Living With Miss G (34 page)

After
Mayerling,
we returned to London, and Miss G settled down in her
Mayfair apartment and began to enjoy life. For Miss G, London had everything:
theatres, cinemas, restaurants, scores of Spanish restaurants, lots of flamenco
and easy access from London airports to all parts of Europe and the world. As
I’ve mentioned before, Miss G even liked the weather.

“Sure, it rains in England.” She said blithely, “I like rain. London rain is
not a slashing torrent that wipes you out. It’s fine rain. Thin rain. Nourishing
rain. It gives me tranquility. I can grow.”

We had been traveling backwards and forwards between Europe and the
States for years and for so long that I thought I could apply for a job as an airline
hostess. That thought had led to the idea that had been formulating in my head
for a long time. Miss G’s protestations that she wasn’t a film actress and
couldn’t care less if she ever made another film were understandable and true.
She had enough money to settle down comfortably, and it was now obvious to
me that she was embedding herself in London and intending to do just that.

I like England, but it wasn’t my country. All my family were in the States.
And something else had cropped up in my life – a man. I had met him on one of
our numerous journeys to California. He had a good job, a great sense of humor,
and he wanted to marry me. I wasn’t sure if marriage appealed to me. I
explained all this to Miss G.

“Rene, honey,” she said. “Give it a go. I’ve had my share of marriages, and
if I ever got married again it would only be a re-marriage.” She grinned, and I
knew who she meant. Frank Sinatra and Miss G were never out of touch.

She went on, “I’ll miss you, honey, but if it doesn’t work out, you can
always come back. If and when I do another movie, you can come with me.”
She paused and smiled again. “But when you’re running at fifty like me, who
the hell wants you as a movie actress anymore? I’ll probably just retire as the
Empress of Austria-Hungary.”

I knew she wouldn’t, but I didn’t argue. I went back and got married.
Church, guests, families, the lot. I tried to settle down. I knew we weren’t going
to start our fried chicken dinners with iced vodka, chilled caviar and vintage
champagne, but what the hell. I could survive on fried chicken alone. He was a
decent guy. We went to the same church. I probably drank more than he did, and
we got on in bed. We were looking at a bright future as we headed towards the
sunset.

We didn’t get there. It didn’t work out.
No point in going into the why and wherefore. It was a mutual parting.
Then before I even had time to work out what the future held for me–boom! My

sister Tressie and I were driving at a sedate pace along a narrow road when
around the corner came a large car at full speed and hit us head-on. I woke up in
the hospital in great pain with a smashed face and two broken legs. It was a
miracle I wasn’t killed. Tressie was hurt, but not so badly.

For me it seemed life had ended. For weeks and months I couldn’t walk
and couldn’t speak because my jaw had to be reconstructed.
Miss G didn’t even know about the accident. For a time I think she thought
I was still crazy in love. A couple of people tried to get in touch with her
through agents, but the agents couldn’t have cared less and didn’t pass on the
information. Then the first letter I could write reached her.
Miss G’s cable back was immediate. “Rene, baby, just got your letter and I
am sick about my little sister’s Capricorn luck. If there is anything you need, let
the office know. I will contact them immediately. Will be in New York next
week–Waldorf. Please telephone me there. Keep your new little chin up. Love
you very much. Love to Tressie.”
Not long after that we were on the phone, she yelling, “Okay, you can’t
walk. I can. Therefore, I’ll come over and see you.”
Nurse Ava Gardner arrived and took charge. “Now, we’ve got to get you
fit. We are both going to Main Chance to get you in shape. I’ve got to get in
shape, too. We’ve got work to do.”
“What work?” I asked.
“Roddy McDowall’s movie. He’s crazy about
Tam Lin.
”
Roddy McDowall was one of Miss G’s oldest friends. He had been in
films for years, starting off as a British child actor. His latest movie was
Planet
of the Apes
. Roddy had been a smash hit as the leading ape-man. He had long
harbored ambitions of becoming a director and after directing various features,
he had put
Tam Lin
together as movie package. The fact that Miss G agreed to
play the lead may have helped him get backing.
At that moment, however, I was in the dark. “Who’s
Tam Lin
?” I asked.
“Sounds like Roddy’s new girlfriend.”
Miss G hooted. “No, baby, no. Tam Lin is a handsome young man
entranced by the Queen of the Fairies.”
“Fairies!” I exclaimed. “Fairies?”
“Rene, stop worrying,” Miss G said, and she explained, “Real fairies, story
book fairies. The story of Tam Lin and the wicked Queen who seduces him
comes from the legends of Celtic folklore. It is an old Scottish fairy tale. Robert
Burns knew all about it and recreated the story in one of his ballads.”
“Not Walt Disney and not like
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
?” I
asked.
“No, and not like
Cinderella
,
Jack and the Beanstalk
or
Old Mother
Hubbard
,” Miss G said. “Serious stuff; real evil stuff. In the original legend, the
Queen of the Fairies is a wicked old slut who has a passion for young men half
her age. As the Queen, she lures them to her bed and makes sure they live a life
of ease and luxury. When she tires of one, she chunks him out. If they tire of her
and decide to opt out, baby, they are in deep trouble. They get the chop.”
“I don’t think this fairy story would put many little children to sleep,” I
said.
“Rene, Scottish kids were tougher in the old days. Anyway, for film
purposes the legend has been modernized. It is a bit like those
Dolce Vita
movies the Italians used to make. Society doomed by decadence, sexual orgies,
immorality, lack of belief, anarchism–you name it, they do it.”
Scotland was breathtakingly beautiful. Even when it rained, or the mist
blew in from the sea, it was beautiful. The girls were beautiful, too. Even the
film critics were rather endearing about the whole thing.
One critic said, “Miss Gardner’s screen image develops from her penchant
for underacting and her touching quality of doomed vulnerability. She is slightly
ridiculous here as a demonic den-mother to a retinue of pubescent sybarites who
look like a freaked out cast for a Pepsi commercial.”
And another said, “Ava wears her years well…her skin is still flawless, her
dark eyes so intensely fierce that the screen smolders, her still graceful figure
costumed to perfection could lead men to their doom for desire. You simply
forget how poor the basic story is when Ava is on screen. When she switches on
that voice and walks around in those Balmain clothes as magnificent as a black
widow spider, you realize Ava Gardner is the creature we have almost forgotten
exists–a star!”
The trouble was that practically nobody saw
Tam Lin.
First of all, the film
company ran out of money–no fault of Roddy’s–and had to find an extra
injection of cash to complete the music dubbing. Then no one wanted to
distribute it.
Afterwards Miss G said to anybody who asked, “I saw it, and it’s a damn
good little picture. I care terribly what happens to the film, not so much for me
but for Roddy. He is just starting to make a career for himself as a director, and
this is so important to him.”
Miss G was being loyal as usual to all her friends. I don’t think she even
got paid her fifty thousand dollars’ salary. The film company just went broke.
Even when the film was salvaged later by American International Pictures, it
attracted only minor headlines.
We were all reunited a few months later when John Huston began work on
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.
Both Miss G and Roddy McDowall
were in the cast.
Without doubt, John Huston could have charmed birds from trees, fish
from streams, or Ava Gardner from whatever bar she was in without any
difficulty whatsoever.
There is also no doubt that as Miss G grew more experienced in her trade
as an actress she began to question and interfere with the dialogue she was
given. And that became perfectly evident during the filming of
The Life and
Times of Judge Roy Bean
. She didn’t like it
this
way. Why couldn’t she say it
that
way? John Huston stopped such feuding at the source. He would rehearse
her line by line and word by word and by the time he had finished, he would
have her fixed in a loving strait jacket of obedience.

You come out of London’s Hyde Park on the south side, not far from the
Albert Hall, and Ennismore Gardens stretches down into the serene, gray-stone,
upper-crust regions of Knightsbridge. The road itself runs down a slight hill and
comes to a dead end, although there are other roads crossing it. Cobblestone
footpaths lead through to the green area surrounding the huge Catholic Church.
Beyond that lies the Old Compton Road, and Harrods is about four hundred
yards away to the left.

It is an area of Georgian and Victorian splendor. The noble facades of
housing are three or four stories high with portico entrances and lattice ironwork balconies. It is a posh area, a pleasant area with small parks protected by
locked gates to which only residents possess keys. High trees lend a rare
distinction. For most of two centuries, the houses have been inhabited by the
“haves” and the “have nots,” the haves keeping their horses and carriages
stabled in the rear mews and the ‘have nots’ cooking the food and keeping the
fires going in the basements. Its history was televised imperishably in the TV
series
Upstairs–Downstairs.
Now most of the grand houses have been divided
floor by floor into apartments.

Not satisfied any longer by her flat in Mayfair, Miss G and I had been
apartment hunting for quite a while in the early seventies. Armed with estate
agents’ prospectus, we had seen a lot of London before we stumbled on
Ennismore Gardens. On this expedition it had been raining quite heavily, and we
had paused at a lot of pubs to keep up our spirits. We were in fact a bit sloshed
when we arrived at the house in Ennismore Gardens.

We pressed the bell, and although there was an elevator, we walked up to
the second story. The lady who opened the door was charming and immediately
offered us a drink, possibly with an intuition that another might complete the
sale. We accepted and then made the tour. Miss G was rapturous and did not
haggle.

After scouring London show rooms and bringing in pieces of the Spanish
furniture she liked, we went off to Paris, Madrid, and Lisbon and got a whole
load of stuff ferried back to Ennismore Gardens. The big living room ran right
through from front to back, the long front windows opening onto the balconies,
giving her Welsh Corgi dog Morgan a chance to test his lungs (by then, Rags
had sadly departed this world).

Miss G had boxes to grow her flowers. There were many bedrooms and an
excellent kitchen. The décor owed a great deal to the Orient, and we were not
worried at all by which part of the Orient the ornamentation came from. There
were screens and vases and big chests. There was a fireplace and a comfortable
chair on either side. It was very cozy. In fact, I had a hard job tearing Miss G
away to go off and be a film star again, but she went.

The place was Hollywood. The film was
Earthquake
, an epic about what
would happen to L.A. if such a thing ever happened. The film was directed by
her old friend Mark Robson, with Charlton Heston co-starring.

Earthquake
turned out to be a monster money-spinner and was later to be
among the top twenty movies in all-time rental records. Why? Not because of
the love interest, but because everybody loves a great disaster, especially if they
are not in it. And especially if the disaster is shown as graphically as those
designed by Frank Brendel, the special effects man. He won an Oscar for them.
Six lane highways were torn up and ripped apart by cataclysmic subterranean
forces. Great canyons opened in the earth, with railway locomotives, cars,
apartment blocks and human beings falling into them. Skyscrapers tilted over
and crumbled into rubble. Electric pylons rent apart and electrocuted everybody
in sight. Water mains burst, and dams sent roaring torrents through the ruined
city.

They had even invented a new large screen effect called “Sensurround,”
which did everything but hit the moviegoer on the head with a block of falling
masonry or drown him in the floods, while watching poor old Charlton Heston
and poor Miss G clinging in each others’ arms and ending by being swept down
a sewer pipe to certain death.

Several movie critics seemed to enjoy drawing parallels between this
occurrence and the careers of both Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner. Both, they
maintained, had been major stars during the same period. Both were studiogroomed film stars; both had maintained their screen star popularity for a great
number of years, and now they were slipping down the sewer together.

Miss G was not sure if any of this was complimentary. She had vivid
memories of that swept-away incident. “Jesus!” she exclaimed. “I said I didn’t
need a stunt girl, so Mark Robson let me do it, but it was tough. I had to let
myself be carried away by this raging torrent, and baby, it came as close to
reality as anything I have ever known. I had to sink under as if I had been
drowned and then, out of camera shot, swim underwater for about twenty yards
to the dock.”