by Ingrid Pitt
Alexander Paal was a brilliant stills photographer and did sessions with me at his studio in London at weekends. The best photos I possess from my entire career were taken by him.
Apart from Sasdy’s and Paal’s arguments, filming went quite smoothly, although there were some mishaps. In one scene I had to have a tumble in a haystack with Sandor Eles. His character had a moustache but, rather than grow one, Sandor let the make-up man do his magic. Sandor looked up at me from the hay to murmur his hot and sexy lines when I suddenly noticed that half his moustache was missing. I called out ‘Cut!’ Sasdy was immediately on the case, telling me that if anyone called ‘cut’ it would be him. I pointed to Sandor’s pruned moustache and explained I didn’t want to waste my emotions on half a man. Make-up man Tom Smith hastily looked through his box of tricks and found that he was out of moustaches.
Everyone started shouting, running around, searching the haystack, but the missing item refused to show itself. I got bored and went into my winnie-bago. I shed my voluminous frock and tried to stretch out on the divan but my corset was killing me so I whipped that off as well. As I walked past a mirror I saw something black and ugly trying to claw its way out of my belly-button. Before I could faint or scream, I recognised the ugly beastie. It was Sandor’s lost face fungus. Everybody was delighted with my find and we were able to get on with the shoot. How the nasty little thing managed to get through my outer clothes and my corset I’d prefer not to think about.
The film was finally wrapped and we all went home happy. At least, I thought we had all gone home happy. Evidently not Peter Sasdy. Throughout the film he had said I was wonderful and my old Countess the best thing he’d seen since Hydra. Then, as soon as I was off the set, he took my voice away. I found out by accident, when an actress, who’d previously only done commercials, sent me flowers and thanked me for the opportunity of getting such a grand job. Her voice was prissy and very ‘English rose’, and didn’t fit a serial killer. Livid, I phoned Sasdy but he wouldn’t speak to me. I got in touch with Jimmy and he seemed furious too. He said that one of the reasons he wanted me for the role was my accent. I suggested he got on to Sasdy and ordered him to restore my voice, but the next day he rang to say that Sasdy had already thrown away the voice tracks.
Much later I asked Sasdy why he had done it.
‘It wasn’t the Queen’s English,’ he replied.
‘But she wasn’t supposed to be English!’ I said.
‘If you play a Royal, you speak like a Royal.’
‘So how about Sandor?’ I demanded. ‘He stands out like a sore thumb. He’s the only one left with an accent.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter how he sounds. It’s the Countess who matters.’
I was post-apocalyptic but could do nothing. Later he rang to ask me to talk to Jimmy Carreras about changing the title of the film. He thought Countess Dracula was too vulgar. Suddenly he seemed to see himself as Eisenstein and to be embarrassed to be a director of something he perceived as beneath him. I told Jimmy about Sasdy wanting to change the title and, as I’d guessed, he was enraged – a small but sweet victory.
I was beginning to like my work. It seemed that everything I sucked was sugar free and did me good. Work was being offered on a fairly constant basis so I was playing the star to the hilt and turning down anything I didn’t fancy. I was starting to feel slightly secure about my future.
Domestically, however, there were a few problems. George was still around and getting heavy if he heard I had tea with anyone who wasn’t female or under ninety-five, and was putting on the pressure about us living together. I spoke to Matka on a more or less daily basis and she always assured me that she was fine, but one day I received a call from a neighbour. She told me that my mother was far from well. She was finding it very hard to get around and had, on more than one occasion, fallen over and been unable to get up. I was shocked. Somehow, while I was feeling hard done by because I’d lost a couple of movies, my mama was doing what she always did: soldiering on without complaint. I rang the travel agent and booked a flight immediately. As I was packing I suddenly remembered I had promised George I would join him at a première in Leicester Square.
I rang him to tell him that I couldn’t go. He was not happy; moreover, he had a producer coming with us who was interested in casting me in his film. I tried to hang on to my principles but he said that an extra day wouldn’t make any difference, one way or the other.
I was glad I took time out to go to the première. It was another case of sitting in front of the right plate at the right table at the right time. The man beside me turned out to be Ronnie Lee from United Artists. He said they were about to start pre-production on a film of The Merry Widow and asked if I could sing.
‘Sure,’ I said, while mentally crossing my fingers. He told me to come and see him when I returned from Berlin.
Matka was worse than I expected. She’d always been thin but now she was skeletal. She had also developed a horrendous bronchial condition. It was so debilitating that she seemed to have been robbed of her spirit. She sat in the big old armchair that had been my father’s favourite and appeared to fade into the upholstery. I sat and held her hand, and fought back the tears. Until then I’d taken it as my right that my mother should look after me. Sitting there in that gloomy room I prayed that she wouldn’t die so I could prove to her and to myself that there was more to me than a fixation that I could entertain people. I told Mascha that I would tidy up the house, sell it and that she was coming with me to live in England. She started arguing that she was too old, that she couldn’t leave the place she was used to, that old and young don’t mix – all kinds of silly arguments which I didn’t bother to answer. I just told her she was coming and that was final. I rang a number of estate agents and put the house on the market at once, then set about sorting which things we would ship to England and what we would leave behind. In a few days Matka was smiling once more, helping me decide and talking about how much my father had loved England.
We had goodbye dinners with Haneli and some of her friends, and in little over a week we were on our way. Steffka was happy as a sandboy to have her grandmother living with us. They played chess, went to the pictures and had a whale of a time together. Slowly Mother lost her cough and walked with a spring in her step once more. Only Maria seemed to feel that her domain had been infringed. I thought that eventually they would work it out.
I rang Ronnie Lee and reminded him that he was about to launch the next diva in his Merry Widow film. He set up a meeting with the ranking members of his company and a singing coach, Gustl Sacher. Now we had got down to the hooks and eyes I wasn’t sure I could do it, but Ronnie didn’t want to hear my doubts. Before I knew what I was up to, Gustl was banging away on the piano and I was tralalaing fit to bust.
There was also the dancing lesson. As a dancer I was definitely designed to twist, maybe jive a little and probably do the locomotion, which was awkward because The Merry Widow is all about the waltz. I tried my best and, unbelievably, it seemed to be good enough to get me a screen test. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in the film business. I was so worried that instead of not sleeping the night before the test, my usual lunacy, I didn’t sleep for a week. Feeling like a gutted rabbit in a butcher’s shop I turned up, and to the sound of my recorded trilling my partner, a well-known choreographer whose name I forget, strutted up decked out in full costume and looking like a seventeenth-century fag on New Orleans’ Main Street. The next few minutes were a high-speed blur. Suffice it to say that my partner hardly limped at all as he led me off the floor.
Ronnie Lee was generous with his applause. I went to change and when I got back he told me that I had the job. I was astonished. The actual shoot was ages away but in the meantime I was to have singing and dancing lessons. I was delighted to be working – and earning – and to be able to say when asked that I was making The Merry Widow.
I found a house in Richmond, one of those three-bedroomed, bow-windowed job
s that uninspired architects scattered across the country in the Thirties. Steffka and Mascha liked it and we rented it. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted but it had a pretty garden with a view over a mausoleum at the back and millions of trees. Just as we moved in I was invited to Romania for a horror documentary so Maria and my mother had to cope with the move as I toured the land of vampires surrounded by a vast media crowd. On returning to our hotel in Bucharest I was confronted by the man who owned the house we’d just rented in Richmond. Having discovered through the newspapers that I was in Bucharest, he’d tracked down my hotel and now begged me to buy his house. Apparently, he had fallen in love with a Romanian girl and wanted to stay. I wasn’t terribly keen on the place but he was persistent and invited the entire crew to dinner for the duration of our stay, so I told him about the poor paintwork and leaking roof. In the end he lowered the price considerably and I negotiated some repair work. I did a ‘subject to survey’ deal with him and flew back to England feeling rather smug.
With the house organised, I could get back to my singing. Steffka was on holiday and I thought it would be nice for her to come along to the studio and see her old mother exercise the epiglottis. Gustl Sacher pounded away at the ancient upright piano, I cleared my throat and prepared to impress. I was well into my coloratura before going into one of the arias from Puccini’s La Bohème when I noticed Steffka, her back to me, staring out of the window. I was a mite hurt. To appreciate my versatility properly she should have been facing me. Then I realised that her shoulders and pony-tail were shaking. I stopped in mid-flight and went across and turned her round to face me. Her face was scarlet with the effort she was making not to laugh. I knew then that Maria Callas had nothing to fear. Kids are the most honest critics and I think Steffanie got it about right. In the end it mattered not at all. The production was put on hold when the original investors withdrew their finance. I was told to hang loose and the producer would be in touch when the new financiers were lined up. I’m still waiting . . .
Twenty-Six
Matka loved England. She had been afraid that the renowned English fog and damp would play havoc with her rheumatism but within a month she was dashing about, aided by her A-framed walking stick, and soon became a well-known figure around Richmond. As she steadily grew stronger she virtually took over the running of the house. It made us both happy. She loved the idea that she had a purpose and was contributing, and for me it was a relief. Maria had gone back to Spain – to retire, as she had put it. I knew Steffka would be utterly safe with her grandmother.
I was still getting a reasonable amount of work but nothing really substantial, so it was back to the obituary of thespian dreams, PCR. Among the list of films completed was a notice saying that Robin Hardy was about to launch a venture called The Wicker Man in Scotland. The story was described loosely and the piece ended with the information that the part of the nymphomaniac librarian was still not cast. It was a Sunday but I wasn’t going to wait until office hours before getting on the case. I rang George and obtained Robin Hardy’s home telephone number. Apologising for phoning on a Sunday morning, I said it was absolutely imperative that I spoke to him at once. He talked about the film for a while, then asked me to call round to discuss the part further.
‘When?’ I asked.
‘Now.’
I drove in record time to his home in Chelsea. We talked for a couple of hours and got on so well that Robin decided to ring Peter Snell, the producer. I was beginning to like this company: they didn’t hang about. Peter was on the point of leaving for Scotland but wanted to see me so I flagged down a taxi and sat impatiently while the cabby, enlightening me as to his philosophy on life in general and Sunday drivers in particular, picked his way across London to St John’s Wood. Peter thought I would be perfect for the part and a week or so later I was on the sleeper to Dumfries.
The car that picked me up from the railway station sped along the hilltop overlooking the Irish Sea – not a reassuring sight. It was October, and mist and rain obscured everything but the waves gnawing up the rugged coastline. Even with the heaters going full blast I could feel the icy wind blowing into my pores. I wondered how we’d avoid the goosebumps showing in the first scene, as we pranced around naked celebrating the joys of spring.
The Kirroughtree Hotel, outside Newton Stewart, was the HQ for the production. After a snooze I went in search of a pot of tea. The decision whether or not to have a second was postponed when Peter Snell walked in. He was looking wind-swept and miserable. I waved the teapot at him and he joined me. Over tea we discussed our schedule and he let slip that his dishevelled appearance was due to being stuck on top of the cliffs of Burrowhead overseeing the construction of the Wicker Man. Of course, I had to squeak and demand that he took me to see it immediately. As we drove up, the mighty Wicker Man towered over us, the setting sun shining through its intermeshed branches creating a magical effect. Peter explained that the compartments which made up the body were for the sacrificial animals and that the larger one in the centre was for Edward Woodward.
We all had dinner that night in the main hall of the hotel with its oak-panelled walls, massive doors and large leaded windows overlooking the cliffs. Tony Shaffer, the writer, and I talked for hours. He was not happy with the ending of the film. In fact, all through the shooting he kept going to Dumfries library in search of a better ending. Every night he and I would sit on the floor between our rooms discussing this ad infinitum until I could no longer stand trying to convince him that he’d done it right the first time round. The producer also argued the point and at last, after considerable coaxing, Shaffer resolved that his first ending was the best.
The Wicker Man was beset by difficulties. British Lion, the production company, changed hands three times during filming. Peter Snell had to do some fast footwork to keep the film from collapsing. The cold got worse as we nudged into November. We all huddled under blankets, clutching rapidly cooling hot-water bottles until the shot was set, then we’d throw off our coverings and prance about pretending it was spring and the sun was warm. Poor Edward Woodward had to run around barefoot in a shroud. On ‘cut’ he would rush over to where I sat trying to convince my body that it was really spring, and stick his freezing feet under my hot frock. Britt Ekland had this fabulous sable coat which she’d throw into the bramble bushes on ‘action’. She was pregnant with her son Nikolas at the time and I think she would have been happier anywhere else but on that windy Scottish coast. Diane Cilento, Britt and I shared a car every morning driving to the location. I like to talk but never got a word in. Their entire conversation revolved around what bad chaps Sean Connery and Peter Sellers had been and trying to outdo each other with the level of poverty they had been left in.
When shooting was finally over and everyone went back to London the battles over the film really began, which must have been hell for Peter Snell.
The nasty bottom line to The Wicker Man was that George refused even to look at the film, claiming it was not commercial. The Rank Cinema circuit therefore wouldn’t show it. Later, in one of our frequent rows, he said that any other film I might manage to make would suffer the same fate. I thought how absurd he was, but I was naive. He subsequently showed that he was a man of bitter action.
Eventually, Bob Webster of EMI, the only other cinema circuit in Britain, took the film with the proviso that it went out on a double bill with Don’t Look Now. The two producers, Peter Snell and Peter Katz, were rather annoyed. Nevertheless, they took the offer as no one else was beating a path to their doors. Neither film deserved the double-bill treatment – each stood up on its own. And both have become classics.
Twenty-Seven
I must have been the wimp of the decade for I continued to escort George wherever he wanted to go and I hated myself for it. I told myself repeatedly that everything would turn out for the best, while other wiser people just waited to see how best to avoid the fall-out. I had given up the idea that I’d ever meet a man I could fall in love with and
had settled for my friendship with George. I thought that once he saw that I really wasn’t interested in a physical relationship with him he would go back to being my friend. One day I believed it, the next I didn’t. It was a routine. And, like all routines, it was hard to break. The real problem, which I wasn’t willing to face, was that I still wanted him to find me work. He realised this and continued to dangle this carrot. His telephone calls always started with, ‘I was talking to Lew Grade . . .’ or Eric Pleskow or Joe Levine or Disney or anyone else who would impress me. He’d then go on to tell me about deals he was putting together on my behalf. I don’t think I really believed it but I didn’t admit it, just in case.
With our relationship not improving, it was a relief when I was offered a job in Switzerland. It was a children’s television show called Ski Boy. I was over my Hollywood film fixation and would accept anything where a camera might possibly be focused on me, followed by a pay-cheque. I told the producer I would love to do the job but unfortunately Steffanie was just getting over flu and needed me.
‘Bring her with you,’ he said.
It was what I wanted to hear.
There were four other actors, Steffka and I on the flight. I didn’t know any of them so sat in the rear of the plane, with Steffanie beside me by the window and my belongings on the aisle seat. I settled down but suddenly became aware that a man stood over me, looking at the seat piled high with my cast-offs. Sod him! I thought. There are plenty of other seats. But he continued to stand there. I looked up and gave him my best drop-dead look but he merely smiled and asked if I would mind shifting my things. I couldn’t believe it. I sat up and pantomimed looking around at the rows of empty seats. It didn’t faze him. He still looked expectantly at my gear. Before I could get really crude a stewardess came into view. She wanted to know what the hold-up was. I explained. She regarded my oppressor. He looked at me and kept his smile firmly in place. His body language suggested he was prepared to remain there indefinitely. The stewardess backed down first. She told me that if I insisted on keeping my goods on the seat I would have to buy another ticket.