The Restless Years (1955-63)
Page 23
Their taste pitted against mine. And there were unforeseen disappointments. Where’s that nice honey-blonde girl who wore the red foxes? Oh, we lost her and Miss Smith, she couldn’t get her work permit. Good girls lost and horrors found.
August 19th
It was a beautiful day; so Kin and I motored to a small village near Sansaleto which I believe is called Tiburan. Here on a quayside with bobbing boats and white houses among the pines, high on the overlooking hillside, we had lunch. With the sunshine and gulls it was like any boat resort, particularly like the Isle of Wight, and I felt pleased with life.
Kin is really incredibly well informed on aspects of art history. He showed me how precise an instrument his mind is when he translated, with the help of a dictionary, a German paragraph by an art philosopher. He not only understood but memorised the passage which, doltish as I am, still baffled me when re-repeated. It was to do with the artist being an idiot if he ignored nature in his interpretation, but a mere copy of nature was of no interest.
Isobel Elsom had to be rigged out in a new costume. She pined for the spangles and the Greek band and was sad at having to look her own period.
Suddenly Jeremy Brett appeared from London bringing with him a whiff of home in the form of a package of my hair lotion from Eileen.
August 23rd
Hangman’s call. The Freeway successfully negotiated; already life going on in a big way at the studio. Coffee canteens very popular and a scene of enormous activity in the make-up department with rows of women being coiffed as grand ladies or cockneys.
Audrey appeared. ‘I was so excited I couldn’t sleep all night.’ The British Consul and about fifty photographers were signs of the great occasion.
August 25th
My only engagement was to go to dinner at Audrey’s for Mel Ferrer’s birthday party. Managed to find a pretty watercolour sketch of spring flowers to give him and went off in great spirits to enjoy myself. The party showed the best sides of everybody I met. They take their ‘private’ life very seriously and separately from their careers. This was a family party, only close friends. Their buddies included Cathleen Nesbitt, the Yul Brynner’s and Rupert Allen.
At a given moment during the dinner (served at a table down by the pool) there came across the lawns a torchlight procession of Shaun (2½), carrying a candlelit birthday cake, accompanied by Audrey and Mel’s children.
Audrey looked very gauche and plain, with huge flat feet and yet just as appealing as when she is a beauty. Talked to Yul about the loss of Gertie Lawrence and he told me that Rodgers and Hammerstein had been beastly to work for; that, after appearing for them for four years in The King and I, he never even received a word of thanks after the final performance; and that they’d tried to get rid of Gertie Lawrence. There is a clause in the contracts that if stars are ill for three weeks the management can give them notice. On the day that Gertie died they sent a letter demanding her resignation.
August 26th
Christopher Isherwood’s birthday party given by Bill and Paul, Dru. Gavin Lambert, Jim and Jack, and Gore Vidal — an amusing evening, excellent talk, the company eating sprawled on divans and on the floor. Hilarious and witty talk about Cole Porter burning himself and likening him to those Buddhist monks who commit suicide. Discussion of Mary Macarthy’s new book. Gore really very entertaining; success seems to have sweetened him.
September 1st
We talked about Alan Lerner’s possible project on Chanel; I had never realised how much time he had spent closeted with this lady talking about her life. She had been very frank, and disarming up to a point, but he said, ‘Now come off it — tell me what your life has really been like.’ It appeared she was most ashamed of her early poverty.
September 7th
Breakfast for Kin had been a drink of river water and some raisins. I had a few raisins but thought coffee would help. It took a lot of trouble on Kin’s part to boil the water. But he loves all these jobs and it is wonderful to watch him moving among the rocks with such grace. After the rites of washing and shaving in these conditions, we went on to another part of the forest to sit and muse and then I watched Kin fishing.
When Kin talks of everyday things, such as changing his clothes or washing, instead of quoting contemporary friends as most people would, he tells of Michelangelo who worked concentratedly and for such long periods at a stretch that when at last he pulled off his socks, much of the flesh of his toes came too. He talks of Leonardo’s jealousy for Michelangelo, and Beethoven’s for Mozart. It is very refreshing. He also has strange bits of knowledge about certain animals in the desert who cannot afford to spare the water from their body, and who urinate in the form of little pebbles. When discussing his family and relations he is interesting about their likes and dislikes which though similar take various forms.
September 8th
We discussed all the most suitable foods we could bring on a hike like this: those that would weigh the least and be most economical in space.
Kin had been reading Moby Dick for the third time. He said: ‘Ed Kaufman teaches one not just to run along with the story, not to anticipate the author, but to wonder where he is going, why certain key phases are there, and what they signify. Moby Dick is man’s attempt to find his soul, by fleeing from the land, going from an island to the sea, and after all these terrible things happen he feels cleansed enough to come back to earth to start life on land again. After the course with Ed, it’s like re-reading with new eyes.’
COLE PORTER
September 17th
Cole Porter had set himself on fire. He has taken six months to recover enough to ask people to dinner. Fred Astaire and I were his guests tonight. Cole sat looking like a little celluloid imp, with his one remaining leg propped up on a chair in front of him. He wore a surgeon’s white coat and was incredibly pink and clean. He looked rested and wide-eyed like a child, but the delicacy of his frame and the thinness of his hands is terrifying. However, his spirits seemed better than when I last saw him, when he had groaned and gone to sleep at intervals throughout the evening. Tonight he was quiet but alert and interested, and whenever he made a remark it was a pertinent one. Fred was at his nicest, talking about the problems of retirement. He is now sixty-four and too old to dance. He said that physically it was painful, that one was always being brave — ‘going on’ with a stretched cartilage or twisted fibre; that one was always kicking a piano or having an arm broken by a heavy lady partner. A lot of the talk was about new and old theatre.
Fred has weathered the years well, and I’ve never known him be less ‘cagey’. In the past he was always afraid to commit himself and was rather a bore, though devastatingly attractive. With no axes left to grind, he is calm and pithy, and tonight kept the conversational ball rolling.
Cole’s household is run like a hospital-cum-hotel, with a fleet of male servants who tend the patient with care and solicitude. Our dinner was first class. Stupidly I drank a second rum cocktail and knew this would give me a hangover. It did.
Cole enjoyed his evening immensely, so did I, and it was good to know that I need not have dreaded seeing him.
VISIT TO LAS VEGAS
November 6th
Italians are deliciously serene and vague. At the time we should have left the hotel (quarter-past-four in the afternoon) they were still sitting elegantly finishing lunch and talking of the English portraits and the French furniture in the Huntington Library.
However, we made the aeroplane. We were going to Las Vegas; six of us, my friends the Brandolinis, and other friends of theirs, an enormous amount of luggage and boxes of bijoux. The aircraft bumped its way over the desert, and we thought our last minutes had come. However, we arrived, and were met by three men who escorted us to a most luxurious suite in the Sand’s Hotel. We all exclaimed at the incredible, vulgar pretentiousness of the decoration: single beds, each the size of the biggest double; imitation trees, and pagodas in the sitting room; fruit and flowers from Frank Sinatra.
/> Then to our round of pleasures. We were thrilled to get to the slot machines, where in turn most of us hit the jackpot, and to eat a hamburger in a coffee-shop where two Lesbians were the centre of our interest: one with yellow hair and mascara eyelashes, dressed as a young boy in a grey-flannel suit. The fantastic display of lights down-town was beautiful in a vulgar way and a complete revelation to me. The colours were so translucent that the great walls of turquoise bulbs became azure. Broadway’s lights were nothing in comparison. Some of the gambling dens were decorated in the style of the 1890s and had little charm, and the strip where the great entertainers perform was not as vulgar as I thought it would be; it is like Miami Beach. However it is an extraordinary place. The Italians were like children and adored every moment of the long evening.
Jerry Lewis is a man with talent, no taste and mighty little charm, but we enjoyed his act. Bobby Darin, an ugly boy with a good way of singing, was our midnight choice. Although he went on, as usual, much too long, we stayed to cheer. Frank Sinatra is the greatest draw today; Belafonte second.
By 2.30 I had to tear myself away as, aching from every limb, I had to get some sleep before a 6.30 am call to get me back at the studio late in the morning. The trip was worth the effort and the expense. I would never go again. As the Brando’s said, it is now a démodé place to visit.
Hollywood: November 14th
Malcolm Sargent came with me to the film studio. He is not a friend, and in spite of his undoubted wit and vitality, his intelligence and drive, I do not like him. He is appallingly conceited and says things to honour himself that curl one’s toes. However, there is no denying his force and he was extremely understanding of all my problems and the obstacles that had to be overcome. He was taken round to see the various studio sights while I got on with the photographic chores of the day.
At dinner at Bina Rothschild’s, Malcolm Sargent dominated the conversation. When he taunted a woman by telling her all her stories were exaggerations, or plain lies, some tried to laugh. But I found him intolerable; yet just as I could bear it no longer, he would say something witty and profound. He is a disturbing influence.
Bina is sweet and well-bred. The atmosphere of her house is calm and cultured; but there isn’t much stimulus to be found here.
November 22nd
Betsy, my beloved secretary, came back with her nose twitching in its habitual way like a rabbit. ‘There’s the most terrible news. President Kennedy has been assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He was shot while driving in a motorcade.’ My blood turned to a pale liquid; I felt I was rushing through space down a lift shaft. The switch from life to death, the waste, the tragedy for his family, for the country, for the world, appalled me. There was a great sense of shock. I could only grieve for Jackie.
Jack Kennedy’s wit, style and courage, his kindness and feeling for humanity, and his sense of humour were his chief qualities. That this young man, at the height of his power, and holding out such promise for his country, should be violently struck down now was an unfathomable tragedy. We were all completely stunned.
NEW YORK
November 27th
I tried Greta again. She had been waiting for my call; then upset to find one of her receivers off the hook. ‘That’s life,’ she said. ‘No, it is too late now’; she’d had a glass of vodka — too late to dine.
November 28th
Greta, whom I’ve not seen for a year, seemed half her usual size, her body completely flat, her face shrunk, her hair shredded with grey. But she looked beautiful and she was as funny as usual. We decided not to walk in the crowded, ugly park but to relax upstairs. She talked of a gloomy summer; how as a result of her films being revived and going well, she was hounded by the Press. By degrees Greta became more cheerful, smiled, and said: ‘This needs a celebration. You have no idea how happy I am now.’
I was touched to see her high spirits. She reminisced about London, saw it all through the rosiest spectacles, the house at Pelham Place, the figs at Reddish; Mr Burton; the Election party. It was all so sweet. Greta said we had had a lot of fun, as much fun as possible for people of opposite sexes; perhaps she would come to England again. I was very touched and pleased.
London: November 29th
Real luxury to have Cornelius bring in a tray with blue and white china dishes containing yoghurt and charcoal biscuits served with the newspapers and Paris Match and New Statesman, etc. A new dimension of luxury to be among one’s own possessions.
Friends telephoned. Then lunch with Diana Cooper; a typical group — Caroline Paget, Lindy Dufferin, Moura Budberg, a nice person called Mossman from TV, Rupert Hart Davis; rough and wroughty conversation. Diana winking and joking about her old age; talk about the new President, the ghastliness of the Dallas police; poems of Thomas Moore recited — a treat. The food personal, original and economical; as usual melon and avocado and dill, and a fish pie. Then the big event of going down to Broadchalke.
***
Continue the journey through CECIL BEATON’S DIARIES with The Parting Years: 1963-74.
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THE PARTING YEARS: 1963-74
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Published by Sapere Books.
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Copyright © The Estate of Cecil Beaton, 2018
The Estate of Cecil Beaton has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales or purely coincidental.
eBook ISBN: 9781912546404
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[1] Tranby Croft, the Yorkshire home of the Wilson shipping family where, during a weekend party graced by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), Sir William Gordon-Cumming was accused of cheating. The result was a scandalous case in which the Prince had to give evidence.
[2] Hal Burton, who had been staying with me.
[3] Baron and Baroness Philippe de Rothschild.
[4] The oxen are now superseded by tractors.
[5] Her country house while Duff Cooper was the British Ambassador in France.
[6] Augustus so justly proud of his becoming First Sea Lord.
[7] The picture was never finished, but was sold after Augustus’ death to a tycoon in California.
[8] Count Brandolini.
[9] Countess Brandolini.