Living With Miss G (35 page)

Strangely enough, serious critics gave more attention to Miss G in
Earthquake
than in many of the far better films she had made. Perhaps they
found it hard to do a dramatic think-piece on earthquake special effects. Several
wondered how Miss G, now fifty-two, had been so popular so long.
The New
Yorker
magazine, not noted for focusing much attention on Hollywood film
stars, came close to the truth about Miss G: “She has a dreamy hurt quality, a
generously modeled mouth, and faraway eyes. Maybe what turned people on
was that her sensuality was developed, but her personality wasn’t. She was a
beautiful rootless stray, somehow incomplete, but never ordinary, and just about
impossible to dislike since she was utterly without affectation. To Universal, she
is just one more old star to beef up a picture’s star power, and so she is cast as a
tiresome bitch whose husband (Charlton Heston) is fed up with her. She looks
blowsy and beat-out and that could be fun if she was allowed to be blowzily
good-natured like her heroine in
Mogambo
, but the script here harks back to
those old movies in which a husband is justified in leaving his wife only if she is
a jealous schemer who made his life hell.”

After
Earthquake
another dilemma entered our lives, and on the emotional
Richter scale it was much more destructive. I can’t say I was surprised. We were
in Rome, and the telephone lines between Rome and Los Angeles for the last
three weeks had been buzzing with conversations between Frank Sinatra and
Miss G.

She opened the subject to me. “Rene, you know as well as I do that if I’m
ever going to marry again it will be with Frank. If I don’t marry Frank, I’ll be
alone for the rest of my life, because nobody else interests me.”

I said, “Miss G, when it comes to second-time-around, it’s usually with a
different fella.”
“Not with me, honey,” she said emphatically. “It’s Frank or no one.”
“Is that what Frank wants?” I asked.
“He says he does. As you know, he has been on the phone for weeks
saying he loves me, and why don’t I go back and we start all over again. We’re
older and wiser now.”
I didn’t think they were wiser, but it was not my business to make smart
remarks. So I just asked, “By starting all over you mean getting married?”
“Yes, get married.”
“But what about Barbara?” I asked. Barbara Marx had been Frank’s
secretary, and they had had a close personal relationship for a long time now.
There was a long pause after my question, and then Miss G said, “Frank
says that if I’m sincere in my intention to go back and marry him, he will tell
Barbara what we’re going to do. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going back. I’m
going to marry Frank. And you and I are going to Fontana to get them to make
me a trousseau now!”
She did not sound like a woman who was totally happy about the whole
thing. The trousseau plan sounded more like some sort of gesture of defiance.
We went to Fontana. They were really happy to see us. We wanted daytime
dresses, evening dresses, cocktail dresses, sports clothes, casual outfits. Gee, we
were good for business! Negligees, peignoirs, we bought them all. They were
delivered to the Grand Hotel.
I had an uneasy feeling. Miss G was still glued to the phone, but she didn’t
tell Frank about the trousseau. I took that as a bad omen. I got the impression
that Frank was saying, “Angel, come across here and we’ll get married. Yes, of
course, I’ll talk to Barbara, but if you don’t want to come back, I’ll marry
Barbara.”
I suppose it was that last sentence that stuck in Miss G’s mind. Barbara had
been around a long time, and she was plainly in love with Frank. Now Frank
was giving Miss G not so much an ultimatum, but an option. It worried her.
Supposing they got married and their usual riots resumed? It wasn’t fair to
Barbara. It wasn’t fair to anyone.
I remember that final decisive telephone conversation between them. She
put down the phone and said, “Rene, let’s both sit down.” We sat down, and she
gave a long sigh. “It’s over,” she said. “I told Frank he should marry Barbara.
It’s better for all of us.”
Frank did marry Barbara. From Miss G there were no tears. There was a
depression that lifted quite quickly, and she and Frank remained friends for the
rest of their lives.
To help herself get over it Miss G decided we would go to Hawaii for a
holiday. Normally we would have tooted off to Cuba, which we adored, but we
couldn’t go to Havana because the Government had barred such travel. The sun
and the sea made a pleasant change. Afterward we went back to London, where
Paul Mills had a film script he wanted Miss G to read with actor Dirk Bogarde.
This was in the period of the Cold War when CIA, spy thrillers, and dirty
work over and under the Iron Curtain were in vogue.
Permission To Kill
was to
be shot in the mountainous area of Austria. This sounded like a good idea, but it
was so damn cold it turned out to be a bad idea. At least Freddie Young’s
magnificent photography added significantly to the film.
The real trouble was it lacked credibility.
The Spy Who Came in From the
Cold
worked well.
Permission To Kill
was loaded with unlikely characters. Dirk
Bogarde was an unlikely British agent belonging to some mythical British secret
service and never comfortable in the role. Bekim Fehmiu, another ex-mistress
role for Miss G, was chief of an equally unlikely Communist National
Liberation Party who wanted to re-defect back behind the Curtain. Then there
was a British Foreign Office homosexual traitor, with Timothy Dalton in that
part. Stir the pot with blackmail, unscrupulous reporters, poor Mr. Bekim
Fehmiu getting himself blown up in a railway station, and guns banging and
shooting all over the place.
Thank goodness no bullet had Miss G’s name on it, so we were able to
return to Ennismore Gardens and get warm.
The next film,
The Blue Bird,
was equally ill-fated. George Cukor, hero of
Bhowani Junction
and one of our favorite people for years, was directing it.
The Blue Bird
was a fairy tale, a fantasy appealing to children from age six
to ninety-six. Two little children from a humble peasant home set in some faroff idyllic background decide to leave their cottage, and in a “dream-trip” set off
in search of the Bluebird of Happiness. It was a fantasy journey in which they
experience the highs and lows of human existence. To achieve this Cukor
enlisted the acting ability of an assortment of talented artists. Elizabeth Taylor
had four parts, Mother, Witch, Light, and Eternal Love; Jane Fonda was Night;
Miss G was Luxury; Cicely Tyson was Cat; Robert Morley was Father Time;
and Harry Andrews was Oak. There were many other parts identified as Bread,
Sugar, Milk, Fire, Sick Girl and Fat Laughter.
The movie industry had tried to get the story off the ground twice before.
In 1918 Paramount made it as a silent movie. In 1939 Darryl Zanuck directed a
version with child mega-star Shirley Temple in the lead. No excitement
followed either production.
This version, co-produced between USA and the USSR, was set in
Leningrad and was the source of one of George Cukor’s well-worn jokes, but it
is still funny and possibly true. Cukor and his assembled team of cameramen
and technicians marched into the huge Soviet studio, and Cukor made his first
little speech: “I am proud to be here working in the very same studio where in
1925 Eisenstein made his great film, the immortal
Battleship Potemkin.”
The Soviet co-producer piped up equally proudly, “And with the very same
equipment!”
As the weeks passed, however, Miss G and I became more interested in
survival than in the success of the USA/USSR co-production. The atmosphere in
Leningrad generally was one of deep suspicion. The faces of the Russian people
on the streets, and of those with whom we worked, were grim and depressed. No
one smiled. The Soviet technicians were in no hurry to do anything. If they
could waste time, they wasted it. Food was dreadful. At the canteen we queued
up for everything and hoped we got something on a plate before the grub ran
out. At the hotel we surrendered our passports and hoped that they hadn’t been
lost in the KGB archives. Getting up to our bedroom was like trying to find a
vacant cell in Alcatraz.
At the foot of the elevator sat a hefty, boot-faced Soviet heroine with x-ray
eyes. We were guilty before we put a foot inside. On our floor sat another lady
the size of a Japanese Sumo wrestler, jangling her keys like a wardress and
handing over our room key as if she were surrendering her long-past virginity.
The room was drab. The plumbing was uncertain. The steam heat was
always a problem.
I had now become catering officer for both Miss G and Miss Elizabeth
Taylor. Thank God, they both loved fried chicken. I had brought with me in my
baggage, with a prescience obviously endowed by some long-past greatgrandmother, a large black iron frying pan. Can you imagine a frying pan in
one’s personal luggage? Even Soviet customs couldn’t think that was a bomb. It
was invaluable.
I rarely went to the studios. I didn’t have time. My duties took me to the
marketplace. I guess it was one of those favored marketplaces reserved for high
officials and visiting foreigners. It was still abysmal. You queued for everything.
Always you were faced with three long queues. Each would take half an hour.
Hopefully you would join the first, hoping it was the chicken, fish or meat line.
You couldn’t handle or choose anything. You just pointed and, plunk, it
was wrapped, and a hand stretched out for the rubles. Then on to the next
queue—maybe potatoes, cabbage or vegetables—and the third perhaps milk,
butter, margarine or cooking oil. Then back to the fortress hotel and up to our
bedroom where in the bathroom we had an electric cooking ring. I cooked the
meal. The girls brought home the vodka. We had a lot of laughs complaining
about everything. The local joke concerned actress Jane Fonda, who was
thought to have communist sympathies. How could she stand it here where she
had no one to convert to communism? Her husband at the time also provided us
with a bit of laughing gossip. He stayed out late one night and returned after
lock-up hour with all hotel doors bolted. Angrily he began banging and
shouting. He spent the night in the hotel jail. Every hotel had one.
George Cukor was the only intelligent guy when it came to forethought.
He had weekly food parcels mailed to him from Fortnum and Masons and
Selfridges in London.
Occasionally we were invited to the limited feasts. Even George was under
considerable strain the entire time. To start with, the film was under-funded.
Miss G was so fond of Cukor that she agreed to play her part for nothing, which
I thought was pretty decent of her.
I was surprised when, toward the end of the picture, Miss G came in one
night very upset. Apparently Cukor, who everyone knew could be very nasty
indeed if he felt like it, had turned on her and berated her at his very nastiest.
She couldn’t understand it. They did not speak for the rest of the film and left
Russia without saying goodbye to each other, their long friendship apparently
over.
The whole experience attached to
The Blue Bird
seemed doomed. It was
almost impossible to get out and see the sights. On one occasion Miss G was
determined to visit some special square she had heard about. In conspiratorial
tones she communicated this to me.
“Rene, I am going off by myself. Nipping out. Finding a taxi. Getting him
to drive me to the square. Having a quick look around, then catching a taxi
back.”
She returned defeated. “Can you believe it, Rene? The taxi took me to the
square. I got out, walked about three yards when another car pulled up beside
me with a door thrown open. It was our car, the one that takes me to the set
every day! Same driver with the sour face. ‘Miss Gardner, get in the car,’ he
ordered. I said, ‘But I just want to have a look around this square.’ This time it’s
a real angry KGB order. ‘Do as I say Miss Gardner!’ I think he would have
dragged me in if I hadn’t obeyed.”
We were all glad to be back home after that. I was glad when Miss G and I
were watching a television film one night in Ennismore Gardens—a funny film
with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy directed by George Cukor.
We screamed with laughter, and Miss G said, “I don’t care if George and I
have fallen out, I’m sending him a telegram of congratulations.” She did, ending
with, “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”
His return telegram read: “Ava, they don’t make ‘em like you anymore.”
I was so pleased they were friends again.

Miss G was now firmly settled in London and not really interested in
making any more films at all. It was only after her business manager pointed out
that, despite reasonable assets, middle-aged ladies have to work occasionally if
they wish to maintain their lifestyle that Miss G took the hint and was open to
offers.