David Niven

by Michael Munn

  DAVID NIVEN

  The Man Behind the Balloon

  by Michael Munn

  This book is for Coralie who watched her father and David Niven play cricket.

  Contents

  A Brief Foreword

  1: In the Flesh

  2: A Father and a Farce

  3: Lovely Delicious Tarts

  4: Sandhurst

  5: Malta

  6: America

  7: Hollywood

  8: An Anglo Saxon Extra

  9: A Great Big Star

  10: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times With Flynn

  11: Wuthering Wyler

  12: Not a Mere Prop

  13: The Greatest Tragedy

  14: The Darkest Time

  15: A Cool Swede

  16: Any Old Rubbish

  17: Four Star

  18: Resurrection

  19: Europe

  20: The Secret Child

  21: A Sham Marriage

  22: No Reprieve

  23: A Life Given Up

  A Brief Afterword

  The Films and Television Work of David Niven

  Bibliography

  Index

  A Brief Foreword

  All, like me, who enjoyed The Moon’s a Balloon and Bring on the Empty Horses can still enjoy them as the most entertaining memoirs any actor – any celebrity – ever wrote. I think more than his films, those books are the main legacy David Niven left us. They are treasures and through them, so is he.

  This is a very personal biography and so reveals more about myself than I would normally do – but only as much as you need to know or might care about. I can’t be an objective author writing from a distance with this biography because I am a part of it. I couldn’t write it any other way. It may not seem apparent from the outset, but David Niven would approve. It was, after all, his request that I write it.

  CHAPTER 1

  —

  In the Flesh

  David Niven’s appearance was diminished. He was 72 and looked 10 years older. But then, he was a dying man. Motor Neurone Disease was slowly wasting and taking him.

  It was July 1982 and he’d come to London from his home on the Côte d’Azur to stay with Leslie and Eve Bricusse to watch Wimbledon on TV. I’d spoken to him earlier that day by telephone – his voice had sounded very slurred over the phone from the disease that was killing him – and he had said, ‘I need to see you, Mike. And bring a tape recorder.’

  So, of course, I went straight to London, found his Mayfair flat and was greeted by him more warmly than ever before. I had difficulty understanding some of what he said, but he was patient with me, showing that I had to be patient with him, and he took his time saying what he felt needed to be said. He told me he wouldn’t speak a great deal because it frustrated him that he couldn’t enunciate properly any more, but typical of him, he went on to talk as much as he ever did.

  He said he had to refrain from laughing because he had lost control over his facial muscles and laughing simply made him hysterical with tears running down his face. ‘My face becomes so contorted that I look like someone dying of laughter and crying in agony, so please, promise you won’t make me laugh,’ he said. Of course I promised him, and he proceeded to tell me about the bizarre treatments carried out by quacks on him that were so hilarious that we were soon both laughing. I saw what he meant by his face being contorted and how the tears flowed.

  When he gained control of himself, he said, ‘I’m sorry but I still have the need to laugh and make people laugh. I have had little talent as an actor, not much more as a writer, but I can tell a funny story, and I don’t want to lose that single talent.’

  He finally got around to the reason he had wanted to see me. He said, ‘You’re exactly what I need – a friend, an author and a priest.’

  I was glad he thought of me as a friend. I was honoured that he thought of me, with just one book published, as an author. I was surprised that he should suddenly think of me as a priest. I was, at that time, an Elder in the Mormon Church. I had been for two years. I no longer believe what I did back then – and that’s all that needs to be said about that. But my faith was important to him.

  I asked him what I could do for him, and he said, ‘I don’t know how long I have to live. Maybe only months. I don’t feel I want to meet my maker without having got a few things off my chest.’

  I told him that I couldn’t grant him absolution if that was what he was looking for, and that if he felt he needed forgiveness from God, then that was between him and his maker. He said in response, ‘It’s not finding absolution for my many sins I need from you.’ He said that he hoped his autobiography The Moon’s a Balloon would be the official record of his life but he had seen what they did to Errol Flynn with a biography that claimed he was a Nazi and a homosexual. He said, ‘I don’t want the same thing happening to me after I’m gone. I’m not a Nazi, I’m not a homosexual, I don’t take drugs, but I’m sure they’ll make something up about me. “Niven was born a woman. He took part in devil worship. David Niven killed JFK.” I need to set the record straight, and I feel that if you know, then you’ll be able to do two things for me.’

  I asked him what those two things were.

  He said, ‘If anyone is going to write about me after I’m gone, I want it to be you. The other thing I’m going to need are your prayers.’

  My immediate thoughts were that I felt hugely inadequate to meet the task of writing his biography, and I felt very humbled and privileged that he would ask me to pray for him. It was, in essence, his last confession.

  I’d first set eyes upon David Niven, in the flesh, in 1970. And I mean, literally in the flesh. He’d opened the door to his suite at the Connaught Hotel in London wearing just a small towel around his waist, revealing surprisingly muscular legs and arms. I had somehow always thought of him as skinny. But he was, even at the age of 60, very well built.

  ‘Do excuse me, gentlemen, I had to have a quick shower or I’d give off an awful pong. Been exercising, you see.’ And with that he did a little weight lifting movement, too delicate and comical to be convincing. ‘Pumping, you know,’ he said with a grin.

  The ‘gentlemen’ were me, just turned 18 years, and my boss, Ron Lee, managing director of Cinerama International Releasing Organisation which was distributing Niven’s latest film, The Statue. Although it wasn’t due for release until early 1971, Ron Lee thought that since Niven was in town for a few days, I should sit with him with my trusty reel to reel tape recorder and get a potted biography of him for publicity purposes. I was little more than a messenger boy and trainee junior publicist but Ron Lee was adamant that I should interview David Niven to produce a biography which, I realised long after, was never intended to be used but was one of Ron’s numerous ploys to get me introduced to film stars and directors to satisfy my movie mania. David was in on the ploy too, agreeing to be interviewed by me but knowing it was never going to be used.

  I became aware of movement within the suite and saw a half naked young lady tiptoeing around as she collected her clothing.

  ‘She’s the cleaner,’ said Niven, deadpan. ‘Only she makes more mess than she clears. Anyway, do come in, gentlemen.’

  We stepped inside the suite and David disappeared into another room to get dressed. The girl was hurriedly getting into her clothes, completely unconcerned by our presence, and by the time David reappeared, buttoning his shirt, she was dressed and fully made-up and ready to go.

  ‘I do hope you won’t be late, darling,’ he said to her.

  ‘No, my audition won’t be for another hour,’ she said, and left. I have no idea if she passed her audition, but a few years later she became quite a well known actress. No, I won’t name her.

  I knew that Niven was
married but having been in the film business for a year I was well aware that normal morals didn’t apply.

  Ron Lee presented Niven with a little present we had prepared. It was a framed sketch of him that I’d done in my spare time at my desk. I could draw, and did a number of sketches which Ron Lee used for publicity purposes, and when possible, he presented the originals to the subjects concerned. Niven appraised the sketch as though it were the best present he’d had in years. ‘That’s splendid. Really wonderful,’ he said, his teeth flashing from his broad smile. ‘It’s a fine work. You know, I like to draw a bit. Yes, this is really very good.’ It was good, actually.

  ‘Coffee, I think,’ he said, and he picked up the phone and ordered room service.

  Ron Lee said he couldn’t stay but assured David he was leaving him in my capable hands. My capable hands were shaking with nerves. I was anxious and I’d just seen a scantily dressed girl.

  After Ron Lee left, and while we were waiting for coffee to arrive, David said, ‘Well, young man, tell me about yourself.’ I was supposed to be interviewing him, but for a few minutes at least, he wanted to know about me. I gave him an extremely brief biography of myself and what my job was at Cinerama, and what my hopes and dreams were. He told me, ‘Never let anybody tell you that your dreams can’t be realised. If I’d listened to people, I would never have become an actor.’

  Back then, as now, my pleasure in meeting actors was because of my great admiration for their body of work or simply because of one or two of their films I particularly liked. I wasn’t actually what you would call a fan of Niven’s, and I found it difficult to name more than a handful of his films off the cuff, although, of course, I was very aware that he was a famous star. At the time I could only recall seeing him in The Guns of Navarone and 55 Days at Peking. I had seen The Charge of the Light Brigade on television but couldn’t remember him in it. But I had done my research and knew enough about him to be able to ask at least several reasonably intelligent questions.

  I was to discover that I didn’t need to ask too many questions. David loved to talk. And talk.

  Within a matter of minutes I had formed my first impressions of David Niven. He was a randy fellow and didn’t hide the fact. He had tremendous charm and a sense of humour. I hadn’t realised he would be so funny. I knew I liked him, and he seemed to like me – perhaps because I had sketched a decent portrait of him. I was also about to discover what a first-rate story-teller he was. My first impressions never changed.

  Between 1970 and 1982 I interviewed Niven seven times, and with each interview I learned more about him and, by pressing him further and harder, discovered the man behind his own myth. I also met with him often when he came to London on a social basis. Sometimes we had lunch, always on him, and I will always remember two memorable evenings out to dine with him and Ava Gardner. You learn a lot about people over dinner and lunch.

  I also watched him at work just for the pleasure of it, seeing him filming in London and on studio sound stages. I love seeing actors at work. He made it look very easy.

  I had learned from Ron Lee almost from my first day at Cinerama – my first day in the film business – to write down everything anyone said to me that I thought was of interest. I had remarkable recall when young and wrote down, at the earliest opportunity, just about everything any film star, director or writer ever said to me. For formal interviews I always used a tape recorder.

  Those interviews and conversations make up the main body of this book. The interviews are of specific importance. The first, in 1970, was almost an abridged ‘spoken word’ recording of The Moon’s a Balloon. When I met him in 1970 and got his life story over what turned out to be a period of three days, I didn’t know that he was in the final stages of writing his famous autobiography, and the many funny stories he had told in that book were ones he repeated for my benefit as easily as if he were reciting the lyrics of a well known song, sung so many times that the words flowed without even the hint of a stumble.

  The second interview in September 1975, when I had just started my journalistic career, was about his second book of memories and anecdotes, Bring on the Empty Horses. In 1976 I interviewed him on the set of Candleshoe at Pinewood Studios. The next year I interviewed him at the time of the paperback publication of Bring on the Empty Horses.

  Interviews with Niven were always wonderful, hilarious experiences. He related his many funny anecdotes which seemed to change from one interview to the next, but he just wouldn’t talk about films. He usually said, ‘I never talk about my films. That’s so boring,’ and then he’d always launch into one of his funny and probably not altogether truthful stories.

  But in 1978 I took him completely by surprise by telling him I didn’t want to interview him ever again. It happened on the set of the World War II drama A Man Called Intrepid when he found me with his co-star Barbara Hershey engaged in conversation in a sound stage complete with sets but bereft of cast and crew as it was lunch time. He seemed his old perky self at first and said, ‘Hello, old man, what brings you here?’

  ‘I’m interviewing Barbara.’

  ‘Not going to do one with me?’ he asked jovially. Obviously he expected me to say I would.

  ‘No,’ I said, and his face changed. He actually looked shocked.

  ‘Why ever not?’ he asked.

  ‘Because you won’t tell me the things I really want to know.’

  My response seemed to sink his spirits like a stone. I hadn’t realised it but he was in something of a depression and I wasn’t helping through what he perceived to be my lack of interest in him. But as a result of my frankness, he took me aside and after discussing the matter, he said that he would answer all of my questions if I interviewed him. So I agreed, and did two interviews with him, the first back at the Connaught Hotel that evening where he invited me for dinner, the second the next day back at the studio where I asked him if he would talk frankly about the war, something he had never done. But he did for me, partly, I think, because of the subject of the film he was making and also because I related some of the war stories director John Huston had told me.

  I think he had always thought of me, like he did a lot of journalists, to be a private audience for him to entertain with his many hilarious and often outrageous anecdotes. One of his favourite journalists was Roddy Mann who also happened to be his good friend. Comparisons of the stories told to different journalists often revealed different versions. His intention was simply to improve on any one story to get the biggest laugh. ‘I simply love making people laugh,’ he said to me once. ‘A day without laughing is a day wasted.’

  Even when cornered and forced to tell a more honest version of humorous events, he still made me laugh. But, although he didn’t seem to know it, Niven’s real world was every bit as entertaining and rich and fascinating as the one he’d invented.

  In 1979 I interviewed him when he was making A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. Because he was always so bright and cheerful, I challenged him to talk about the things that really made him angry – I called it Niv’s Most Angry Interview Ever, and intended to publish it in Photoplay. It resulted in the darkest interview I ever did with him. I decided to shelve it as I felt it wasn’t the right time to reveal some of his darker moments in a fan magazine.

  In 1982 came the last interview, done at his request, which proved to be the most revealing, shocking and emotional of all the interviews. It was a dying man’s confession.

  My first interview with him, in 1970, was by far the longest – it was spread over three days during which he told me the story of his life. On the first day, when I was alone with him in his suite, coffee arrived, I turned on my tape recorder, and we began.

  CHAPTER 2

  —

  A Father and a Farce

  According to my research material he was born in Scotland, so I began my interview with, ‘You were born in Scotland,’ which was hardly the most probing way to begin an interview, but it at least started at the beginn
ing.

  ‘Yes, old boy,’ he said. ‘At Kirriemuir. We moved to London after my father died in the Great War in 1915.’

  In one sentence he had moved swiftly from mentioning his place of birth to talking about his father’s death. I now realise he didn’t want to dwell on his place of birth. And with good reason. He wasn’t born in Scotland but in London and it was a source of embarrassment to him that he had been saying for years that he had been misleading everyone about his place of birth. In fact, he made no mention of his birthplace at all in The Moon’s a Balloon, published a year after I first met him.

  However, it was Niven himself who, in 1978, told me he was born in London. It slipped out over dinner at the Connaught Hotel, in a moment of reflection. He said, ‘I do love London. I suppose one never stops loving one’s first home.’

  I said, ‘I thought you were born in Scotland.’

  Without missing a beat he replied, ‘Oh, you don’t want to believe all that old tosh. That’s old, old studio publicity. They lied through their teeth. Thought it would make my life sound more interesting. Maybe it does. I don’t know.’

  I decided not to remind him that it was he who had told me that old tosh eight years earlier. It is true, however, that his early studio publicity played fast and loose with the facts of his life. They did with a good many film stars back in the 1930s.

  ‘Sometimes even I can’t tell which is real and which is studio tosh,’ he said.

  I think there was actually some truth in what he said about him not always knowing what was completely true, but he certainly benefited from playing fast and loose with the facts, making a fortune from writing the most entertaining autobiography ever penned by a Hollywood film star. David’s greatest talent was telling a good story and not letting facts get in the way, so he had often talked happily of his Scottish ancestry. The truth was, his father was born in London, and his mother, who was half-French, in Wales.