David Niven (28 page)

David was well aware that he was the star of the film and Kenny More wasn't. The film's director, Ralph Thomas, who directed Niven again in 1979 in
A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
, told me, ‘David is no trouble to direct, always professional, and when we first worked together on that film about the cow, he was fighting to save his career and to maintain his position as the star of that film. In fact, he thought that Kenny [More] was a little
too
good. He'd watch the rushes and laugh at Kenny's great comedy timing, but it worried him, and he insisted that one of Kenny's best scenes be cut. I said to him, “Look, if you cut Kenny's best scene, he'll be just another supporting actor,” and Niven said “Exactly!” So I had to tell Kenny his scene was cut and he was very disappointed and as much as he liked David, after that he was wary of him.'

It seemed that Niven could be just as ruthless as Cary Grant had been. However, he did try to make things up with More by inviting him to Wilcot Manor for the weekend. He got Kenny very drunk and then persuaded him to break a chair which David said was very ugly and should be destroyed, and so Kenny broke the chair and threw it on the fire. In the morning he came downstairs to find Hjördis distraught that her favourite chair was gone. David told her, ‘Kenny burned it.' She yelled at More and refused to speak to him for the rest of his stay.

While he was in England making
Appointment with Venus
, David did some painting in his spare time. It was a new hobby which he'd taken up as his film career continued to stall. He even had one of his oil paintings
exhibited at the Trafford Gallery in London along with other famous amateur artists.

The prospects of another film coming his way any time soon were bleak, and so Noël Coward got a friend of his, stage producer John Wilson, to offer Niven a play. It hardly seemed the right move for David, who had failed in
Wedding
, his only previous stage play, but with nothing else on offer, he returned to New York to rehearse
Nina
in September 1951. Hjördis went with him, but they left the boys in England – David Jnr to attend boarding school and Jamie to live at Wilcot Manor with Evelyn.

Nina
was a French bedroom farce that had been a huge hit in Paris. It had a cast of three; David, former silent screen goddess Gloria Swanson and Alan Webb. Surprisingly, David relaxed into his new role of a stage actor and did well. The play premiered in Hartford, Connecticut in November, then moved on to Boston, Philadelphia and finally Broadway where it ran at the Royale Theatre for 45 performances. Somewhat surprisingly, David Niven had become a successful stage actor, but the stage wasn't where he wanted to be.

He did, however, want to be an author, and his first book,
Round the Rugged Rocks
was published in December 1951. Sheridan Morley told me, ‘I think it was the best thing he ever wrote. It's a wonderful light comedy. It's written in something of a jocular journalistic style and although it was all based on his own experiences he insisted it was not an autobiography. It quickly went out of print and he made sure it stayed out of print because so much of it turned up in
The Moon's a Balloon
and
Bring on the Empty Horses.'

It sold around 5,000 copies, which wasn't bad for a first novel, and it also came out in paperback. But the royalties weren't enough to live on, and stage producers didn't pay much, so what he really needed was a boost to his film career.

He returned to Los Angeles and hoped for the best. He brought the boys back to California and was, said Hjördis, ‘an excellent father. He spent time with the boys and they loved him very much. He wouldn't tolerate them telling lies, and he taught them to be polite. He was a more natural parent than I ever could be. I think he made an effort because his own parents had not shown much attention to him.'

The boys grew to dislike Hjördis who showed little interest in them. She became more aloof and friends found her to be growing ever more distant. She tended to suffer from bouts of depression and her drinking had increased. The problem was that while she might have been a poor mother and David was a good father, David was also proving to be less than a fine husband. He was continuing an affair he had begun while filming in England – and Hjördis knew it.

‘I was depressed because David was already having affairs,' she said. ‘He was never faithful to me. I've been accused of being the one who was unfaithful. Well, yes, later I was unfaithful, but that was because he was going with other women, and I thought, to hell with him, I can do that also. But again, in Hollywood, a man can play around, but a
woman?

‘My depression was not just a sulk. I was really suffering from depression. People told me to snap out of it. But when you are depressed and not just having a sulk, it is hard. It is an illness. I didn't know I was ill, but I was.'

As the crisis in David's career deepened, the more he fooled around. I asked him why he couldn't stay faithful, and he said, ‘There are times of crisis when I need the relief.' That may have been part of the reason. And his career was certainly in crisis. But he was about to be thrown a lifeline from a most unexpected source.

—

J
ust as it looked like he would never find success as a screen actor, David landed firmly on both feet in television. It was the medium that Hollywood considered its greatest enemy. Film stars were not supposed to do television; it was only the newcomers, the unestablished actors that did regular television drama. David had done just a couple to start with,
Portrait of Lydia
in 1950 and
Not a Chance
in 1951. But in 1952 he did four-
The Petrified Forest, A Moment of Memory, The Sheffield Story
and
Sword Play
.

Most of them were aired live, and his stage experience allowed him the confidence to perform well. But he was warned by well meaning friends that he would be blacklisted by the major Hollywood studios for doing too much television. He told then, ‘What difference does it make? I'm blacklisted anyway.'

He might never have made another film – at least, not in Hollywood – had it not been for director Otto Preminger who had seen him on stage in
Nina
and was so impressed that he wanted him to be in a movie he was about to make,
The Moon is Blue
, a comedy of romantic errors set in a New York bachelor pad and based on a successful and slightly risqué stage play.

Preminger thought it would be a great idea to put on the play and have David star in it as preparation for the film. United Artists, who were financing the film, told Preminger he was crazy to hire Niven who was washed up in Hollywood. But Preminger stuck to his guns and David had considerable success on stage in
The Moon is Blue
in California.

At the theatre next to his, in San Francisco, Charles Boyer was appearing in
Don Juan in Hell
. Niven and Boyer had dinner together several
times, and one time Boyer revealed that he and Dick Powell were forming a TV production company and asked David if he would like to join them. With nothing to lose, David agreed, and so he, Boyer and Powell started Four Star Playhouse. They had hoped to actually find a fourth star to join them in their venture, but every Hollywood star they approached backed quickly away. Many, however, agreed to appear in their productions, such as Merle Oberon, Joan Fontaine, Ronald Colman and Ida Lupino who went on to become a regular with the company acting
and
directing.

Four Star became one of the most successful production companies in television, producing one-off dramas and regular series such as
The Rifleman, Zane Grey Theatre
and
Wanted Dead or Alive
which launched the career of Steve McQueen.

‘I rather liked being a producer at last,' David told me. ‘There was always regular work for me, and I had plenty of acting work in my own productions. I was never going to be out of work again.'
Four Star Playhouse
became a popular series, and David starred in an episode called
The Island
in 1952. Many more episodes would follow.

To Hjördis's surprise and delight, David suddenly offered her a role in one of his productions. This seeming change of heart he had about her being an actress backfired. She recalled,

After years of telling me I mustn't become an actress, he told me he wanted me to be in one of his television films. He said he needed someone to play a foreign spy and he thought my accent would make me sound like Mata Hari or something.

I found I really enjoyed doing it. And I thought that because David had allowed me to be in his production, he would be happy if I did some films. I was offered a part opposite Robert Taylor. I thought that I could finally become something other than a good wife and a bad mother. But David refused to let me do the film. I understood his concern. He'd known many Hollywood marriages to break up. He said, ‘I'll be at one end of the world making a film and you'll be at the other end, and there will be temptation.' He meant one or other of us would have an affair. I felt like I was being accused but
he
was the one not resisting temptation.

Hjördis began to sink further into bouts of black despair and heavy drinking.

On top of his success as a TV producer, David starred in Preminger's film version of
The Moon is Blue
, opposite William Holden, Maggie McNamara and British actress Dawn Addams. It outraged many because
the dialogue included words such as ‘seduce' and ‘virgin' and was condemned by the Catholic Church and banned by the censor in America. United Artists and Preminger defied the censor and were successful in getting local counsils to grant the film distribution to great success; it was the first time the American censor had been bypassed.

Its notoriety caused much publicity and almost guaranteed its success. It also happened to be a good film in which David was excellent, earning him the Golden Globe Award for the best comedy performance of the year. Maggie McNamara was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, and the critics received it generally well.
Kine Weekly
, the British film trade publication, said, ‘David Niven completely disarms', and
Variety
said, ‘Niven's middle-aged playboy is mighty fancy play-acting.'

It wasn't all play-acting. I got to know Dawn Addams in 1974 when I worked at Columbia-Warner, and discovered that he was playing the middle-aged playboy very successfully with her. ‘I think the film's racy theme had an effect on David,' she told me. I think she may have been the actress he had been having an affair with in England.

I asked Hjördis why she tolerated his affairs. She answered, ‘What could I do? I loved him, and I kept thinking he would change. But he was a man who needed sex all the time and he needed it from different women. He couldn't be monogamous. I don't know why. I thought of divorcing him many times.'

She hoped that a holiday they took to Rhode Island in November 1952 would help their ailing marriage. They were supposed to spend a weekend shooting pheasants, but Hjördis had a premonition. ‘I am psychic,' she told me. ‘That's why I can see ghosts. And I can sometimes see the future. I dreamed that I would be shot and I told David I didn't want to go shooting. He wanted me to go and said I was being silly, so I went. I was shot in the face and neck, and in my chest.'

David was severely shaken by the accident and feared he was about to lose a second wife. But the injuries were not severe. She had been hit by just three pellets, and while the injuries to her face, neck and chest healed easily enough, the marriage didn't. She was suffering more bouts of depression and began to experience panic attacks. He thought she was faking it.

‘I didn't recognise that she was really becoming most unwell,' he told me in 1982. ‘I'd seen Vivien Leigh suffer from mental illness, and I didn't want to think that my own wife could be mentally ill as well. It wasn't the same. Vivien was a manic depressive which is an actual condition. Hjördis was suffering from…
things
in her life.'

She had experienced a trauma in childhood which affected her for the
rest of her life and at some point she shared her secret with David, but he never told me what it was. ‘That is not my place,' he told me, which was right and proper.

However, in 1986 she told me what had happened to her. ‘I was abused when I was small.'

‘Abused sexually?' I asked.

‘Yes.'

‘Can you tell me what happened?'

‘I can't,' she said, and began to cry. ‘I can't. I wish I could. I was just a child and he did things.'

She wouldn't say who ‘he' was except that he was a member of her family. The trauma of that experience had never left her, and it took a long time before she was able to discover through therapy that this was the cause of her initial depression and anxiety. It was only made worse by David's infidelity. Her desire to break out of the domestic role he had firmly cast her in and become an actress, a career she had not originally sought when she married him, added further despair; it wasn't that she wanted to be an actress but she craved control over her own life. She told me that she felt she had not been in control of her life since being abused.

‘I might have failed as an actress, but at least I would have tried,' she told me. ‘I can't bear to be controlled. I want to be in control of myself. My memories controlled me, alcohol controlled me, and David controlled me.' In 1986 she felt she was finally in control. But she didn't even begin to start to get better before things got worse.

David's reference to Vivien Leigh's illness was based on first hand experience of seeing her in the grip of what was once called manic depression but it now known as bi-polar disorder. He had to call Stewart Granger one night when Vivien became ill while filming
Elephant Walk
. Granger told me,