David Niven (26 page)

We were very good friends with Humphrey Bogart and Betty (Lauren) Bacall as well. They made me feel very welcome, and once I was able to relax David and I became very happy.

The Press took an interest in the new Mrs David Niven and her portrait took up a whole page of London's
Sketch
magazine. In America
Life
followed suit and put her on the cover and featured her in an article that numbered her among the 10 most beautiful women in Hollywood which included Ava Gardner, Jean Simmons, Elizabeth Taylor and Greta Garbo. The difference between Hjördis and the other candidates was that they were all film stars and she wasn't.

She certainly had film star looks and that brought about offers from producers and directors, such as Billy Wilder and David Selznick, to do screen tests. David put his foot down and forbade her to do any.

Stewart Granger remembered the
Life
feature because it included his wife, Jean Simmons, and he was very aware that, after Hjördis appeared on the cover, the Hollywood studios were enthusiastic to turn her into a movie star. ‘They thought they had a major new discovery on their hands,' he told me when I talked to him one day on the set of
The Wild Geese
in 1979 (I was an extra in it). ‘They didn't care if she could act or not. An actress had to be stunningly beautiful, and if they could act, then that was a bonus. So there were all these producers knocking at her door and telling her she could be big in movies. Oh, David hated that.'

David told me that he was furious at the film producers who, in essence, were trying to wreck his family life. ‘I wanted a wife, not another film star in the family.'

There were others apart from Trubshawe who accused Hjördis of trying to use her marriage to become a movie star, but she emphatically denied that this had ever been the case.

I never went to Hollywood hoping to become a movie star. I didn't know anything about acting. I could model. I knew how to look good for a photographer. David Selznick wanted to give me a screen test. He said that I would look marvellous, and any woman would enjoy such
flattery. So I thought that maybe I could give it a try. I had no other interest in my life. But David said that
he
should be my interest. And so should his boys. I said that if I had children of my own, I would feel different. So he said we would have children of our own. He was desperate to stop me becoming an actress.

I talked to Greta Garbo about it. She said, ‘Become an actress, make a few films, and then when you are bored with it, give it up. It's your life, you must do what you want. If you don't, you will always be just Mrs David Niven.'

But then there were other people telling me I mustn't be an actress as it would upset David. I had people telling me what I should and shouldn't do, even when I wasn't asking them for their advice.

Ava Gardner gave me her opinion: ‘I think their marriage began to go wrong when Hjördis was noticed by the Hollywood studios. She was very beautiful. I think David was proud of how beautiful she was, but he was very unhappy when she was named in a list of the most beautiful women in Hollywood.'

It was a bad beginning to their life together. He wanted a stable family life and wanted her to be at home, while she was realising that she was never going to be anything more than Mrs David Niven which began to be a burden because she knew it was impossible to live up to the expectations people had of her. She said, ‘I was young and my husband was a widower and a father. That was something I hadn't thought about, but we were married and it was too late. The only thing to do is try your best. But I always felt my best was not good enough. I knew that he thought I was only second to Primmie, and I understand that now, but I couldn't at the time. I think I was like a child who would sulk because I wasn't allowed to be the prettiest girl at the party. Or I should say, the most
popular
. And I couldn't do the things she did. She could cook. I couldn't cook. I didn't know how to relate to the boys. I felt like a bad wife and a bad stepmother. I'm sorry that in time Jamie and David [Junior] came to dislike me so much.'

Some of Niven's friends made hasty judgements about her. Peter Ustinov was one of them. He told me in 1984, ‘The problem with Hjördis is that she is such a lazy woman. David was very tidy and also very punctual, but she was always late.'

I put that to Hjördis who said, ‘So are many women', which is actually the response I gave to Ustinov who conceded, ‘Yes, true. It wasn't so much that she was late but that she couldn't get out of the bed in the mornings.'

I put that to Hjördis too. ‘I got out of bed, but not when David did,' she
said. ‘He was up early every morning. I said to him, “Why don't you have a lie in?” He said he had to get up early ever since he was in the Army. He was conditioned to it. I wasn't a soldier. I didn't
have
to get up and be on parade when the cock crowed. I got up when I woke up.'

Even those who had befriended her when she first arrived in Hollywood began to turn against her. She recognised the problem but was helpless to do anything about it. She said, ‘I didn't speak as much English as I do now, so people thought I was being cool and rude to them. Even the two boys thought I was unkind to them. They loved Pinkie, and I was happy that they had someone who could be more like a mother to them. I tried, but I could only do so much. The boys were young but sometimes they would say hurtful things like “We love Pinkie more than we love you.” Things like that. It wasn't their fault, they were just children. They needed a mother's love, and while I loved them, I didn't know how to
be
a mother. I told them not to call me
Mummy
. I thought they might like it if they could call me Hjördis. Other people criticised me for
that
too.'

There was another growing problem. Hjördis began to drink more than she normally did. ‘I did drink a lot, but so did David,' she told me. ‘A woman is not allowed to drink like a man. I always felt second to him. I shouldn't be anything more than his “wife”. I shouldn't be an actress, and I shouldn't drink as much as him, or more than him.

‘And always producers were asking me to take screen tests. But they wouldn't come to me, they would go to David, as if he was my manager, and he'd say, “No, no, no, she is not going to become an actress.” I didn't want him deciding what I could or couldn't be. I felt like I was not in control of my own mind. I hated to be controlled. So, yes, I drank a little more.'

There were other pressures on them outside of Hjördis's control. ‘David was in a terrible mood because he was fighting with Samuel Goldwyn. People get upset. It's life. But if I got upset, people told me, “You mustn't upset David. He's having a difficult time.” I think I was a good wife to him in the beginning. All these things led to me drinking more. I don't excuse myself. I just say what it was like. I would have been a better person if I hadn't drunk.'

Despite the terrible times that lay ahead, David always maintained that he was as much to blame for the problems as she was. ‘I love Hjördis very much, I did from the start,' he said, speaking in 1980 to Lynne Frederick and me, proving that even towards the end of his life and his marriage he hadn't stopped loving Hjördis. ‘Sometimes love isn't enough. I've loved other women but didn't want to be married to them. If our marriage didn't work, it was more my fault than hers. In the first few years she was great fun. I didn't care that she couldn't cook. We had someone to cook for us.'

Five months after David married Hjördis, Pinkie left. Some claimed Hjördis got rid of her. Hjördis denied that. ‘I would never have fired Pinkie. For a start, David wouldn't have let me, and for another, I couldn't take care of the boys. I needed her. I tried to become a “mother” to them but I wasn't strict with them and let them do what they wanted. David said I was spoiling them. I could do nothing right. The boys loved Pinkie and we needed her, but she felt she wasn't needed any more, or maybe she didn't like me either – I don't know.'

David defended Hjördis, saying, ‘She never got rid of Pinkie. She begged Pinkie to stay. But I think dear old Pinkie felt she was getting in the way of the relationship between the boys and Hjördis, so she went off to San Francisco and become someone else's super nanny.' The boys soon had another very fine nanny called Evelyn.

In all the years I knew David, from 1970 to 1983, I never heard him blame Hjördis for the sham their marriage became, and I think that was because he knew that the problems they had, which grew from molehills into towering mountains, were as much his fault as hers. Not even David's closest friends, many of them people I admire and respect and personally like, knew what really went on, or were prepared to accept that David's behaviour was no better than Hjördis's, but they are among those who have castigated Hjördis. David could do no wrong. Hjördis could do nothing right.

Nothing is ever that simple, and the story of the second Niven marriage is complex, baffling, emotional and tragic.

—

A
part from having to settle into a new and not altogether comfortable marriage, Niven was also making what he knew was a dreadful picture, A
Kiss in the Dark
. ‘When I heard the title and that Jack Warner was personally producing it for Warner Brothers and that Delmer Daves was directing, I thought I was going to be in what might be a promising
film noir,'
David told me. ‘It turned out very silly indeed.' That was about as much as you could get from David when asking him to comment on his films. But he was right. It
did
sound like a
film noir
but turned out to be a comedy.

Niven played a mild mannered concert pianist who finds himself the unwitting owner of a run-down apartment block peopled by an assortment of odd characters including a disgruntled tenant who punches him, a pretty model (played by Jane Wyman) who treats his injury, and her fiancé who tries to sell him insurance.

The
Observer
complained, ‘By far the unhappiest moments of the week were those spent at
A Kiss in the Dark
. Starring David Niven and Jane Wyman it proceeds to waste them both in one of the silliest and trashiest stories seen on the screen for many a day.'

David knew it was a disaster before it was released in 1949, and his spirits were not raised when Goldwyn told him he was going back to Britain to make another costume adventure for Korda,
The Elusive Pimpernel
, a retelling of the Scarlet Pimpernel tale with Niven in the title role. I told him that I thought that he would have been encouraged that this was to be produced for Korda by Emeric Pressburger and directed by Michael Powell, but he said,

I was going to be put into more silly wigs and costumes, and I just look damn silly in all that stuff. But what really made me so mad was that I had only just got my family settled [in Hollywood] and I was going to have to take my boys out of nursery and take my new wife and get them all over to England – at my own cost. So I refused point blank to do it, and Goldwyn put me on suspension. I hoped he would see how desperate I was and be reasonable but he just told me –
again
– how if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have a film career. I tried to hold out, but my agent told me that Goldwyn would never back down, which I knew in my heart of hearts, and so finally, to prevent my family from sinking in poverty, I gave in but made demands. I insisted Goldwyn pay the fare, by sea, for the boys, their new nanny and for Hjördis, there and back. I wanted living expenses for myself and for Hjördis. I wanted a house close to the studio with a housekeeper, a gardener, a cook and a driver, and I wanted a clothing allowance for my sons and their nanny. I also demanded a suite at Claridge's Hotel, tips for the hotel staff, ration books, Scotch to be sent from America, a car – everything I could think of. Goldwyn agreed, although I think he got Korda to cough up half the costs.

I behaved appallingly. I was a spoilt brat. I was conceited. But I believed Goldwyn was wrecking my career and I told him so. We had stand-up rows in his office.

At the end of July 1949, the Nivens sailed for England where David complained that the housing Goldwyn's British representative had found was completely inadequate. Cables went back and forth across the Atlantic and Niven threatened legal action. David also demanded that since his contract allowed him six weeks' holiday a year he was going to take it – straight away – back in California. Alexander Korda offered Niven his own yacht to go anywhere he wanted but David insisted he was going back to America.

‘I cannot excuse my behaviour,' David said in 1978. ‘It's the only time in my life I was unprofessional.' The family returned to California – at Goldwyn's expense – and then David and Hjördis flew to Bermuda for their delayed honeymoon. All this gave Hjördis an impression of how she thought Hollywood stars behaved. She told me,

I saw a way of life I'd never imagined. Whatever David demanded, he got. I thought that was what everyone did in Hollywood. And I thought it meant that David always got what he wanted. So I decided
I
wanted things and made demands on David who would always say he couldn't
afford what I wanted. I couldn't understand how he couldn't afford them since he was getting all this free travel and free accommodation, expenses, everything he wanted from Goldwyn. We would argue and he'd say, ‘Have another drink,' so I would drink, and so would he.

Then we had the most wonderful honeymoon in Bermuda. Life was very nice then. We laughed a lot, and we made love and we lived like royalty. I didn't know that David couldn't actually afford our lifestyle. He lived beyond his means, always hoping he could make more money from films. Others made a lot more money, but David wasn't a really big star. His films didn't make big money. I think Samuel Goldwyn was trying to make him into a star with silly costume films.