David Niven Parkinson: The Interviews

'Hello, G George. Are you all right?

'Are you going to try to land?'

Name's not G George, it's P Peter, Squadron Leader Peter D Carter.

No, I'm not landing. Undercarriage is gone. I'm bailing out presently.

-Take a telegram.

-Received your message. We can hear you.

-Telegram to my mother. Mrs Michael Carter, 88 Hampstead Lane, London.

-88 Hampstead Lane.

Tell her I love her. You'll have to write this for me, but I want her to know I love her very much.

I've never really shown it to her, but I always loved her, to the end.

Received your message. We can hear you. Are you wounded?

-Are you bailing out?

-What's your name?

-June.

June, I'm bailing out, but there's a catch. I've got no parachute!

David Niven, playing - better than most - the officer and gentleman.

He was a film star for 40 years, when movies were the most popular entertainment in the world.

He was an accomplished comedian, with debonair style and manners.

It was a role he played in real life, too, and with great success.

Naturally charming, he made you feel awkward by comparison.

He was so impeccably turned out, you wished you'd cleaned your shoes.

Educated at public school and at Sandhurst, he became a lumberjack, barman, waiter...

and even sold bootleg booze during prohibition, before starting his film career as a Hollywood extra.

In 1972, I asked him about his childhood and his first love.

-Does this programme get bleeped?

-No, no, you may speak freely.

Well, I know what you're getting at, Michael!

You can take the bleeps out! Anyway, I was sort of almost 15. That's my excuse, anyway.

We lived in London and there wasn't room for me in this small house.

So I was farmed out, into a room up at St James' Place. We lived in Sloane Street.

And so every night, after dinner, this creepy stepfather I had used to give me tuppence for the bus,

number 19, 22 or 30 up Sloane Street.

I used to get off at the Ritz Hotel and walk down to my ghastly burrow with a pot under the bed, o-oh!

I got more adventurous, and I would walk on up to Piccadilly to look at the lights, for Bovril and so on.

Then I realised that lots of girls were walking about at the same time.

Then I once saw a spectacular pair of legs and I followed this girl, just to look at her.

And she seemed to have an awful lot of men friends she would talk to.

So I went to my room, and I kept on thinking about this girl.

The next night I couldn't wait to get up to Piccadilly again.

Finally I saw her with a nice-looking man I thought was her father, a man in a dinner jacket,

and she took him into this little house in Cork Street.

And I hid and waited to see if she came out again, and she did, quite soon, actually!

So anyway, after that I really thought of this girl all the time.

I used to go looking for her at night.

One night she suddenly turned on me.

She was a lovely Cockney. "D'you want a piece, mate?" I didn't know what she was talking about.

"D'you want to come home with me?" I said, "Yes!"

So this dream took me into this flat. I thought this would be the ginger beer and gramophone record!

Then she gave me this ghastly book of photographs, and said "If you've any trouble, look at these first."

-Wa-aah!

-AUDIENCE CACKLES

Fifteen!

And then she appeared, the usual thing, pink shoes and nothing else, and I'm gibbering!

She said, "You can wash over there, dear." There was a kidney-shaped table full of blue fluid.

So I washed my hands!

I didn't know...! Terrible!

APPLAUSE

-No bleeps!

-No!

I think that's a marvellous introduction! Tell you what, it beats sex education films!

-Well, yes!

-It does!

-I know, reading your book too, that you became very fond of her.

-True.

It sounds corny and odd, but she really... I think I fell in love with her very much.

-And she used to come down and see me at school...

-LAUGHTER

She'd never seen the country before. She came from Hoxton.

She used to arrive with a ghastly tartan rug and potted shrimp sandwiches. Thank God for the rug!

-Did she meet any...? Wasn't it a bit dangerous? You were at boarding school.

-I was.

-Yes. I was at Stowe.

-Stowe!

-It had a marvellous headmaster, Roxburgh.

The cricket match was on. She was a real dish, a beauty. Lovely girl.

And Roxburgh came over, saw me sitting on the rug with this girl watching the cricket.

And... Oh, it was agony! And he said, "May I join you?" And I said, "Oh, sir, please. This is Miss..."

I won't give the name, even now.

She said, "You don't look a bit like a schoolmaster, do you, dear?"

-And he knew. He knew!

-Yeah!

-He knew.

With David Niven there was a remarkable difference between the confident man appearing on camera

and the gibbering wreck waiting to go on. I never met anyone so nervous about appearing on TV.

Half an hour before that interview, I heard him being ill next door.

When I went to see if I could help, he said he was always sick with fear before a public appearance.

We met again in 1975, by which time he was a literary celebrity as well.

APPLAUSE

Good evening and welcome.

If you were a writer and had a first novel published this week,

you could expect to sell 250 copies in hardback.

If you were an established writer with form, you might sell 600-700 hardback copies.

My special guest tonight wrote a book once. It was his first effort.

It sold 200,000 hardback copies, and a staggering four million in both hard and paperback.

Not bad for a book he described as the sort people read in the loo!

That book was called "The Moon's a Balloon".

The companion volume, "Bring on the Empty Horses", is just published.

The author, my guest, David Niven.

APPLAUSE

I mentioned the fact that you've written the sequel to "The Moon's a Balloon".

You're on record as saying before that you wouldn't write a sequel. What made you change your mind?

Well, the New York publisher, Putnam, after I got lucky with the first one, called me up.

I went to see him and he offered me a large sum to write something else.

And I said, "What?" And he said, "Anything you like."

So I said, "Fine."

And I grabbed the cheque!

And quickly spent it!

And about a year later he said, "How's the book coming along?"

And it went on like that, sort of cat and mouse, for quite a while.

Then I really had to sit down to it. I started to write a novel, and it was not very good.

Then I dipped into the bottomless pit of Hollywood, and thought I'd better write about something I know.

And, um, I wrote about ancient Hollywood, really...

and it's about Hollywood between 1935 and 1960,

coinciding with what is laughingly referred to as "the great days". I've tried to describe them.

The book is in fact basically a fond obituary for a lost society.

It's an obituary for that period, yes. But Mike, Hollywood today is booming again,

and I just came back from making a movie, and Hollywood is now...

In the book, I don't try to make any comparison between the two.

I settled solely for that period, and I was there, from extra on down.

At that point, it was controlled by about six moguls.

And it was full of immense personalities, enormous superstars and great writers.

Now it is full of great talent, new faces, and it's controlled by conglomerates and computers,

and powerful agents and lawyers. The same game, differently composed.

-Yes. Far less glamorous, actually.

We'll discuss the writers and stars you talk about in your book later.

I'd like to talk to you about being a writer, a change in your life.

At a late stage in your career you became a very successful writer.

I do envy you! Four million copies! Strewth!

Anyway... Envy, envy!

Do you find inspiration comes easily?

No, not at all!

I mean, first of all I've got absolutely no powers of concentration whatever.

If it's a nice day I can't write, because it's something else to do. And if it rains it's too dreary!

I'll make any excuse! If an aeroplane goes over, it's a bonanza. I'll watch that for hours!

And I beg my wife to bring awful news, a burst boiler or something!

Fianlly I put one little chair in the garden right up against a corner of a hedge,

so I can't even see the sky, and I sit there and do my best.

-Would you describe yourself as an author or an actor?

-Oh, an actor.

I regard this as a terrific...not a sideline, even, I'm an amateur.

I love doing it, if it's a success.

I was so happy with the earlier unexpected success, because I wrote it for chums for Christmas.

You've got an awful lot of chums!

"Bring on the Empty Horses" is an intriguing title for a book about Hollywood. Where does it come from?

I have to put a self-bleep machine into this.

-You don't have to.

-I do, I think!

-You do?

-Yes!

A great Hungarian director called Mike Curtiz was directing The Charge of the Light Brigade.

And his English was very peculiar, and Errol Flynn and I were standing under a rostrum - he was on it -

and the charge had taken place and, as you know, everybody was killed.

It was time 200 riderless charges arrived. So Mike with his megaphone says, "Bring on the empty horses."

So Flynn and I fell down. He turned on us, through the megaphone,

"You bums! You lousy, limey bastards! You jerks!

"You and your goddamn language! You think I know bleep nothing, and I know bleep all!"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You've been in Hollywood for 40 years, haven't you?

I've been in the business 40 years. I lived there for 25 years and I go back often.

What was it like being a young, struggling actor then in Hollywood, as you said, in the great days?

-You didn't walk in a superstar, did you?

-Oh, no. I was an extra, and that was hell.

What kind? Were you classified?

Yes, I was. There were the dress extras, who were very snooty.

They had clothes for every occasion. Ball gowns and race-going clothes and office clothes and all that.

They got paid 10 a day.

Which was about £3, I suppose.

Then there were the people who looked all right in uniforms and could walk properly.

The rest of us were the cattle. We were put in sort of ethnic groups.

You know, Asian, American red, American white, American black,

-and I was Anglo-Saxon type 2008.

-LAUGHTER

-Do you remember the first lines you spoke?

-Yes.

I remember the first three lines.

One was... I said, "Hello, my dear." No! "Goodbye, my dear."

to Elissa Landi at a railway station,

and I was such a smash, I was hired to say "Hello, my dear" to Ruth Chatterton at another station.

Then my big moment was in a Sam Goldwyn production with Miriam Hopkins and Edward G Robinson.

I was a cockney sailor, and I was thrown out of the window of a brothel in San Francisco

into three foot of mud. And I said, "Orl roight, I'll go!"

and Miriam and Joel McCrea and Eddie Robinson

and some donkeys and 40 vigilantes walked over the top of me.

An auspicious debut(!) One of the fascinating things that comes out in what you've written

is the amount of importance attached in those days in Hollywood

to publicity, to making yourself known.

-What kind of tricks did they get up to, publicity experts?

-Well, Mike...

In those days it was not great talents, it was great personalities.

And there were probably 40 people who could support any picture.

Today there are probably four.

And it was a case of publicity building up grains of sand

until they became sizeable hills that could be seen a long way off!

They got up to all sorts of tricks.

The first publicity man came from Barnum and Bailey's circus, a man called Harry Richenbach.

He was hired in the early days to publicise a Tarzan picture.

He booked a ground floor room in a hotel right opposite the theatre in New York where it would open.

A large packing case was delivered.

He pressed the bell and ordered 8lb of chopped hamburger for lunch.

So the waiter tottered up with this, and there was a large lion sitting at his table

with a napkin round his neck!

-So the waiter sued Harry Richenbach under immense publicity. That was the first publicity stunt!

-Really?

It backfired, as he got badly sued.

The next one that backfired was Mae West... Mae West backfired?! That sounds very strange!

Mae West was doing a movie called It Ain't No Sin.

And they had a brilliant idea and they got together 140 parrots.

They put them into intensive training, and the poor animals were taught to say, "It ain't no sin."

They were to be put on perches in hotel lobbies all round the city for the opening of the picture.

At the last minute, the Hays Office, the group in charge of Hollywood morals,

decided It Ain't No Sin was a dirty title, changing it to I'm No Angel.

The poor bloody parrots were taken away...

and given a crash course in this.

Then they were put on the perches and frightful noises came out and they were sent home in disgrace!

My favourite flop, though, was Walt Disney, of all people, with the opening of Pinocchio in New York.

He hired 12 midgets, and he dressed them as Pinocchio and put them up

on the theatre marquee to gambol about and cause a traffic stir.

Everything went beautifully until lunch time, when somebody sent them up a couple of bottles of bourbon.

The midgets started playing strip poker up there, and by 3.00pm they were all naked and belching

and screaming about on the top, and the fire department brought them down in pillowcases!

APPLAUSE

A drunken midget in a pillowcase!

I don't believe a word of it!

The other people, of course, who were around at that time...

It's absurd, isn't it?

..were, um, the gossip columnists.

As you say, Hollywood invented the publicity stunt. They also invented the gossip columnist, didn't they?

And you suffered, or lived through, the two most powerful women...

They were immensely powerful, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.

One was short and fat, the other long and thin, and both were mines of misinformation.

Between them, they covered every single newspaper in the USA.

They had millions of readers. They did daily profiles, and were very powerful.

I don't think they could destroy anybody who had great talent. They both hacked away at Marlon.

They had terrific favourites and terrific enemies.

Hedda's enemy was Orson Welles, because he made Citizen Kane.

Hearst, of course, her boss, was the prototype of that.

And Hedda loathed Chaplin, because she was very politically minded.

She thought he was very left wing, and a Commie, and all that stuff.

As she was dying, aged 82, she said, "I hear that SOB Chaplin wants to get back in the country. Stop him."

And died.

But they were very rough, and the studios used them.

I remember I was under contract to Sam Goldwyn for 15 years,

and something happened, a contract was up for renewal or dissipation,

and Goldwyn decided to soften me up for the kill,

to get me to settle for less money. I was rather popular, I thought, at the studio.

I picked up the paper and a headline said, "Niven unbearable, say fellow workers"!

It said I'd got so swollen-headed nobody could work with me!

-Louella put it in to help Goldwyn. These things happened.

-Did you have to be nice to them?

Well, you did. We were all whores, really.

It was much easier to go with them than against them. They could make it very uncomfy for you.

Did you ever manage to get back at any of them?

Well, we did a little thing once...

Ida Lupino was a great friend, and she was married to a very rough man, Howard Duff. She still is.

And Hjordis, my wife... We loathed Hedda and Louella at this point,

we'd had problems with them, all four of us had problems with them.

We had a little plan, and we had dinner together.

I called Ciro's, a chic nightclub, and booked a table for two.

The head waiter said, "Oh, yes, Mr Niven, just you and Madam?"

I said "Just give me a quiet corner table." Then Ida and I arrived.

Terrific twittering, cos there were spies everywhere for the columnists, in the brothels and the hospitals!

Immediately, next thing I knew, about 15 cameramen arrived, we're sitting with Lupie nibbling my ear!

Right in the middle of all this, in come Howard and Hjordis, and go to the far side of the dance floor.

Lupino overdid it, she says, "You must flee!" You must flee(!)

And then Howard, who was reputed as a brawler, you know, now he spotted us, kicked over his table.

Crash! Everybody in the place is watching. Everybody waited. And I pretended to be a bit gassed.

I got up from mine, we took our coats off, big deal!

All the photographers get into position for the kill. The dance floor is cleared, and we circle.

The classic western ending!

Finally we grabbed each other, kissed and waltzed round the room!

APPLAUSE

Can we talk about some of the great figures you've worked with?

Take your pick. Gary Cooper, you worked with him.

-Did you ever feel in awe of any of these people when you were young?

-Oh, yes. They were superstars.

The word is used a lot now, but these people really were.

Coop, Gable, Bogey... They used to get 20,000 letters a week each.

They were gods, really, because there was no competition.

No television, no bingo halls, no night baseball, nothing but movies.

200 million people each week paid to see Hollywood movies. Of course one was in awe.

The first big movie I was put into was a picture with Lubitsch, the master director,

directing Cooper and Claudette Colbert. And I was terrified.

Lubitsch was a wonderful little man. He got me into his office and acted out my part for me. Brilliantly!

And I collapsed. He said, "What's the matter?" I said, "I can't possibly do that!"

He said, "Are you scared of me?" I said, "No. Yes! I'm terrified!"

And he said, "Well, let me tell you something. Cooper is terrified of Claudette. It's his first comedy.

"Claudette is terrified of Coop, because he's such a natural actor.

"I'm terrified of both of them!"

So he said, "You will be on the set for a week before you start work,

"so you'll get to know everybody and will be part of the family." They took all that trouble.

-Was he a natural actor, Cooper?

-Oh, so natural! He was the most relaxed man I've ever known!

After a take, he'd just go to sleep on the floor, or something!

I did love him. I wish I could have learnt his calm. He had tremendous concentration, drawing attention.

-Brando has it, too.

-Yes.

-You always look at Brando, cos he concentrates.

I asked Coop about it. I said, "MrCooper,"- Icalledhim that -

"How do you concentrate?" He said, "Concentrate? I'm just trying to remember what the hell I say next!"

You also knew Garbo very well, too. How intimidating was she?

Well, she was terribly intimidating. For instance, Groucho Marx, she straightened him out.

She was walking round the lot, and I'd see her in the distance,

with big floppy hats and a running outfit. She was approaching when Groucho, with that crouch and cigar,

came along and looked under the hat.

He found he was staring into Baltic blue eyes and he panicked and said,

"Pardon me, ma'am, I thought you were a guy I knew in Pittsburgh!"

But, you know, she was marvellous. Years later I bought her old house. We lived there happily for 15 years.

One day a mutual friend appeared at our house, and behind him was Garbo.

I nearly fell through the floor.

She said, "I hope you don't mind me coming, but the happiest days of my life were spent in this house.

"I would love to see it again." My wife is Swedish, so they became chums. She was always there.

We went on a yachting trip once, Hjordis and I, and Garbo and a man friend who was supposed to navigate.

We headed for Catalina Island, which is 40 miles off into the Pacific. Miss it, you go to Japan!

So, we set off, and something went wrong with the navigation. The man got at the schnaps!

He said, "Don't worry! It'll be all right." The sun was going down. He said we'd see the island's outline.

The sun sizzled into the sea with no sign of the island. We were lost.

He disappeared below, made lots of calculations, then said "We're nine miles north of the Grand Canyon!"

So it was a fraught weekend. Then the lavatory broke. On a small boat you get to know people! You would!

You should. And she was marvellous. She volunteered for all the dirty jobs, and everything.

But at the end of it, I didn't know her any better. It was six days.

-Except that I knew she did not have large feet!

-That was it?

-Actually, she had beautifully shaped feet.

But she had an awful habit of encasing them in big brown loafers. They looked like landing craft!

Bob Taylor did Camille with her.

He said it was awful. He knew... She was wearing these marvellous crinolines, magnificent hairdos,

"But underneath," he said, "I know she has crummy old slippers on!"

It's a great mystery - did she ever tell you why she gave up acting?

She did. I finally had the guts to ask her. She came to live in France near us, and we saw a lot of her.

One day she came over for lunch.

We were going to have lunch in the garden and it rained.

So instead of having lunch AT the table, we had it underneath!

It was very cosy! So I asked her. I finally said, "Why did you give up movies? There was no reason to."

She thought for so long, I thought I'd dropped some horrendous brick.

She said, "I'd made enough faces." It didn't help me any further forward.

I think really what happened was she got right to the top and knew there was nowhere to go except down.

How difficult was it to remain unimpressed by it all, having made it? Was any advice offered to you,

which kept you sane and a survivor in Hollywood?

Gable was a great chum of mine. He was a real feet-on-the-ground man. We used to go fishing together.

He always said, "If you ever get to the top, be tough with the brass, with the moguls.

"Don't forget it's a terrifying scenario we're taking part in. And we're gonna get it in the end.

"Everybody expects that." He used to say, "I personally take Spencer Tracy's advice.

"Get there on time, know the jokes, take the cheque and go home."

-Yes. And that's the way...

-I think, Mike, I WAS getting out of control,

because it's very difficult not to believe your own publicity. There was so much of it!

I think I really was saved by the war.

I came back here for 6½ years and was brought down to earth smartly.

But did it put an impossible strain on your married life, for instance?

Our marriage has lasted for 20 something years, thank God.

It put an extraordinary strain on, because Hjordis is very beautiful. She was the top model in Sweden.

A very beautiful woman should immediately - this is a tiny example - attract the attention

if a couple walks into a room or a restaurant.

But if she walks in with a dreary old bulldog face that's been around for 500 years, she gets it second.

Or table-hopping, when people are plucking at you in Hollywood, "What about...?" Left there standing.

-It got to such a point, she left.

-Really?

-She said, "I've got to find out if I'm anything any more."

This was after years of marriage. She took off for four months.

And I realised a horrendous thing, that I was taking the most important thing for granted.

-Thank God, we got the show on the road again.

-Another thing, David.

The other thing that must strike you, and I wonder if it worries you, is lots of people you knew are dead.

Oh, yeah?! Yes!

-It's true! Gable, Flynn, Bogey, all those great stars...

-I feel I'm being measured for something!

I once said that to Noel Coward.

I said, "I've got to the point in my life when all my chums are dying like flies."

He said, "Personally, I'm delighted if mine last through luncheon!"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

No, but I know exactly what you mean. It's horrible to lose one's friends in any walk of life.

The trick is not to live in a cocoon of one group of friends, all of the same age.

I'm lucky to have younger friends, who I hope will see me through!

-What plans do you have?

-What?!

-For the future?!

-Not for seeing it through! Working, I meant!

-Oh, thank God!

-I wasn't making a proposition!

-I thought Mormons were coming for me!

Let me think. I go to New York in two or three days. Then I go on to Hollywood to make a movie.

I made one last year. I make, usually, one a year, to keep the sheriff away.

I made one in Malaysia last year, Paper Tiger, with the most sensational Japanese boy of nine,

who learnt to speak English for a very long part in eight weeks.

And we worked in Malaysia, where it was very strange because, you know,

they've been having a little problem there. It's a picture about a political kidnapping.

The chief of police of Kuala Lumpur said, "I think this is a dangerous movie for you to make out here.

"So I'm going to put a 24-hour guard on some of the actors."

We were living in the Kuala Lumpur Hilton. The day we arrived they killed the chief of police!

It made me very nervous indeed, I can tell you! It's a lovely part of the world, terribly hot.

It was 137 degrees - it's 100 miles north of the equator - in August. 97% humidity.

And we had 14 nationalities in the crew and actors. Germans, Japanese, Americans, English, everything.

Spanish cameraman, Malays, Indian - unbelievable.

And two or three lovely limeys.

One was from Battersea. I can't say his name. He'd never been out of England. Not to the Isle of Wight!

He appeared in this terrific heat with a sweater on and a cap!

And he looked round and he said to me,

"Turned mild, hasn't it, David?"

-Don't drink that. The fly's gone into it! The fly's gone into your water!

-You're right.

-Put it on the floor and I'll stamp on it!

-It's a kamikaze!

-So, anyway,

this fellow, the heat finally got to him!

He said, "I think I'll take a short zzz in the jungle, David. I found a nice little hole behind that tree.

"Keep an eye on things. If they need me..." He went. He emerged two hours later. He'd aged 50 years!

I said, "What happened to you?" He said, "Oh, my Gawd! There's been a dreadful incident, David!" "What?"

"Well, I woke up with a dreadful weight on my chest." "What?" "I looked down, it was an anaconda!"

Anaconda, that's the snake that eats the pythons! 35ft long, yellow.

He said, "It took about 25 minutes to go past!"

LAUGHTER

-The joys of filming!

-You asked me what I was going to do next.

-Yes.

-New York, California,

I just came back from making a Walt Disney movie with a skunk that goes "Prft!" every time it looks at me!

And a bulldog that had emphysema! It was great fun!

Well, we've reached the end, sadly. It goes so quickly with you.

Normally, if somebody can sing a song, they sing a song.

Last time you were on the programme, you told a joke at the end.

-If you recall, it was a rather risque joke, which went down well, about an orang-utan...

-Yes!

In fact, it was so popular we repeated it.

So, as a party piece, do you know any similar jokes?

I could give you, um, I could give you a joke about a prawn,

or a joke about gambling.

-AUDIENCE CACKLES

-Let's have the prawn joke.

Then if that doesn't work, we'll have the gamblers!

The prawn fell in love with a crab.

And it was mad about this crab.

And it said, "Look, I'm mad about that crab that lives up round the big rock at the end."

And the prawn's father was furious. He said, "You can't be seen with a crab! Ridiculous! They go sideways!

"Tell the crab it's finished."

The prawn went to the crab and said, "Crab, I'm terribly sorry, it's off.

"My father says you look ridiculous going sideways, and as a matter of fact, you do!" The crab was furious.

It said, "I'll be down this evening. I'll have a seaweed and soda with your father." And went off.

Now, at 6.00pm the prawns were all sitting around their rock. The weed opened and in came the crab.

To everybody's amazement it came in straight, like that. The prawn said, "Crab! You're going straight!"

The crab said, "Shut up, I'm pissed!"

RAUCOUS LAUGHTER

I spoke to David Niven for the last time in 1981,

when he was suffering the first symptoms of motor neurone disease, which led to his sad death in 1983.

He was all those things we tend to make fun of nowadays - courteous, charming, polite, well-spoken.

In more innocent times, he came to represent everything upright and decent about the true Brit.

No matter how cynical you are, it was a very attractive package.

Next week, I shall be recalling encounters with Kenneth Williams, on Sunday at 10.55pm. Goodnight!

Subtitles by Judith Russell BBC Scotland, 1995