by Ingrid Pitt
I switched my drop-dead look to her, thought through the situation and decided the hassle wasn’t worth it. I slung the bags under my seat, the stewardess hung up my coat and the lout sat down. I hated him utterly. He pulled out an Evening News, turned to the crossword, searched unsuccessfully for a pen and then had the impudence to ask me if I had one he could borrow. I was more furious than ever but made a production of getting a pen out of my handbag. He sat there staring at the crossword for a while, then handed the pen back. ‘Too hard,’ was his explanation.
We sat in silence for a while. Steffka was staring out at the clouds and occasionally looking past me at our uninvited companion. He gave her a smile and she responded. Traitor, I thought. He refolded the paper and found the junior crossword. Again he had the temerity to ask for my pen. Seething, I slammed it on the table in front of him. As he picked it up I noticed he was wearing a bracelet with his name on it. Cretin! Can’t even remember his own name . . . I thought.
The fool studied the simple puzzle with furrowed brow and sighed in resignation. ‘That’s too hard as well,’ he said, returning my pen.
As we neared the Pyrenees the weather changed and the plane started jiving about. I love flying but am not at all keen on crashing. I gripped Steffka’s hand and braced myself for the inevitable. Steffanie looked across me to my persecutor and explained my behaviour. He reassured her that everything was all right. We’d just hit some thermals approaching the mountains. Once we were over them everything would be calm again.
I was feeling seriously pissed off, not only because he seemed to be sympathetic to my malaise but because he was trying to reassure me. I hate being reassured. It’s so condescending. ‘You’d know about that, would you?’ I asked cuttingly. After all, someone who couldn’t do the children’s crossword was hardly an Einstein. He confessed he was a pilot.
I looked at him with a smidgen of respect. ‘So you say,’ I said haughtily.
He shrugged and continued talking to Steffanie. As if I were invisible, he asked her what her mother did. She told him I was an actress.
‘Not another one!’ he said rudely.
Prat! I thought. I pointed towards his bracelet with his name on it. ‘That’s in case you forget your name, is it?’ I asked smugly. He explained that he was a racing driver and for the purpose of identification the bracelet had his name and blood group on it.
Toughski shitski, I thought. So you fly, you race cars and you’ve had enough of ‘actresses’ . . . What else can you do? It sure ain’t crossword puzzles.
Steffka carried on flirting with him, smiling and talking to him as though I wasn’t there. The flight calmed down as we left the mountains behind and little by little I calmed down too.
I hate being ignored so gradually I let my guard slip. He told me he had just returned from the temporada – season – in Buenos Aires and was on his way to stay with a racing mate at his chalet in the mountains outside Geneva. I told him we were going on location for Ski Boy in St Luc and he apologised for his derogatory remark about actresses, explaining that every hot-panted dolly bird strutting the pit-lanes of the world classified herself as either a model or an actress. He seemed quite intrigued that I actually had a job to go to.
At Geneva airport he not only schlepped my bags off the aircraft but was happy to be left with Steffanie while I went off to change some currency. I smiled to see them in animated conversation, Steffka’s pony-tail bobbing up and down as she chatted away a mile a minute. He was laughing at what she was saying and I had to admit he was growing on me.
Driving out to the location, I sat in the car and wondered if I would ever see him again. He’d asked for my telephone number before going off with a friend and to my surprise I’d actually given it to him. I thought about him for a while, then decided it was just one of those things . . . passengers that go bump as they pass in the air.
Ski Boy went like a dream, and Steffanie loved Switzerland and the snow. I played a journalist and had great fun both with the part and working with a pro like Michael Culver. Steffanie’s birthday was on the penultimate night of the shoot. I arranged a party for her and the cast and crew. We had a great fondue and I suddenly thought of this funny guy I’d met on the plane. I wondered how his skiing was going and realised that I wouldn’t mind hearing from him. I had to admit he was outrageously sexy and I don’t feel that way often.
Filming over, Steffka and I jetted back to England. I was just wrestling my oversized suitcase into the bedroom when the telephone rang. It was my aeroplane tormentor. He had returned early from his skiing holiday and wanted to take me out. Not wishing him to think I was one of his pit-ponies, I tried to keep my voice cool and to act distant, but when I put down the phone I had somehow agreed to have dinner with him the next evening. I insisted on calling him Tonio instead of Tony and on choosing the restaurant. That night he had me in stitches all through dinner as he told me about his life in the RAF and motor racing. I’d never laughed so much on a date, nor got so hot and bothered either . . . Back at my place he insisted on a cup of tea before he got down to business and an apple afterwards. As I stood in the doorway, weak-kneed, and waved him goodbye I wondered what I was letting myself in for, Years later, Tone confessed that he’d watched Steffanie and me horsing around in the VIP lounge and thought it was Christmas when he saw we were on the same flight. He was having me and that was that.
By May, Tonio and I were an item. He knew about George and insisted I told him what was going on but I was fearful of the harm George could do me in the business. So far I had managed to keep the work coming in. I was a panellist on New Faces and doing a reasonable amount of television. That could all be jeopardised if I broke off with George. But I knew I should have to make a choice pretty soon. I was going to too many motor-racing parties and public events for our liaison to remain a secret for ever and I was telling George so many lies that when I told the truth I instantly felt a tremor of panic. Then one of my ‘friends’ phoned George, met him for dinner and filled him in on my passionate love affair. He had already sensed it. I had changed. I was quite relaxed about my life and career, and contented within myself. I didn’t care that George knew. I was so incredibly happy to have discovered my knight in shining racing cars. Love had at last found me.
To distract me from my problems, Tonio began teaching me to fly. He kept a Cherokee Arrow down at Elstree and whenever we went anywhere he let me take the controls for most of the flight. No switching on the auto-pilot and getting your feet up for me, I sat there clutching the yoke and responding to every twitch or lurch. When George heard about this he went bananas, unable to stand the thought of me being independent. I couldn’t ignore him or his urgent notes, telegrams and messages any longer. Our relationship had to be settled once and for all. I arranged a meeting with him at his flat in Dolphin Square. Although I had long lost any hope of George behaving like a gentleman and honouring his promise to release me from our marriage should I find true love, I now saw a side of him I hadn’t known existed. He raged and screamed at me, demanding I leave Tonio at once to move into a family house with him. He threw insults at me about my family and Tone.
I was shaking with fury and felt sick. ‘Why did you marry me? Why did you lie to me?’ I cried. ‘You said we could be friends. You promised nothing would change . . .’
‘Well,’ he said and laughed. ‘Things will change now. You’ll see. Your future has always been behind you. I alone kept you going. You don’t have a career now, that’s for sure. Perhaps you’ve already noticed that nobody is falling over himself to hire you? Just wait until I really get to work. I guarantee you won’t be able to get a walk-on part in a skin flick. So just stop seeing this dago’ – which is what he called him, because I called Tone ‘Tonio’ – ‘and we’ll say no more about it.’
The argument was getting us nowhere. I turned to leave, only to find George had locked the door of the flat. As I scrabbled to escape he seized my shoulders and threw me on the floor. Demanding that we
consummate our ‘marriage’ there and then, he tried to force himself on me and started violently pulling at my clothes. He was a big man and my karate lessons were of no use as he pushed his full weight on to me. Able only to move my neck, I head-butted him on the nose and the pain propelled him backwards. A well-directed kick to the groin sealed the matter. As he screamed with pain, I jumped up, unlocked the door and ran.
George now dedicated his life to turning mine into a morass of hatred and venom. He wrote to tell me that, had he only the courage, he would kill my child because it would hurt me most, but since he was a coward he would kill my career instead.
Tonio said, ‘Forget it, he’ll get over it.’ But I knew he would make good his threat and was even frightened that he would hurt Steffanie. I went to the police and filed his letter, just in case. Tonio and I went to the town hall and filled in my divorce papers. We wanted George out of our lives.
Michael Cort had signed me up to do a sort of Bond film in Turkey, Click, with Tom Adams, and not long afterwards Howard Pays offered me a film in Malta with Rossano Brazzi. I loved both scripts. They were totally different stories and each of them fitted me perfectly. Suddenly, however, I received a phone call telling me the film in Malta was off. Then Michael Cort came to see me and told me that George had phoned and threatened him. He said that if he employed me George wouldn’t play the picture in the Rank cinemas. I couldn’t believe it. George had told me about some of the dirty tricks he had played on people who had got on the wrong side of him. I had always assumed he was just showing off. Now I was forced to realise just how powerful and malicious he was. When I confronted him, he just sneered. ‘Prove it!’ he said. ‘You don’t think any of those idiots out there are going to put their arse on the line for you, do you?’ and he was right. No one in the industry spoke to me. Word had got out that I was persona non grata. When Tonio and I attended a première not a soul spoke to me, no one said hello. At lunch with Tone at the White Elephant, the ‘in’ place for the film industry at the time, people I’d thought were my friends gave a forced smile and turned away.
Tonio could see what it was doing to me and suggested we go to Argentina to shoot a film script I’d optioned. I thought of Perón, back in Argentina, President for the third time. Tonio had met him many times at the Automobile Club in Buenos Aires and at the Admirante Brown circuit. Perhaps he would help to get things going. Together we wrote Perón a letter.
Meanwhile the press learned about my problem with George. They asked me to tell all and help them do a hatchet job on the film exhibiting business, revealing how the circuit was booked and what backhanders were exchanged. I was sorely tempted, especially when they encouraged me to name my price. In the end I took Tonio’s advice. ‘Forget it!’ he said. ‘They’ll tear you to pieces in the process. We’ll go to Buenos Aires. If nothing happens at least you’ll be out of the way for a while and who knows . . .?’
It was decided that Steffanie would finish her school year and then come out to Buenos Aires to join us, either with Matka or alone, depending on how things went. But a week later we read in the paper that President Peron had died. In Argentina, at that time, you had to be in with the powerful if you expected to get anything done. Isabel was Perón’s deputy and had taken over the Presidency, but we didn’t know how long that would last.
While we dithered I received a call from Bruce Gyngell at ITC, offering me a job. I asked Bruce whether he knew I was no longer with George. Had he seen the bad PR I was getting? He said he came from Australia and didn’t give a shit about the bloody Rank Organisation and their personality problems. He wanted me for the female lead in an episode of a TV drama series called Thriller. I was delighted. I had one friend at least. And he was giving me a job.
‘Where the Action Is’ was filmed at Elstree with Eddie Burns from 77 Sunset Strip. Tonio drove me to the studio every morning and came to fetch me home at the end of the day. We put our longer-term worries at the backs of our minds and enjoyed ourselves like a couple of kids.
I was offered another film but pessimistically waited for the call of doom. Sure enough, George did his stuff and a week later it came.
‘Let’s go to Buenos Aires,’ I said. ‘I can’t bear all this hate.’
We left almost at once.
Twenty-Eight
The sweep of the wide Rio de la Plata was under our left wing as the plane lined up for landing. As we came on to finals Buenos Aires stretched to the horizon. From the air it was ugly but once on the ground I loved it.
We booked into the Sheraton opposite the Plaza de los Ingléses and were given a message that Juan Manuel Fangio, five times world motor racing champion and a friend of Tonio’s, would take us out to dinner that evening with his ‘natural son’, Manuel Bordeu. I was touched. With everyone treating us like lepers in London it was nice to have someone like Fangio wanting to dine with us. His visit did a lot for our standing in the Sheraton: in Argentina Juan Manuel Fangio was next to God.
A couple of days later, as we were moving into a flat on Calle Posadas, Hector Olivera, a top Argentinian producer not entirely unknown in Europe, rang. He had heard that we were in town and wanted to invite us to dinner. There were about thirty guests at Olivera’s house, which was big, even by the Republic’s standards, and Hollywood-decorated. I was seated near Hector and opposite Juan Manuel. Naturally, the conversation turned to motor racing and, much to Tone’s amusement, I insisted on putting the great Fangio right on the application of one of the rules. Luckily Juan Manuel was also amused.
After the meal, Olivera led us on to the terrace where a dozen gauchos were lined up. Eight of them banged massive drums, two played guitars and others the accordion, but the most impressive sight was the two gauchos standing surrounded by the drums. Slowly they started to tap with their heels on the stone floor. Gradually their feet moved faster, louder and they began to swing boleadoras. These are leather-bound bones or boulders about the size of a cricket ball, plaited on to thongs about two metres long, which on the pampas are used for bringing down cattle or game. As the rhythm picked up they began to twirl the boleadoras faster, closer, until the balls were brushing the hair of the dancers. A tiny error and the hard missiles would have smashed through their skulls. In a frenzy other dancers pulled from their belts huge silver-handled facones – razor-sharp small swords that all true gauchos carry – and threw them at the stomping feet of their partners. There was a stunning primitive beauty to this dance, the Malambo, which seemed to capture the gaucho heart of Argentina.
On our return the porter told us that Luis Sojit had been to see us and wanted us to telephone him as soon as we came in. Sojit, who I’d met at Perón’s party in Spain, had now been taken back into government and was Minister for Communication. He had a big surprise for us: he had told President Isabel Perón that we were in town and now we were invited to lunch at her residence in Olivos. At this rate we reckoned we would be taking over the Argentine film industry before the week was out.
Lunch in Argentina invariably means asado in the garden cooked by a couple of cardboard gauchos. Isabel was friendly but distracted by political problems. She put on a brave face and chatted about my visits to Puerta de Hierro and Perón. She also asked after my work and, fascinated by horror, asked if she could see my movies. I offered to have them sent out for her.
Olivera invited us to visit him again, this time for lunch. His garden and pool were laid out like the Beverly Hills Hotel. The friends sitting around the pool were equally spectacular: long-legged women in micro-swim-suits and suntans that didn’t stop, and balding, leather-tanned men, loaded down with gold fertility symbols and taking every opportunity to run experienced hands over obliging fillies. When we had devoured a small herd of cows and a flock or two of sheep, Hector took us to a table in a small arbour and got down to business. If we were serious about making films for consumption in Europe, he was our man, he said. Olivera owned some studios and a few days later he took us to visit Laboratories Alex, where the chairma
n, Alex Sessa, swore that his raison d’être was to process every bit of film we cared to expose – and all for love. This was getting heady.
The following weekend we were invited to the Hurlingham Country Club, a bastion of Englishness in the pampas. Our host was Gaston Perkins, one of Argentina’s top racing drivers and one of Tonio’s oldest friends. Gaston’s brother-in-law, Herbie Henderson, was also in the party. He had made a killing selling farm equipment and fertiliser, and was interested in investing in something more exciting, such as movies. We laid out our wares and he rather liked the idea of El Ultimo Enemigo, the Spanish title of the script I had optioned.
By now, everybody seemed to know about us and why we were in Argentina. We were even invited to a poetry evening at the great Luis Borges’s apartment. Borges was almost completely blind but seemed to love having people around him. Our names also reached the ears of the British Ambassador, who invited us to tea with his wife. I’d already fallen in love with Argentina and its people so when the Ambassador made derogatory remarks about the country I, as usual, spoke my mind. The atmosphere became decidedly frosty and we left, secure in the knowledge that we would not be invited back.
Meanwhile offers of partnerships continued to flow in and we began to look at the finer details of the deals. Gunter Jeanee, a macho Argy if ever there was one, was building a reputation as an action director of note. He was working for a company called Dinam, which wanted to make English-language films, and invited us to meet one of the partners, Orlando de Benedetti. Dinam’s offices were decorated like Disney’s idea of a fairy grotto. Orlando was tanned, Italian-looking, in his late thirties and had a penchant for wearing his jacket over his shoulders without his arms in the sleeves. But he was making all the right sounds. He wasn’t talking just one film but six, and a television series based on a script that Tonio had written. He had a partner, Emilio Perina – who had connections in Montevideo, in particular with Uruguay’s leading newspaper El Pais – whom he wanted us to meet. Meanwhile Hector was panting for an answer, although we were not enthusiastic about his insistence that he should be the director of any film we should choose to make, and Herbie was still wanting to find a home for his cash. We decided we’d keep these two waiting until we’d met de Benedetti’s and Perina’s Uruguayan friends.