David Niven

by Michael Munn

  The public disagreed with the critics and the film made a nice profit of $27 million.

  Despite his displeasure with his first Disney film, David made another for that company, Candleshoe, shot in England at Pinewood Studios in 1976 where I interviewed him. He seemed a lot happier on his second Disney film and was able to make changes to some of his dialogue, some of it with my help. He also enthused about one of his co-stars: ‘We have this wonderful young actress called Jodie Foster [then 14 years old]. She told me that she really prefers to work with adults rather than children but only if they remember their lines.’

  He also enjoyed the challenge of playing several parts – a butler, an Irish chauffeur, a Scottish gardener, a cook called Miss Oglethorpe and an old colonel. He hoped it would be likened to Kind Hearts and Coronets. It wasn’t even close.

  In October he finished Candleshoe and went to Lo Scoglietto on the Côte d’Azur and began work on his next book; this time he was determined it would be a novel.

  He hit the promotional rounds again in England in February 1977 with the paperback publication of Bring on the Empty Horses. He was still doubting his abilities as a writer, and said, ‘I’ve done so well so far but what if the next book is a disaster?’

  He admitted that he had come to hate the promotional tours. In fact, I noticed he was a lot less jovial than usual. It might be that he was getting old and was feeling his age and resenting it. There was definitely a loss of the old Niven sparkle.

  Much of it was, of course, to do with Hjördis. His friends continued to blame her for all their troubles. David knew that he had to bear much of the responsibility and he tried, periodically, to do something about it, but Hjördis, by her own admission, was out of reach. ‘By the late 70s I was so withdrawn from everything,’ she said. ‘I felt lost. I felt empty. If I had been brave enough I would have killed myself. And I didn’t want David to be a widower a second time. I did love him. I think he loved me. But we couldn’t reach each other. No, he couldn’t reach me. I was out of reach. It would have been better if he had left me. I wouldn’t have blamed him.’

  Life had become so intolerable that David actually considered killing her. He told me in 1980, ‘I came home one night and found her drunk in the bath, unable to get out. I thought she would drown. I thought about pushing her down. Oh God, I wanted her to die.’

  ‘Are you glad you didn’t do it?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh God, yes! How could I live with that?’

  David finally made up his mind to leave her. He told me, ‘There was someone I thought I could be happy with.’ He said he postponed telling her he was leaving until after he had finished his next film, Death on the Nile. He flew to Egypt in October 1977 to make the first film in which Peter Ustinov, Niven’s old friend, played Hercule Poirot.

  ‘Egypt can be a wonderful, beautiful and fascinating country,’ he said. ‘But what was so awful were the flies. They are everywhere…all the time. You had to stay out of the sun because it got to around 130 degrees. Everyone was coming down with tummy trouble. I’d been prepared for that and ordered hampers from Fortnum’s to be flown to Cairo. It didn’t help. I was riding a camel when I felt suddenly very ill. A very inconvenient place to be when you suddenly need to rush to the nearest toilet – on a camel.’

  While he was in Egypt, Kristina, aged 16, drove her boyfriend’s BMW along an icy road and crashed into a tree. The boyfriend was unhurt but Kristina suffered a smashed skull, a broken leg and a punctured lung. She was taken by helicopter to Lausanne General Hospital where she slipped into a coma which lasted eight days.

  As soon as David heard the news, he flew home. Hjördis recalled,

  I had never seen David so distressed. He was terrified she would die. He would have felt the same if it had happened to Fiona, but Kristina was his blood daughter. In just a week he lost much weight. He wasn’t the same man for a while. He didn’t tell jokes. He didn’t tell stories. Normally, if there was a crisis, he’d have the old British stiff upper lip. But this was different.

  I too was afraid she would die. My only way to deal with it was to withdraw ever more into myself, wherever that was – it was a dark, lonely place; I hated it there. And I drank and drank.

  We stayed at the Beau Rivage Hotel in Lausanne. Some friends came over to be with us. I’m afraid I was too drunk to hardly notice them.

  David wanted to hold me. Or he wanted me to hold him. I couldn’t. I was unable to hold him and give him the comfort he needed. I needed comfort too but I was out of reach.

  From the distance I put myself, I saw him become a frail old man. When he knew she would live, there was then the fear she would be crippled.

  After Kristina came out of the coma, she was operated on to relieve the pressure of blood on her brain. She also received treatment from an English physiotherapist, David Bolton, who was practising in Gstaad.

  David still had to finish Death on the Nile and returned to Egypt. Peter Ustinov recalled in 1984 that when he saw David ‘he was suddenly very frail. I’d never seen him like that. He always looked so healthy and strong, even as he got older. But Kristina’s dreadful accident made him age 10 years and he lost so much weight.’

  When filming was over, David flew Kristina to the London Clinic in December for further treatment, and he returned to her every weekend. He just sat with her and talked and listened to her. She had difficulty speaking at times, often repeating herself, and her memory played tricks on her. She became impatient with herself but he remained calm and unendingly patient.

  Kristina did recover, but to reconstruct her face she underwent 22 further operations over the next few years.

  David had been set to leave Hjördis after finishing Death on the Nile, but he found he couldn’t do it. ‘When Kristina was badly injured, that stopped me leaving her,’ he told me.

  Kristina’s accident had a positive effect on Hjördis. She said, ‘After Kristina’s accident I managed to pull myself together for a while.’

  David Niven Jnr had become a film producer and had a hit with The Eagle Has Landed. Roger Moore said, ‘I told David Jnr to stop being a ponce and to give me and his father a job.’ Moore didn’t really need a job. He was doing very well as James Bond, but I think he felt Niven Snr could do with the work to help him get over Kristina’s accident.

  The film David Jnr produced was Escape to Athena, a comedy action World War II film in which Moore played the German – or rather Austrian – commandant of a Nazi prison camp in occupied Greece, and Niven was an archaeologist keen to investigate local treasures.

  It was filmed on Rhodes early in 1978. Telly Savalas, Elliott Gould, Richard Roundtree, Stefanie Powers, Claudia Cardinale and Sonny Bono were also in the film, but all to no avail. As Martyn Auty wrote in the Monthly Film Bulletin, ‘Performing as though they had met up by chance on holiday, the clutch of box office stars do what they can in a situation where they are the stand-ins and the stuntmen (especially the motorcyclists) dominate the screen.’ The film was a flop.

  In June David and Hjördis threw a big social event, and Hjördis really had to make a huge effort to be a hostess and not get drunk. She recalled,

  We had a big party for Princess Caroline [of Monaco] the day before her marriage to her boyfriend [Philippe Junot]. I was friends with Grace and I knew she and [Prince] Rainier detested their son in law.

  So many people came to the party. They were all David’s friends.

  Cary Grant was interested in a bronze statue of my head which was at the end of our garden. He said, ‘I see you have been immortalised.’ I said, ‘It’s just a small thing but maybe it’s the only thing that will remind people of me.’ He said that I would be remembered as Mrs David Niven. I said, ‘Do you think that is enough?’ He said, ‘No, frankly I don’t. But you and David have been married a long time now. I don’t know many in Hollywood who have stayed happy for so long. God knows I haven’t.’

  So I said that if he thought our marriage was a happy marriage, then he didn’t see wha
t everyone else saw. Then he said he did, but he didn’t wish to appear rude. He was trying to be considerate, and I knew he was. He said that I had everything and what more was there? I said, ‘I just want to be happy all the time. I want to be well, I want to be unafraid, I want to be someone else. So, as you can see darling, I can never have what I really want.’

  Among the many guests there that day were Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra. I asked Ava what she thought of Hjördis. She said,

  I don’t know Hjördis that well, but I could see that she was unhappy. A lot of David’s friends hate her. I don’t hate her. I don’t have any great feeling one way or the other for her. Frank was a little cruel about her. He said, ‘I can’t stand a dame who can’t hold her liquor.’

  I tried to talk to her at the party she and David had for Princess Caroline. I think she put up a barrier. I said to her, ‘Look, honey, why don’t you just tell me, girl to girl, what your problem is.’ She said, ‘Why would you care?’ I said, ‘Do I look like someone who has the right to judge you? I’ve screwed up plenty and, honey, you looked like you’re screwing up. I’m a screwed up expert.’

  She laughed, and she started to talk to me. She didn’t sleep with David any more, and she no longer dressed to excite him. She said she was afraid of getting old and ugly, that she was an alcoholic. She hardly ate. I think she had an eating disorder. She certainly was slim then. Too thin. And she wore heavy make-up. She complained about giving him the best years of her life and she hadn’t even been able to have a child of her own or a career. She had nothing that was her very own, she said. I didn’t have any advice for her. I just thought it was important to listen.

  She said to me, ‘You’ve known David for years. Could you be married to him?’ I said, ‘Honey, I can’t be married to anyone.’

  I thought she tried hard to be a good hostess. She talked to a lot of people. She showed them her gardens. David told me that he thought she was a manic depressive. I think she might have been. She wasn’t manic that day. Maybe she was on pills, and she was certainly drinking. But she wasn’t drunk.

  In September, Kristina was well enough to go back to school, and David flew to London to start work on a TV mini series, A Man Called Intrepid. It was about Sir William Stephenson who headed the joint Anglo-American intelligence agency British Security Coordination in New York during World War II. He was given the code name Intrepid.

  Over dinner with him one night back at the Connaught Hotel, he talked about Kristina and about the progress she had made. He had changed dramatically from the self-assured actor full of bonhomie I had met in 1970. His hands shook just a little and he certainly looked physically diminished. While the film was being made, he flew to Geneva each Friday to be with Kristina. He was devoted to her.

  I think it was during the filming of A Man Called Intrepid that Lynne Frederick persuaded me to fly over with her to the house she and Peter Sellers had bought in Switzerland. We went to eat out with a number of well known personalities and I saw Hjördis sitting on her own in a corner. Peter Sellers suggested I ignore her, but I went over and sat with her. I think she realised who I was, but I couldn’t guarantee it. She took my hand and kept hold of it, and she talked about nothing and everything, all garbled nonsense. But I stayed with her for about half an hour until Lynne prised me away, telling me that Mrs Niven was drunkenly flirting with me. I don’t think she was flirting at all. She just seemed very sad and desperate.

  When I met Hjördis again in 1986, she remembered me as the young man who held her hand and listened to what she had to say. ‘I must have been very drugged,’ she said. ‘People would think I was drunk, but sometimes I just dosed up on sedatives and tranquillisers.’

  I asked her if she could remember what she was doing there all alone, and she said, ‘I don’t know. I just remember you were there, and that meant a lot to me.’

  Filming of A Man Called Intrepid was completed in Canada, and then Niven returned to Château d’Oex to try to continue writing his novel which he had stopped work on during Kristina’s crisis.

  The following year, 1979, he complained of getting continual cramps in his right calf and consulted physiotherapist David Bolton who had treated Kristina. Niven began a strict daily exercise regime, often walked vast distances, and was optimistic that the cramps would subside.

  Just as he was again convinced that his acting career was over, he landed a leading role in a British film, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, filmed in London in April and May. I spent time with him, doing a couple of interviews with him – including the ‘angry interview’ – and just watching him at work.

  He played the mastermind behind a gang of bank robbers. I told him the title sounded more like something Anna Neagle would have made for Herbert Wilcox in 1950s. That made him laugh.

  Later in 1979 he was back in England to make Rough Cut for director Don Siegel. He played a Scotland Yard detective, while Burt Reynolds played a jewel thief. I knew Don Siegel a little, having spent time with him during pre-production so I could interview him at length about his career, and he allowed me down on the set to watch some of the filming. I thought everything seemed to be going along well enough and David and Burt Reynolds were getting along. But after the film was finished David discovered much of his part had been cut, and he received only third billing below Burt Reynolds and the leading lady Lesley-Anne Down. He sued the producer, David Merrick, for breach of contract and it was settled out of court for $125,000. ‘Not bad money for being shafted,’ David told me.

  Niven’s next film job was almost something of a favour to him. The Sea Wolves was an attempt to follow up on the success of The Wild Geese by producer Euan Lloyd and director Andrew V. McLaglen. They wanted Richard Burton and Roger Moore from The Wild Geese to star together again, but Burton turned the film down, so Lloyd and McLaglen cast Gregory Peck in his place. Peck wanted Niven in the film, but David wasn’t having any of it. ‘I didn’t fancy the idea of going to India where they were going to shoot much of it,’ he told me. ‘So I said “No.” Roger, bless him, told Euan Lloyd to make me a better offer. Roger knows I can’t resist money, and they came back with a much better deal and I said, “Okay, but if I get sick, I’m suing you.”’

  He was paid $500,000 plus $1,500 a week expenses. And he got sick. They all did. ‘The whole cast came down with bloody stomach troubles,’ I was told by Brook Williams who was in the film.

  The Sea Wolves was based on the true story of a group of ex-soldiers on a mission to blow up German ships in Goa, India, in 1943. It was November when they began filming in Goa, but it still got unbelievably hot, often reaching 140°F (60°C).

  I interviewed Roger Moore when he was promoting the film, and he said, ‘It was enormous fun to do. We were all great friends. There was Greg and Niv, and Trevor Howard, Patrick Macnee, and me and a dozen or so other great character actors.’

  But fun was not had by all. David hated Goa and begged to be allowed to return home for Christmas. Euan Lloyd gave him permission provided he did no skiing. After Christmas, Niven returned to Goa and took to taking long walks along the beach to strengthen his legs which were becoming increasingly weak.

  Filming ended in February 1980 and he hurried back to Château d’Oex and immediately went skiing but found that he was so out of breath he had to lie down and rest.

  On 1 March he turned 70 and threw himself a birthday bash at the Eagle Club to which he invited many guests. Hjördis didn’t join them. She remained at home, scared to go anywhere and probably too drunk to care. She had not only gone back to her old ways, she was worse than ever.

  In desperation David sought outside help. ‘I asked the advice of the wife of an old army friend because she had had a problem with alcohol. The trouble is, Hjördis won’t admit she has a problem, so she can’t be helped.’

  In April 1980, Niven sent his unfinished novel to his publisher, Doubleday. The book wasn’t good but Doubleday hoped it could be improved with editing. They met Niven’s
demand of an advance of a million and one dollars. David explained that the extra dollar was so he could tell everyone that the deal was for more than a million. Doubleday expected the name of David Niven alone to ensure it sold well. The deal included a second book.

  On 24 July 1980 Peter Sellers died of a heart attack. He and Niven had remained friends and so his widow, Lynne Frederick, asked David to deliver the eulogy at the memorial service in London at St Martin-in-the-Fields in September.

  Kristina, now 19, left school and started a year-long fine-arts course at Sotheby’s in London. David went with her to London to help find her a flat, and then he flew back to the Côte d’Azur.

  On a trip to New York that year to see the editors at Doubleday, he was struck by a terrible pain in his leg as he walked along Fifth Avenue. He underwent various tests in London but nothing wrong was found, so he returned to Switzerland and there discovered that although he could still ski he couldn’t raise his right heel.

  In January 1981 he flew out to Los Angeles to speak at a ceremony at the American Film Institute which was giving a Life Achievement Award to Fred Astaire. David’s voice was slurred and he apologised to the audience but he couldn’t understand what was wrong. He knew he wasn’t drunk.

  He finally finished his book in February 1981 which he called Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly; it is something a little girl once said to him as he left the West Indies. It was set during World War II and told of a young Polish American who joins the RAF, goes to Hollywood and becomes a film star. It was semi-autobiographical and very crude. David was not a good novelist, but he was a good story-teller.

  In May he flew to New York to consult an orthopaedic surgeon who said that he might have muscle problems due to a pinched nerve from a very old back injury. He underwent an extensive physiotherapy course in England.