Living With Miss G (18 page)

was!
Sammy’s further explanation was that he rang MGM’s publicity
department offering apologies and was told that Ava was ignoring the entire
episode and that if he was thinking of suing
Confidential
he should think again
because a lawsuit would only attract more disgraceful publicity.
Sammy’s first worry was quickly removed when Frank arrived at the
hospital bearing gifts and kind words. He believed Sammy’s denial of any
implication. There was no way Sammy could be involved in such a stunt. Miss
G also gave Sammy benefit of the doubt and sent him a get-well card. But the
more she thought about it, the more she began to change her mind. The
divergence of opinion between Frank and Miss G soured their relationship for a
long time afterwards and created many heated quarrels.
Bottom line, Miss G did not believe Sammy’s story. She was bitterly hurt
that someone she had always rated as a real friend should betray her. The fact
that sheets of red paper matching the wallpaper in Sammy’s flat were pinned on
the wall of the Drake Hotel suite implied a calculated conspiracy. She and
Sammy had been photographed against it to bolster
Confidential
’s claim that she
had been Sammy’s lover and a regular visitor to his flat.
Other occurrences in the years ahead that sustained her suspicions were
Sammy’s continual involvements with white actresses. When rumors surfaced
about a liaison between him and Kim Novak, one of Columbia’s prime moneyspinners, the boss of Columbia Pictures, a gentleman not renowned for
reticence, allegedly threatened Sammy that if he didn’t get himself married to a
black girl by the next week he was likely to lose sight in his other eye.
Miss G never forgave Sammy Davis, Jr. She shunned him with a virulence
that was very unusual considering her forgiving nature. We both did. I will not
repeat the names we called him, but they were very vulgar, and he had earned
them. If the story had been given wide publicity around the world, her film
career could have been destroyed. It did indeed do a good bit of damage among
her friends and family in North Carolina. Salacious lies and sexy innuendos find
a ready audience in most societies, and Miss G’s home territory was no
different. Gossip spread across the Bible Belt that “Ava Gardner was a
Hollywood whore after all…and a nigger’s whore at that.” This scandal deeply
distressed Miss G’s family, who could do little to counter such vicious gossip. I
think that even some of the family was not prepared to give Ava the benefit of
the doubt. At the filling station of Miss G’s brother Jack, whom she adored,
windows were broken, and “your sister is a nigger-lover,” was daubed on the
walls. (Incidentally Miss G had given Jack the five thousand dollars necessary to
start the business).
I, for one, knew there was not a fragment of truth in the
Confidential
allegations. No one in the whole wide world knew more about Miss G’s private
life than I did. The scandal lingered in the atmosphere, a shadow at the back of
every conversation. It was never forgotten.
I think Miss G was dead on target. Sammy was involved. We believed that
he cooperated with the people responsible for the article. Maybe he did not
anticipate the damage he would cause, and maybe he didn’t think that through.
For the male artist, black or white, sex scandal is often an aphrodisiac, not a
disaster. Not so for a female. In many ways, the whole episode hardened Miss
G’s attitude toward the press and the media in general from then on. If they were
prepared to print such wicked and destructive articles, then why the hell should
she agree to cooperate?
I guess black guys and white guys can all pull mean tricks like this when
they feel it is to their advantage. I think–I hope–Sammy learned something from
this. He got to the top, reached all his ambitions, and maybe mellowed enough
to become a more thoughtful human being.

Miss G was still smarting over the Sammy Davis incident when she
attended the New York opening of
The Barefoot Contessa
. By this time Miss G
was pretty well fed up with the movie, and half way through the premier she
would have walked out had David not pleaded for her to stay until after Eddie
O’Brien’s big scene. As old friends, they owed that to him.

It was clear that despite the fine cast, the wonderful camera work, the
ornamental settings, the marvelous shots of life as lived by the jet set in Italy and
the south of France, the movie’s drama quotient was limited. It had very little to
say. What was to have been Joe Mankiewicz’s bitter attack upon the shallow,
superficial and greedy Hollywood society had turned out to be more of a soap
opera than a satire. The spectacle of Warren Stevens playing Howard Hughes
and Marius Goring playing Porfirio Rubirosa, shouting insults at each other
forty feet apart in a crowded room did not engender any confidence in their
respective intelligences. Humphrey Bogart’s insistent narration explaining every
bit of philosophy and action was a bore. Miss G, gorgeous as ever but totally
miscast, certainly did not live up to the often quoted phrase, “the world’s most
beautiful animal.” Her characterization as “the proud, prowling, restless tigress
sure of her powers, yet convinced about their proper uses” was real film speak.
Miss G had one slinky dance around a gypsy campfire that gave a hint of those
aforementioned qualities, but the rest of the time all she did was stalk around in
the fabulous Fontana gowns exhibiting her exquisite profile and giving a
performance as wooden as a telegraph pole.

To allow our thoughts to settle and avoid having to live in Hollywood,
Miss G decided we would base ourselves in a rented house in Palm Springs.
Bappie, who had seniority over me, stepped in, saying it was her turn to go with
Miss G while she finished her
Barefoot Contessa
publicity tour in the Orient, so
I stayed home in Palm Springs.

In our life at that moment were two love-sick suitors, Howard Hughes and
Frank Sinatra. Both hated each other with feverish male venom. Frank, even
after the unhappy separation, was back in favor. I had already been told that
during the shooting of
The Barefoot Contessa
he and Miss G had spent
Christmas together in Rome. Miss G had decided to forgive and forget their
mutual unhappiness during the last few months. They had both enjoyed a
romantic week in bed together without a single fight.

Mr. Hughes knew that. Mr. Hughes knew everything, even if he didn’t
know what to do about it. He had to make a counter offer. Mr. Hughes was still
pursuing his lunatic theory that everyone has a price and that for most women it
was either jewels or money. Having tried and failed to heap jewels into Miss G’s
lap, he decided he would have to make a real dramatic, clinching gesture.

Our Palm Springs house was situated some distance from the center of
town on the edge of the airfield. At that time, the area was no more than a
peaceful, open grassy space. Mr. Hughes would often land there at night. All he
had to do was ring up his aides and get them to line up their cars with their
headlights blazing to form an illuminated runway.

On this occasion he rang Miss G to ask her to meet him when he landed.
Slightly mystified, Miss G drove the short distance to the makeshift landing
strip. She met Mr. Hughes as he was leaving his plane. He was carrying his
usual cardboard box. He opened it as she approached. It was packed thick with
wedges of dollar notes.

“What’s that?” she asked.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” he announced.
“What for?” she asked politely.
“For you.”
“For what?” a puzzled Miss G asked.
“We want you to make a film.”
Miss G did not say in exasperation, “You brought me out here at this time

of night to tell me that?” She only said quietly, “Who’s we?”
“Darryl Zanuck is working on several scripts.”
“He always is. But what is the money for?”
“It’s an advance.”
Miss G paused for a few seconds, then gently pushed the box away.

I often tried to feel sorry for Mr. Hughes, but I never could. He wanted to
marry Miss G. If only he’d tried Mickey Rooney’s technique, “I love you, I love
you, I love you. I’m going to go on asking you to marry me until I’m a hundred
years old, so you might as well marry me now.” If Mr. Hughes had taken that
route, he might have stood a chance. Mr. Hughes only offered bribes. He was
also possessive to the point of lunacy. He knew Frank Sinatra also owned a
house in Palm Springs within walking distance of ours.

Frank might make approaches to Miss G, Mr. Hughes figured, so he came
up with a plan to forestall such possibilities. He rang Miss G and told her that he
was sending down a car and chauffeur for her exclusive use. He hoped she
would be happy with this arrangement. By this time, Miss G knew it was useless
to argue with Mr. Hughes. He would send the car and drive down anyway
whether she liked it or not. So she just said, “Thank you, Howard.” The
chauffeur was named Bill. He was young, fresh, handsome, and athletic, with an
American style crew cut, typical of the scores of prototypes that Mr. Hughes
used for his handiwork. Bill was willing to oblige in any way he could and bored
to tears with just sitting in the car. He became Miss G’s chauffeur, butler, drinks
server, odd job man, washer upper, cleaner, shopper and general factotum. I’ve
never had more help in my life.

MGM had spent two hundred thousand dollars buying the film rights to
John Master’s novel,
Bhowani Junction
. Its heroine was a beautiful Eurasian
girl–half Indian, half British–named Victoria Jones. Masters described her
appearance through the eyes of her dazzled first lover: “Victoria is tall, and her
eyes are brown and she has the longest legs and thick black hair. She has a
figure like a film star, only better. She is beautiful.”

The back cover of the book added to the hype: “It is a blazing story of
India torn by riot and civil war when a proud Anglo-Indian girl and a hard bitten
English colonel faced terror and death on an isolated railway outpost.”

MGM production chiefs said, “Dead right for Ava Gardner. George Cukor
is directing. He’s great with women. He’ll love Ava.”
“Miss Gardner is suspended,” protested the suspension department.
“Well, for God’s sake, un-suspend her,” said the big brass. “What’s the
point of having a world famous pussy cat under suspension when she could be
making us millions of dollars?”
By this time, Miss G had improved her financial situation because she had
acquired a decent agent. First of all, she got more money. Secondly, she had
some say in the choice of roles she played. Thirdly, and most importantly,
American tax laws offered exemption to actors who spent long periods overseas
making films. I would suspect that from that moment onward ninety percent of
Miss G’s movies were filmed overseas.
The film should have been made in India; however, the territory had been
divided into two nations–India, which was Hindu, and Pakistan, which was
Muslim. In India they were suspicious of how MGM was going to treat the
subject matter. They were even more suspicious when they learned almost the
entire cast was British. Also the Indian tax collectors were demanding a large
chunk of film profits to be paid in advance, even though MGM lawyers were
busily explaining that Hollywood films never, ever made a profit. Profits were
always lost somewhere in the labyrinth of production costs. Indian tax collectors
were not buying that claim. They wanted dollars before they would allow the
cameras to roll. Pakistan, next door, said, “Forget the tax collectors. We’ll loan
you the Northwestern Railway and throw in the 13
^th
Battalion of the Frontier
Force all for free. And as for extras you can rent them out at about a rupee for a
hundred.
MGM reached the quick decision to locate the film in Lahore. To get there
was quite a journey. The first stopping off place was the capital of Karachi
where we were all to assemble. Miss G reached London at the end of her Far
Eastern tour for
The Barefoot Contessa
, which had been uneventful compared to
the South American tour. I flew from Los Angeles to London where I was
delayed for a few days getting a visa. As I was booked into the Savoy, I was not
enduring any hardship.
I reached our hotel in Karachi just in time to overhear Stewart Granger and
Miss G having an argument. Apparently the British Embassy was holding a
reception for King Hussein, and they had invited Stewart Granger, George
Cukor, and Miss G to represent the film people and to be introduced to the king.
Jimmy, as Stewart Granger was known, being a perfect English gentleman,
thought this an honor not to be missed. Miss G didn’t think that way.
Jimmy said, “Ava, don’t you want to meet a real king?”
“What’s he king of?”
“Jordan.”
“Where is Jordan?”
Jimmy waved an airy hand in the direction of the window. “Out there
somewhere. It is near Israel. Ava, you can’t miss the opportunity.”
“I can,” said Miss G.
Jimmy ignored her comment and went on. “You will have to dress up and
curtsy. Can you curtsy?”
Miss G blew a raspberry.
“Curtsy! Let me tell you honey, when I was married to Mickey, we went to
a film party at the White House where we met President and Mrs. Roosevelt.
She was wonderful and showed Mickey and me all over the White House, even
the bed in which President Lincoln slept. I didn’t curtsy to the President or her. I
am not going to start curtsying to some king from some country I’ve never heard
of.”
“Now, listen Ava, love….”
“You curtsy,” said Miss G.
Oh God, how we laughed over that later. Jimmy did too. Not that Miss G’s
absence made the slightest bit of difference to the reception. In the Muslim
world women are not noticeably important. Jimmy and George Cukor played
their parts and came back to tell us that King Hussein was a really nice guy.
Our main location was the ancient city of Lahore five hundred miles to the
north of Karachi. It was the capital of Punjab. Our hotel, Felatti’s, was the only
one in the city as far as I could see. The whole cast stayed there. It was
definitely not of the Hilton standard, but they had done their best. They even put
in a separate bathroom for Miss G in our section. Calling our rooms a “suite”
would be too much of an honor. It was a low, rambling building with verandas
everywhere. We also had a hot-plate which worked and an icebox which didn’t.
We made friends with some American service people in Lahore. I remember
they always had pancakes on Sunday. Their house was like a commissary full of
food, which we were happy to share with them.
In the summer season, Lahore was one of the hottest places in India. When
we were there it was supposed to be getting cooler, but was it hot—110 degrees!
And it sure was ancient. I loved the line in the guidebook that said, “The streets
of the old city are narrow and tortuous and are best seen from the back of an
elephant!”
“Damn it!” cried Miss G. “We’ve forgotten our elephant!”
The guidebook also did not mention that the back streets with open sewers,
packed with people of a dozen races and religions, stank! There were pinched,
hungry faces everywhere. They had gods to take care of you, gods to whom you
paid penance, gods of sexuality. It was “pick your own god,” it seemed. I also
discovered that the young girls of the lower castes were not looked after by
much of a god. They could be bought or sold, and for many of them prostitution
was a haven.
We were in Pakistan, which was totally bewildering in its customs, full of
desperate poverty and a total lack of hygiene. Who were we to grumble? It was
their country. The British had established themselves there for more than three
centuries and had prospered. The Indians had lived there for thousands of years
and survived. Who were we? One white actress and one black girl; we didn’t
complain. We ate everything–well, practically everything. We did everything
required of us. We certainly drank a lot.
The British expatriates to whom Pakistan was home believed that alcohol
in a variety of bottles was a sure antidote against malaria, sunstroke, snakebite,
typhoid, leprosy, foot-rot, and similar maladies. We did our best to give
ourselves immunity. Nobody there was immune to green-apple-gallop—a
euphemism for dysentery. We all suffered from it.
I have to say, and I’m certain there would be no contradiction from the
cast, that the Lahore location provided us with the most difficult, hair-raising,
trying, exasperating, nerve-wracking, disease-ridden potential of any film
location any of us had or would ever experience. Of course, there were good
memories, funny memories, even though some of them didn’t seem funny at the
time.
During our first week, I can remember hideous screams emerging from
Miss G who was in the bathroom. I mean real hair-raising, “I’m being
murdered” screams. Then, stark naked, Miss G came racing out the door. God in
heaven, there was a great black flying “thing” attacking the top of her head. She
hit the front door leading out onto the veranda at speed. The “thing” was still
after her. I realized what it was–a huge, black bat which must have swooped out
of the rafters or come through the window.
Many might think Miss G in the nude a pretty sight. For the city of Lahore
to be given the chance of assessment was not on the cards, especially since their
women were cocooned in cotton from head to toe, their faces covered with a
veil.
My decision was split second. Miss G was running in a clockwise
direction. If I could exit out of our other door and turn counter-clockwise, I
could intercept her. I made for the door, seizing a large towel and a broom on
the way. I just managed to cut her off. I smothered her in the bath towel, which
cut off her screams and pushed her back through the open door behind me. Then
I took on the bat, which was whirling and diving like a Stuka dive bomber. I did
not make a single contact, but by now I was aided by members of the staff who
had heard the screams. Obviously it had happened before, because they were
armed with loopy old tennis rackets. The bat, understanding that the odds had
changed, flew off. I can only imagine that it intended to make a nest in Miss G’s
rumpled black hair.
What about the film itself? It told the story of that period at the end of the
Second World War when the enormous subcontinent of India, with its two
hundred and six million Sikhs were protesting against the British and against
each other. They were rioting, burning, looting, killing and breaking down every
barrier of civilized behavior in a crisis that came close to civil war.
Three hundred years of British rule were ending, but who would have
believed it could end in such chaos? What would replace it? Independence had a
fine ring, and the British were leaving secure in the knowledge that they were
leaving behind a nation that would frame its own constitution. Now it seemed no
one could agree to frame anything.
Many opposing factions were at loggerheads. The Congress Party, India’s
major political power, was organizing mass marches, alleging their purposes
were only peaceful. Its more passionate supporters were already settling deadly
scores against religious enemies–mainly Muslims. The Muslims were retaliating
with equal fury. It was heart-breaking. People who had lived side by side for
centuries were now at each other’s throats.
The Communists, of whom there were many, also played a large part in the
general anarchy by encouraging civil disorder and inciting people to riot, and
they themselves were always at work in clandestine terrorist activities–anything
to promote chaos and allow them to take over.
The leaders eventually worked out their solution. Partition was the only
answer. India must split into two nations: India and Pakistan. It was achieved
with an enormous cost in human life. For months refugees struggled across the
countryside trying to find shelter in their own religious enclaves, which had
been apportioned to them. Eleven million people died in that murderous changeover.
The British Army, with their Indian counterparts, did their best to contain
the tumult and rioting and defend the network of railways without which the
whole nation would be paralyzed.
In the film Colonel Savage’s job was to protect Bhowani Junction and the
railway lines in his area and maintain law and order.
Against this dangerous and dramatic background, pretty Victoria Jones
(Miss G) and her boyfriend Patrick Taylor, played by Bill Travers, were in a
quandary. They were both Eurasian, a commonplace situation among a British
population that had lived in India for so long. Victoria held a good position; she
worked in the British Army offices and held the rank of subaltern. Patrick was
employed as a supervisor for the Railway Company.
Patrick was confused and angry as the British began their withdrawal from
India, for he was left with a conflict of identify. To which side did he owe
allegiance? He had no friends or contacts in England, and since childhood the
British part of him had treated the “wogs”–his fellow countrymen–with
contempt and derision. How could he become part of an India he despised?
Victoria belonged to the same Eurasian community and faced the same
problems. She was more practical and realistic about the future. Nevertheless,
was she British or Indian? She decided she was Indian and moved among them.
She met a handsome, romantic Sikh played by Francis Matthews, and he
introduced her to a culture and religion she hardly knew existed. They became
lovers, and she was considering marriage. She realized she could not live that
sort of life. Besides, she had fallen in love with that handsome, suave, gallant,
mocking, irreverent Jimmy Granger in his role as Colonel Savage, and he had
fallen in love with her. Conflict existed between them from the first, and the
turbulent background of divided loyalties did not help. Miss G really did like her
role as Victoria Jones and felt she and Victoria had feelings in common.
When she stormed at Colonel Savage, “I belong here not as a phony
Indian, not as a phony white, but as myself,” she was echoing her own
philosophy. Miss G did not wish to live as a phony actress, phony ex-farm girl, a
phony anything. She wanted to be herself.
The critics applauded: “Ava Gardner has several scenes of extraordinary
intensity and power in which her mature gifts as an actress are given greater
scope than usual as she rises to the challenge of doing justice to this complex
and divided human being. In one sequence when she argues vehemently with
Bill Travers over his blind worship of all things British, a whole range of
expressions—rage, frustration, and compassion—cross her face in rapid
succession, rather than the more frozen beauty she has been required to exhibit
in the past. With her loose and flying hair, her body bending free of the erect
posture which had imprisoned her in her earlier performances, Gardner is a
figure of humane convictions and great emotional force.” I agreed.
We both agreed with one other thing also. If we had to single out any
member of the MGM
Bhowani Junction
expedition for the award of the British
Empire Director’s Medal, one man stands out above all others–George Cukor.
Not only did he direct the film, he bought the film!
In the middle of riot scenes, rape and desolation, there he was defending
himself with only one weapon–his rolled up script bearing details of that day’s
shooting. There he was battling his way through thousands of violent Pakistanis
bent on tearing the world apart, and no one in their right mind could refer to
them as “extras.”
This small, skinny Hollywood director, who never in his life had
encountered a crowd bigger than a queue lining up at the MGM lunch counter,
smashed his way through black bearded Pathans, bayonet-armed Gurkhas and
raging rioters in blood-stained white nighties as if they were harmless extras in
an early Hollywood film. He marshaled them into riot formations, villageburning orgies, and mass horror shows with hundreds lying on railway tracks
seeking to prevent trains from plowing through their bodies.
Faced with any sort of disobedience, he whacked the air with his paper
baton but always emerged from these scenes breathless, disheveled and alive.
The Pakistanis loved him. They had never encountered anyone like him, and
neither had we.