused us of being so uncoordinated that we’d spill something on the carpet. We thought it pretty funny. Here we were, buried in the sort of opulence you could only get with the Arabian Nights, in the land of the Persian carpet, and we were being warned off dribbling on the mat.
Back in London Bondartchuk came to my house for dinner. The old smoothie told me that I cooked the meanest plate of borscht he’d eaten in his life. He invited me to study at the Soviet Film Institute in Moscow where he was one of the top instructors. Although it would have been a fantastic experience for me, I couldn’t possibly go to Moscow. My big mouth had got me into trouble already in a Communist country. Now I was a mother and wouldn’t take the risk. I smiled and said I had absolutely no time to study in Moscow. I was working, working all the time.
Twenty-Four
Where Eagles Dare was well and truly behind me now. I had moved into a little mews house in Carmel Court in Kensington with Steffanie and Maria. I was getting bags of publicity, and invitations to premiéres and other less salubrious events, but no work. I regretted giving my agent in LA the raspberry when he had suggested TV work but hadn’t the guts to ring him and do some world-class grovelling. My London agent seemed to have forgotten me as well. I had taken him for all the wrong reasons. For one, he was Mary Ure’s agent, although he emphasised that since he had Robert Shaw on his books he had been obliged to take her on. That he could be so ungallant should have been enough reason for me not to join his agency. Especially since I could have had Jimmy Frazer who was a total treasure. It’s a big mistake to use the head instead of the ticker. It didn’t work and I was stranded with someone else’s man who didn’t give a hoot about me. I’ve never forgiven myself for such a terrible error of judgement.
But that just paled into the embroidery compared with the lulu I was about to make. Theo Cowan, my press agent, introduced me to a man who appeared to be the answer to a wanna-be superstar’s prayer. He seemed to be kind, persuasive and reasonably influential in the business. And all he professed to want was friendship. It seemed too good to be true. I should have trusted my instincts. George Pinches was the booker for the Rank Organisation cinema chain, which at this time commanded more than half of the screens in Britain. If George, on behalf of Rank, gave you the cold shoulder it was very cold indeed.
George and I seemed to rub along fine. He swore he just wanted to be my friend and didn’t put any pressure on me to step up the relationship into anything more meaningful. He was also hugely sympathetic about my work-permit problems. The temporary work permit I had for Eagles had long expired. I wasted a lot of time sitting around at Immigration in Holborn trying to convince bored civil servants of my love for England and the Brits, and my desperate need to stay. I just couldn’t impress anyone. George suggested I went to see the greatest lawyer of them all, Lord Goodman, to tell him about my father’s successful years in England and his subsequent refusal to put his scientific knowledge to work for the Nazis. His Lordship tried to work something out on my behalf but for another year I struggled on with the Home Office, spending a day each month trying to secure my status. When it seemed that there was nothing left that I could do to stave off deportation George came up with the perfect answer: we could get married. I would get a passport and we could live separately but happily ever after. I wasn’t sure. I liked George, but not enough to marry him. What if I met someone who swept me off my feet and became the love of my life? It wouldn’t be a problem, George promised, we’d just get divorced.
Eventually, when the deportation order became more threatening, against my better judgement, I agreed to the marriage. Our future was mapped out at a Sunday lunch in the country. I would give my attention to my work without all the nasty little side issues that day-to-day life served up. George, with his influence in the industry, would look after my career. He would live in Dolphin Square near the Houses of Parliament and I would live in Richmond, Surrey. I would continue to attend premières and business dinners and play his acolyte, but we would keep the marriage secret.
I’m sure George entered into the agreement with nothing but good intentions but, like a prospective lover promising passionately only to want a feel, George’s attitude changed as soon as we walked out of th
e Register Office. Unfortunately mine didn’t. It was to prove a salient point on a domestic battleground for a long time.
Although I carried out my part of the deal to the letter, and was there, lipsticked and hairdressed to the nines, whenever George needed a partner for a party, George always wanted more and the pantomime became very boring. Every sentence he said was full of innuendo and spite. And I wasn’t exactly being inundated with film roles, either. Instead of helping my career, my liaison with the Rank film booker seemed to be scaring potential employers away. I couldn’t understand it, especially as George was always telling me about all the strings he was pulling in the background to assure my superstar status.
In spite of our messy on/off relationship, I did feel sorry for George for it was clear that he pandered to my every whim and promised me everything, while I gave him nothing but reluctant limited companionship. He also appeared to have no real friends. We were never invited to anyone’s home and he even admitted that if he were to lose his job, no one would ever talk to him again which, as it turned out, was a frighteningly prescient statement.
One year Disney invited us to the Oscars. When we arrived at the hotel it was the old game again: only one double room was booked and the hotel was full . . . I told him that if there wasn’t a room for me I was getting the next flight back to London. A vacant room was mysteriously made available.
The Oscars should have been a joy. I love that sort of thing. Instead, it was a nightmare with George in a particularly ugly mood making disparaging remarks all the time and trying to make me feel small. I was sullen and didn’t speak even when spoken to. I’ve always regretted not being more conciliatory. I could have been more gracious but clearly whatever there had been between us as friends had long been ruptured and discarded.