One film though that really impressed me back then, still does after all these years, was The Lure of Crooning Water directed by Arthur Rooke. My God, even the title still thrills me to this day. It was so intelligently and sensitively done. The formidable Ivy Duke played the female lead as this glamorous actress who is advised by her doctor to take a rest cure in the countryside where she ends up seducing a married farmer. It was a kind of comedy-drama, a beauty and the beast set-up doomed to fail. It was the type of role I craved.
My first big chance came when I managed to get myself an audition for the part of Daisy, a model and the love interest of the great Ivor Novello in the Alfred Hitchcock film, The Lodger, which was being produced by Michael Balcon over at Gainsborough Pictures. I knew one of the assistant directors assigned to the film, Sandy Aitkinson, and he told me he thought I’d be ideal for the role. Sandy even tipped me off to come to the audition wearing a blonde wig as Daisy was scripted as the potential murder victim of a serial killer who only preyed on fair-haired young women.
Hitchcock was only a year older than I, yet he was already gaining something of a reputation as an up-and-coming director thanks to his imaginative use of montage, lighting and unusual camera angles. I think the studio executives and the distributors thought he was a bit too arty for their tastes – ‘the problem between the artistic and the commercial is the cost of expression’ as he himself would put it – but from what Sandy was telling me, the part of Daisy was a brilliant role for a woman whether the film eventually got widely distributed or not.
Gainsborough Pictures was over in the East End in Shoreditch and I took The Tube rather than the bus which was a mistake as I had a long walk in the rain to get to the studios. I did have an umbrella but I arrived with my shoes wet and all a bit hot and flustered. A secretary showed me into a small waiting area where another woman was sitting. I recognised her from previous auditions – her name was June if I remember correctly. We both gave each other quick polite smiles but were experienced enough to know there would be no small talk. I thought the secretary would provide me with a few pages from the scenario to look at while I waited but nothing was forthcoming. I sat stiff and straight with my hands in my lap, closed my eyes and conjured up an image of my father. That’s what I always did at interviews but this time I had a real sense of his presence there with me. I started praying to him: ‘Wish me success, wish me success.’ I must have been speaking out loud for I heard a sharp cough. I opened my eyes to see June giving me an odd stare. A door into the adjoining room swung ajar and thankfully there was my friend Sandy. He looked at both of us then beckoned me in.
I found myself in a small rehearsal room where the stage was a slightly raised platform area covering about a third of the floor space. Hitchcock was half sitting, half leaning against a wooden crate in the middle of the room facing the stage. He was a roly-poly figure with a weak chin that was already beginning to disappear into his thick neck. His jacket was open and the trousers of his suit were belted high across his stomach. He was only twenty-eighty years old but there was already an air of haughty self-confidence about him. He hardly looked up at me as I came in. I just stood there not knowing what to do.
‘Georgina Hepburn,’ Sandy said. ‘For Daisy.’
Hitchcock eyed me up and down, like a farmer measuring the worth of a horse put up for market, scrunched up his mouth then slowly shook his head. It was as if Caesar himself had turned down his thumb and sentenced me to death.
‘What about one of the other victims?’ Sandy persisted. ‘The blondes.’
‘Is that a wig?’ Hitchcock asked me in that solemn, deliberate tone of his.
‘Yes, it is.’
He grunted, shook his head again, waved his hand in dismissal.
Sandy took me by the elbow, led me back towards the door.
‘He doesn’t want to see me act?’ I whispered as I scampered along beside him.
‘That’s it, I’m afraid.’
When we were back in the waiting room, he took me aside. ‘He’s got an exact picture of Daisy in his head. And all the other parts too. You either fit or you don’t. He couldn’t care two hoots if you can act or not. For him, it’s the camera that does all the work.’ Sandy turned his attention to June, smiled at her, then escorted her into the rehearsal room.
The rest, as they say, is history. June got the part of Daisy, I missed out on acting with Ivor Novello while Hitchcock’s film about a serial killer in the London fog became a huge success, laying down many of the cinematic tropes that would come to establish him as the Master of Suspense. Another opportunity had passed me by. My disappointment was immense but fortunately it was short-lived. For soon after, along came Max.
Chapter Nine
Along Came Sal
By the time coffee was served in the cavernous lounge with its grand piano and several sofas, Laura was slightly tipsy. She had also learned that if she wanted to live longer she would have to do the following: meditate, move to Monaco or Japan (both of which she actually found quite appealing options), travel by train, eat more seeds, buy a dog, try not to oversleep, stop stressing about her career. She should also drink less red wine and have more sex. While Fredrik had turned out to be an interesting dinner companion, this latter activity was definitely not going to involve him.
She had been poised with her cup and saucer desperate for a place to sit when Sal Yerksaw finally approached her.
‘I was hoping we could have a chat,’ he said.
‘You had your chance over dinner,’ she scolded in a half-serious, half-mocking tone.
‘You seemed more preoccupied with our Swedish friend.’
‘And you with that pretty young writer.’
‘She has just won a very prestigious prize,’ Sal countered, as if this somehow explained his rudeness.
‘And Fredrik wanted to predict the date of my death.’
‘Well, let’s hope it won’t be any time soon.’ He pointed to the unlit cigar he held between his fingers. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘I actually enjoy the aroma of a good Cuban,’ she said, repeating a line from one of her film roles but with a little more swagger than she intended. She really had drunk too much.
‘Well, just in case others don’t.’ He gently took her arm by the elbow, guided her out onto the patio. ‘Smoking is a capital crime where I come from.’
‘Can I light it for you?’ she asked. ‘My father used to let me do that all the time. Do you mind?’
‘Be my guest.’
She put down her coffee on a patio table. Sal handed over the cigar, then produced one of those old brass petrol lighters, flicked the flame alive.
She put the cut end in her mouth, rotated the cigar slightly as she kissed and puffed the tip into an even burn. That woody, sweet-chocolate flavour immediately reminding her of her father. He might have been unable to recognise his own daughter, but he still smoked the occasional hand-rolled parejo. She blew on the lit end to make sure the burn had taken properly, handed it back.
‘I’m impressed,’ he said.
She dipped her gaze, delivered one of her famous smiles, then a slight dizziness took over and she had to grasp the patio rail for balance.
‘Are you all right?’ Sal asked from behind a cloud of cigar smoke.
‘I’m fine. My heel caught on the decking.’ She waved him away. ‘Bride or groom?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Who do you know? Caroline or Sir Lew?’
‘Caroline. I met her last week at a special screening at the British Film Institute. She thought I looked lonely.’
‘I can imagine. She’s always picking up strays.’
‘Your name came up in conversation.’ Sal moved in closer, leaned back on the patio rail, drew slowly on his cigar. ‘I saw you in that Japanese movie. What was it called again?’
‘Tokyo Winter.’
‘Yeah, that was it.’
‘It was awful.’
‘You were good i
n it though.’
‘That’s kind of you to say.’
‘You’ve pretty much been good in everything I’ve seen you. You usually make excellent choices.’
‘You know how it is. Tokyo Winter looked wonderful on the printed page. It just didn’t turn out that way on the screen.’
‘What are you doing now?’
‘I just finished something with Disney.’
‘Voice-over?’
‘A crab. Not actually high-end stuff.’
Sal smiled. ‘Money’s good though. Lets you take a bit more risk on the really good stuff.’
‘That’s a nice way of putting it.’ She glanced at his ringless fingers, tried to remember if Caroline said he was married. ‘What about you? What are you up to these days?’
‘You make it sound as if you know something about me. Is that true?’
‘I hold my hands up,’ she said, although she had no intention of doing so or she might fall over again. ‘I’m afraid I have to plead ignorance.’
He smiled again, a sort of lopsided roguish grin. ‘I’m over here producing a documentary for one of the US networks. On the birth of the silent film era. A lot of the pioneers were Brits, lived and worked down on the south coast way back at the turn of last century. Then there were all the studios that opened in London. It was a booming industry.’
‘It’s not what most people imagine, is it? They usually think. Silent movies. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Keystone Cops, Hollywood.’
‘Exactly.’ Sal sucked on his cigar, flicked it hard so the ash fell away on to the lawn. ‘The Brits made some excellent silent movies although many have been lost. I’ve been at the BFI all week viewing as many as I can fit in.’
‘I’ve only seen a few myself.’
‘I’m impressed you’ve seen any at all. Most people haven’t.’
‘That’s twice I’ve impressed you then. Are you staying here in London?’
‘No, I’ve shot all the London stuff. I’ve moved down with the crew to Brighton.’
‘Fun place.’
‘I guess. If you have the time.’
‘Surely it can’t be all work and no play?’
‘Well, being down there has given me the opportunity to do some research on a pet project of mine.’
‘Pray tell.’ She took a sip of coffee. It was stone cold. She pretended it wasn’t. ‘Or is it some great industry secret?’
Sal turned away from her, leaned on the railing, stared out to the garden. ‘Have you heard of Georgie Hepburn?’
Chapter Ten
The Hepburn Archives
Extract from an unpublished memoir
I met Max Rosen at a party hosted by a couple of communist writers in Soho. Actors, poets and authors crammed together in a small, stuffy flat, the air thick with smoke and seduction, Marxism and other radical talk. He told me he was a scenarist although nothing he had written had yet made it to the screen. When his unusual accent forced me to ask where he came from, he replied:
‘I am a Central European.’
‘What does that mean?’ I said, pursing my cigarette smoke into the air like a gasping fish. Oh how sophisticated I used to think I looked with my raised hemline, my fox stole, my cigarette holder and my red lipstick from metal tubes. ‘Don’t you have a country?’
‘My country keeps changing. Sometimes it is Russia, then Poland, then Germany. Then back to Russia again.’
Max was Jewish. I discovered later he had fled with his family to England prior to the Great War. He had only been fifteen at the time. He compensated for this lack of identity with a homeland by clinging to his ideas with an intensity, an intellect and a charm that was hugely seductive to someone like me. A young woman who at that time was devoid of any strong ideas at all except the one that made me want to be a highly successful actress.
‘I envy you,’ I said.
‘And why is that?’
‘The place where I come from never changes.’
‘We have nothing in common then,’ Max said with a smile. ‘But at the same time we share everything.’
‘What do we share?’
‘A need to rebel.’ He touched my bare arm and I felt my body jolt from the contact. I never stood a chance against him.
Max wasn’t particularly tall or particularly good-looking in any traditional sense. He boasted an unwieldy mass of thick dark hair that he wore longer than was the fashion in those days. His face was fleshy, his nose crooked from defending his ethnicity in several East End street fights, yet there was a brightness in his eyes that I found totally alluring. He also possessed a vanity that ensured he was always smartly dressed. Except for one peculiar tic in that the corners on the collar of his shirt were constantly bent back. Even if I personally ironed them down, by the end of the evening they had flicked upwards. It was as if there was some raging heat in his upper chest that forced the collar to curl, like paper singed by a flame.
Max was extremely talented, as desperate to be picked up by a major studio as I was. By the end of our first encounter at that Soho party, he told me he had fallen madly in love with me.
‘I shall write a scenario just for you,’ he declared. ‘It will be irresistible to the world. For it will be full of truth and passion.’
And that was what he did. He wrote the screenplay for The Woman Walks Free, a tense thriller about a woman charged with a revenge murder she did not commit (or did she?). The script was commissioned, Max insisted I be given an audition for the leading role with the director Cecil Benson and I got the part. The film opened to excellent reviews:
The harshest critics of the British silent film industry have consistently accused its output of being hastily assembled reels of bland and shallow rubbish compared to that of its American rivals. Well, criticise no more. Just take a stroll down to your local picture house to see Cecil Benson’s The Woman Walks Free. A taut, stylish drama with subtle and sensitive characterisation that will have you utterly engaged from start to finish. Georgina Hepburn is mesmerising in the title role. Don’t miss it. (The Stage)
Georgina Hepburn electrifies the screen in The Woman Walks Free. Move over Lillian Gish. Watch your back Mary Pickford. A new star is born on this side of the Atlantic. (Picturegoer)
Directed by Cecil Benson and based on a scenario by Max Rosen, The Woman Walks Free is brought to life by the stunning performance of Georgina Hepburn. Recommended. (Kinematograph)
I even made it into the gossip pages of The Tatler:
Ivor Novello, star of The Lodger, and Georgina Hepburn, who has been lauded for her debut success in The Woman Walks Free, seen here together at Royal Ascot with her beau, the scenarist, Max Rosen. Rumours abound that the happy threesome will be working together in Alfred Hitchcock’s next drama but for the time being it is the thrills of the Sport of Kings that attract.
I may have been denied the opportunity to play opposite Novello in The Lodger but I did get to mingle with him socially since he and I shared the same studio. On the day of the races, he came to collect us in a chauffeur-driven limousine. What a handsome, dapper and charming man he was. His success in The Lodger was just the icing on the cake of an already successful career as a songwriter, his popularity firmly assured by his song Keep the Home Fires Burning which had been the soldiers’ anthem of the Great War. He was courteous, generous and attentive to both Max and I on that day. We had our own private box where lunch and afternoon tea were served and the champagne was free flowing. Novello showed me how to place a bet and I actually won. To this day, I even remember the name of the horse. My True Destiny. It was one of those days that seemed to be sprinkled with magic dust, the conversation sparkled, luck sparkled, I sparkled. That was until Max and I were driven home in the studio limousine. Feeling quite drunk on all the champagne, cosseted in the luxury of the leather seats, I tried to snuggle up to him. But he pushed me away.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer.
‘It’s been such a wonderful d
ay,’ I said. ‘Don’t spoil it.’
‘Wonderful day? How can you say such a thing? When all we have done is condone the behaviour of the capitalist elite?’
‘We had a day at the races, Max. Don’t turn everything into a class war.’
‘Everything is a class war,’ he said.
‘Well, I had a lovely time.’
‘Gulping down champagne with Novello and the rest of the bourgeoisie.’
‘I think you are confusing your politics with your jealousy.’ I regretted these last words as soon as they had come out of my mouth.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he snapped.
‘Novello was just being attentive. He’s like that with everyone.’
‘His eyes. They were all over you.’ Max grabbed my upper arm, squeezed it tight till it hurt.
‘Stop it,’ I hissed. I looked through the glass partition to the driver but his attention was firmly on the road.
‘I will stop it when you promise you won’t do that again.’
‘Do what, Max? I didn’t do anything.’
He kept on squeezing until my eyes teared but I was determined not to cry out.
‘You made a fool out of me. That’s what you did.’ He pushed me away so hard that I fell over on my side, hitting my head against the door handle. I don’t know if I was knocked unconscious or not but the next thing I remember was Max’s arms wrapped around me, his fingers running lightly over the burgeoning bruise on my forehead, his mouth next to my ear as he cried: ‘I’m sorry, Georgie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Forgive me. Please forgive me.’
‘Get off of me.’
He did as I asked and I pushed myself upright until we were back sitting side by side, our bodies no longer touching. We stayed like that for a few moments, waiting for our breathing to subside, considering all that had just happened.
A Woman of Integrity Page 4