I Loved Her in the Movies: Memories of Hollywood's Legendary Actresses

by Robert J. Wagner

  THE SIXTIES

  The 1960s were a tumultuous time. Standards that had been around for a hundred years were overturned in the course of a decade, and that was reflected in the faces of the actresses who became popular in the era. You had movie stars who were, frankly, not beautiful by traditional movie standards. Actresses like Barbra Streisand and Mia Farrow couldn’t help but make you conscious of what women had gone through and the rejections they’d had to endure. The message that their popularity sent was that movies were now much more inclusive than they had been even twenty years earlier. Then, the marquees of movie theaters across America might as well have read “Only the Beautiful Need Apply.” But in the 1960s it became obvious that looks were less important than talent or drive.

  This was not a completely novel development—Joan Crawford had projected many of the same qualities thirty years earlier, as had Bette Davis—but it was unusual. Most of the stars of that era made a point of not bringing their personal sadness to their work. Norma Shearer, Norma Talmadge, and Barbara Stanwyck all had tough childhoods, but on the screen they conquered the obstacles life placed in their way.

  To a great extent that also describes their adult lives—never overlook the motivating force of success stories in the psychology of actresses. If their marriages or their relationships with their children were compromised to one extent or another, they invariably chose movies with happier endings than life offered.

  These women flourished at a time when women in the world usually had limited options. They could be teachers, secretaries, or nurses. Doctors or lawyers were mostly men. Yes, the best and brightest could bulldoze their way into careers in law or medicine, but that happened infrequently.

  My sister was typical of her generation. She had five kids and was basically relegated to feeding them, wiping their bottoms, and raising them. In the 1960s, women said to hell with that, and thank God they did. It opened up the world to tens of millions of them.

  One thing I’ve learned in my long life is that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Once earned—or seized—freedom is impossible to roll back, and today we have women governors, senators, and prime ministers all over the world, and nobody thinks anything of it. Even fifty years ago, this would have been inconceivable.

  As society began to change, so did Hollywood, but for a long time it wasn’t sure in which direction to go. The 1950s were a time when Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, and Doris Day were huge stars, and four more dissimilar women can hardly be imagined. You might even say that Audrey and Doris amounted to a rejection by half the audience of what Marilyn and Elizabeth represented to the other half of the audience.

  For a long time in the 1950s, producers tried to hedge their bets by hiring actresses who had some or most of the same qualities that reigning stars did. For instance, Pier Angeli looked a little like Audrey Hepburn, so they cast her in the same wistful roles.

  20th Century Fox signed up Joan Collins in the hope that she’d become another Elizabeth Taylor—she had the same sultry accoutrements and sensual quality. That’s pretty much what happened, but it took more than twenty years before Joan achieved her imperious apotheosis on Dynasty.

  Joan had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and had been in the business since she was nine years old. She was always accomplished and always a pro. She made a lot of pictures at Fox, usually playing a sexpot—The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys! We made a picture together called Stopover Tokyo, which at least one critic referred to as Stopover Acting. We became more than co-workers for a time. I was falling in love with her, but I could tell something was holding Joan back. Shortly afterward, Natalie and I fell in love. A little while later, I introduced Joan to Anthony Newley, whom she began keeping company with.

  Later, after Natalie and I divorced, I decided to get out of Hollywood and move to Italy. I had three reasons: my busted marriage, my career, and the fact that I had always loved Italy. I invited Joan to come with me. She thought about it and finally told me, “I’d rather stay in England.” She went off and married Tony and had her daughter; I went off and married Marion and had my daughter Katie before remarrying Natalie. (Joan also had a daughter named Kate.)

  So everything transpired as it was meant to.

  Joan and I have been friends for more than sixty years. She’s been up, and she’s been down, but she always manages to climb up off the canvas where life occasionally deposits all of us. She was a terrific girl, and now she’s a terrific woman, with an admirable character—and more talented than her years of playing voluptuous, over-the-top characters would lead you to think. But you know something? Nobody could play voluptuous, over-the-top characters better than Joan.

  • • •

  During this period, they were making better movies in Europe than they were in America. Federico Fellini had directed La Dolce Vita and was about to begin 8½, Michelangelo Antonioni was starting to make his presence known, and even the low-end spaghetti Westerns had more energy and flair than you got in American pictures with similar stories and budgets.

  I wanted to advance my career, which at that point was not in great shape. I didn’t lack for ambition; I was very interested in working with Brigitte Bardot, the hottest thing on two legs at that time, or Alida Valli, an actress who never had the career she should have but who I thought had everything going for her. She had made a big initial splash in The Paradine Case and The Third Man, but her innate reserve made her seem a little too severe for American audiences. She spent most of her career in Europe. She was terribly underrated.

  I never worked with either Bardot or Valli, but I did work with Sophia Loren, so I can’t complain. Sophia was one of the first actresses I acted with in Europe, which is a hell of a way to get to know a continent. I loved her as a woman and adored her as a person—she was then as she is now: completely honest and forthright. The film was called The Condemned of Altona and it was directed by Vittorio De Sica, one of cinema’s giants.

  Vittorio was very hands on, and I mean that literally. He would come out from next to the camera, and show you where to stand, when to move. He would position your head to catch the light that he wanted. Sometimes he would even offer line readings. If he was directing Sophia, he would show her how to make an entrance by swinging his hips with a feminine flourish that was actually kind of charming, not to mention funny.

  Some actors hate that kind of direction, which can reduce you to the level of a puppet, but I honestly didn’t mind. Blake Edwards sometimes did the same thing, as did Lubitsch, and they all managed to sustain an actor’s individuality. Besides, I had seen The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D. and been shattered by them; I figured De Sica knew more about making a De Sica film than I did.

  Vittorio had the kind of fatherly, exuberant personality that is very attractive to actors, who are usually looking for approval. He had a way of guiding you that was completely noncritical. And he helped me with my vocal production, which was a minor problem for me at that point. He suggested a professor of voice named Scurri in Rome who specialized in coaching opera singers, and who helped me lower my tone and add some resonance.

  Of course, Vittorio had created Sophia, not as a star, but as an actress. He directed her in Two Women, which won her the Oscar for Best Actress, as well as Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and a slew of other fine pictures.

  I was in love with Sophia before we started the picture. Honestly, I never knew a man who met her who didn’t fall for her. Making The Condemned of Altona with her only made me love her more. Sophia was a highly prepared actress; she had memorized the script and had ideas of her own, but would happily incorporate any advice Vittorio gave her. She worshipped him. I honestly believe if he had told her to dangle by a rope from a helicopter five hundred yards above the Coliseum she would have done it, and then told the pilot to fly higher in order to make the shot better.

  You can judge the personality of a star by how she treats people whom she doesn’t have
to be nice to—the crew, for instance. Sophia treated everybody as a friend, and the crew adored her, but then kindness could have been her middle name.

  Sophia was very powerful in a room; like the great stars of the era of Hollywood that I grew up watching, you always knew she was there, knew a star had entered the room even if your back was turned. There was a sudden rustling in the air, a sense of electricity. Not every actor or actress has that inner light; Joanne Woodward, for instance, was like Marilyn Monroe—she could turn it off anytime she wanted and disappear into the wallpaper.

  Sophia’s husband, Carlo Ponti, was very involved in the production, as he was with all of Sophia’s films. Many people didn’t put a great deal of stock in the marriage; Carlo was much older, bald, and pear shaped. Nobody could understand why she would choose a spouse like that when she could have had any man in the world.

  I had learned that a couple of years earlier, Sophia had an affair with Cary Grant while making The Pride and the Passion for Stanley Kramer. She wasn’t married to Carlo at the time, although they did have an understanding. She overwhelmed Cary, and he insisted she be cast opposite him in a charming comedy called Houseboat.

  While it lasted, it was a wonderful thing for Cary.

  Sophia Loren

  He wanted to marry her, but she dodged him and married Carlo instead. I can see you shaking your head, but remember, she already had the bond with Carlo, and who can truly comprehend the love that exists between other people? Never underestimate emotional needs, and Carlo was already a powerful producer with eyes and ears in both the European and American markets. Carlo adored her, and Carlo protected her, which she needed. Her childhood had been one of deprivation and sorrow during and after World War II, and he gave her the security she needed.

  After watching them respond to each other, I understood that the relation was not one of father and daughter but genuinely one of husband and wife. She was extremely loyal to him, and devoted to their children.

  As for Cary, from the very occasional references he would make about Sophia, it was clear that he had been overcome by her. It took him a long time to get over her, as it would any man.

  Sophia asked me to escort her to the Milan premiere of The Condemned of Altona. The response was excellent, but Fox was very nervous about the movie, as it was a thinly veiled depiction of the Krupp dynasty. The studio recut the movie for the American market and the picture failed, but Vittorio’s original version was quite good. I remain proud and grateful to have worked with such a great artist.

  In 2014, I was invited to Sophia’s eightieth birthday party, which was to be held in Mexico City, but I was working at the time and couldn’t get away. I called her shortly afterward to wish her a belated happy birthday. She closed the conversation by saying, “I love you, Robert!”

  Darling Sophia, believe me when I say that the feeling is mutual.

  • • •

  The most enduring of the films I made in Europe is undoubtedly The Pink Panther, which Blake Edwards, Peter Sellers, and David Niven turned into a classic comedy. The female lead opposite David Niven was the beautiful, tragic Capucine. Cappy was an exquisite creature, with cheekbones that seemed to rise to the elevation of the Chrysler Building. Her looks indicated her first profession—in her youth she had been a haute couture model. Cappy was a very funny woman who later appeared in an episode of Hart to Hart with me. My kids adored her because she was so much fun.

  When we made The Pink Panther, Cappy was the mistress of Charles Feldman, who was my agent and who tried very hard to make her a movie star. Charlie cast her in North to Alaska opposite John Wayne and Stewart Granger, and a bunch of other pictures. For whatever reason, the public never quite took to her. Perhaps she was a little too aristocratic in her looks, or the delightful aspects of her personality never quite came across on film.

  Cappy was a manic-depressive, and when she went into her dark moods, nothing could get her out—she would become practically catatonic. She attempted suicide more than once. Audrey Hepburn told me about how she and her partner Rob Wolders saved Cappy’s life after she tried to kill herself in Switzerland. They got her to the hospital, and when they went to visit her, she asked them, “Why did you bring me back?”

  After the affair with Charles Feldman ran its course, Cappy was with Bill Holden for a while, but Bill had his own issues and wasn’t going to be able to help Cappy. Today, of course, there are numerous medications that might have helped.

  What I do know is that in 1990, Cappy leapt off the patio of her eighth-floor apartment in Switzerland. Her only survivors were her three cats. She was a gracious, elegant woman who deserved much more out of life than she got.

  While I worked with a lot of actresses during this era, most of whom were special ladies, I wasn’t crazy about my experience with Raquel Welch, but then a lot of people have said the same thing. The picture we did together was called The Biggest Bundle of Them All, and throughout the production she was unprofessional—she practically gave Edward G. Robinson a heart attack with her inability to show up on time.

  The odd thing was that I had met her years before, when she was working as a ball girl at a tennis tournament in La Jolla. Years later, she became a pinup girl and made One Million Years B.C., costarring with a lot of stop-motion animated dinosaurs courtesy of Ray Harryhausen. The animation was first rate, but all anybody could talk about was the way Raquel looked in her animal-skin costumes.

  A star was born.

  The Biggest Bundle of Them All was produced by Josef Shaftel and Sy Stewart and directed by Ken Annakin, and was shot all over France and Italy. I became good friends with Ken and his wife, Pauline. Between the locations and the cast (Eddie Robinson, Vittorio De Sica, Godfrey Cambridge), it should have been a lot of fun to make, but Raquel turned it into the equivalent of an eight-week-long proctology exam.

  The film was a lighthearted caper movie about a group of goofballs who try to make a killing by kidnapping a famous gangster and holding him for ransom. It was precisely the same plot as the Sam Spiegel movie The Happening, and that was no coincidence; Shaftel had been in someone’s office at Columbia where he had picked the script of The Happening off a desk, read it, and liked it so much that he decided to make his own knockoff version at MGM. (Isn’t the movie business glamorous? Isn’t it fun?)

  This obvious plagiarism naturally aroused the ire of Columbia, and for a time a lot of lawyers were busily amassing billable hours. The end result was that MGM held our picture back while The Happening was released. To the best of my knowledge, nobody ever noticed the fact that the plot of our picture was identical to Spiegel’s, which was a commercial disappointment in the bargain.

  The truly funny thing about the entire episode was that Sam Spiegel was widely known to be one of the least ethical people in the business—if Sam owed you money, years would drift by until you got it back, and then the only way to recover it was to sue him, which took years more. The result was that Sam had the use of your money for a very long time before he had to fork it over.

  The fact that Sam was finally getting a taste of his own medicine aroused no little amount of schadenfreude. With some producers, a handshake was all you needed; with others, you had to get it in writing, and with a few others, you’d best get your money in advance. With Sam, you were going to need a contract and a battery of Philadelphia lawyers and a few phone calls from the Mob.

  A few years ago, I read Raquel’s book Beyond the Cleavage and I was very impressed. She had obviously learned and grown a great deal in the intervening years. I gave copies of the book to all my daughters.

  INTERMISSION II

  Both at the time and in my memory the years in Europe were golden. I encountered Marion, who was living there with her two sons, Peter and Josh, whom I immediately adored.

  During one vacation Marion and I took, we were traveling by ferry when I met a little girl, several years old, whom I amused by making faces. A woman named Carmel Myers and her husband were also onboard
and noticed me. Carmel came over to tell me how much she liked my work in the movies, and that began a friendship. (There’s nothing like admiration to win over an actor.)

  I can hear what you’re thinking: Carmel who?

  Carmel Myers had been a star in silent movies, including D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, a part she got because Griffith had sought some advice from her father, who happened to be a well-known rabbi in Los Angeles. The rabbi didn’t want any money in return for his help, but did ask if Griffith could perhaps find a part for his daughter.

  That was the start of a considerable film career for Carmel, culminating in her performance in the original 1925 version of Ben-Hur, in which she seduced Ramon Novarro.

  I had never seen her films, but I remembered my mother talking about her, so I was pleased to meet her. She was a very lively, bright, interesting person with a wide range of interests, of which movies were only one. Carmel’s career had slowed with the onset of talkies, then stopped entirely, but she was an unusual woman. She figured that if the movies didn’t want her, the business world would, and by the time we met in the early 1960s she was quite successful in the fragrance business.

  She asked me if I would be the face of a new men’s cologne she was bringing to market. I liked her, so I said yes. She hired LeRoy Neiman to do a portrait of me to use in the advertising campaign. The cologne came on the market and did just fine.

  Years later, I was working on a television project with Glen Larson, who had produced both It Takes a Thief and Switch. Glen referred to me as his good-luck charm, and always cast me in his pilots because he believed my presence would ensure their success. When the Neiman painting of me came on the market, Glen bought it. Years later, when Jill St. John and I got married, Glen gave it to me as a wedding gift.

  Today that portrait hangs in my office in Aspen. Whenever I look at it, I think of that delightful woman I met on a ferry ride in Italy, and the good fortune that has often graced my life. And of my friend Glen, who left us far too soon.