David Niven (30 page)

By the mid 1950s, David should have been happy with his lot – a
family, a successful career as a TV producer, recognition for his work as an actor on television – but he was dissatisfied because what he wanted above all else was success as a movie actor. He finally got what he had long hoped for. ‘I got a wonderful picture,
Around the World in 80 Days
, but I didn't get it because
I
was so wonderful. Mike Todd gave me the part because he didn't
need
a big star. The picture was the star. And so was the balloon.'

—

M
ike Todd was a 46-year-old showman who had invented a new screen process called Todd-AO which was intended to project a 70mm picture onto a massive curved screen to give a ‘you are there' sensation as a rival to Cinerama. The first Todd-AO production was
Oklahoma!
in 1955 but Todd felt it didn't provide the Cinerama type effect he intended, so he personally produced a film that would do just that, a film of Jules Verne's
Around the World in 80 Days
.

‘Cary Grant was Todd's first choice [to play Philias Fogg],' David told me. ‘I heard about the film and thought it was just what I needed and I thought, as modestly as possible, that I'd be perfect for it. I didn't think Cary was right for it at all. So I got my agent on the case, and after Todd failed to get Grant, he offered me the part. It took some negotiating because I was a TV star but not a major film star, and I was happy to admit that the picture and that balloon were the stars. I had some help also from Evelyn Keyes, an old friend of mine, who was living with Todd, and she put in a good word for me. Finally he gave me the role, and it saved my career. It was my resurrection.'

Todd paid him a handsome fee of $100,000. The production itself was massive, taking six months to film, and not all of it around the world as one might think. Most of it was filmed in California, but there were locations in England, France, Spain, Hong Kong and Japan.

Todd peopled the film with big stars in tiny cameos, including Frank Sinatra, Buster Keaton, George Raft and Marlene Dietrich. More important supporting roles were played by such character actors as
Trevor Howard, Robert Morley and John Gielgud. There was a major supporting role for Robert Newton as the Scotland Yard inspector who tracks Fogg around the world thinking him to be a bank robber, and a prime role for Mexican star Cantinflas as Fogg's faithful valet. Twenty-one-year-old Shirley MacLaine was the film's leading lady – it was only her fourth film.

David told me, ‘I didn't think Shirley could do it because she was playing a Hindu princess, and I was very cynical about her to start with, and not very friendly towards her, which I regret. I can be a total bastard, you know. People think I'm always so wonderful. However, I saw how good an actress she was and how seriously she took her work and she was a really nice person as well, and in the end we became very good friends.'

Around the World in 80 Days
was one of the three big box office hits of 1956, along with
The King and I
and
The Ten Commandments
. It also received almost unanimous praise from the critics, and Niven received good personal notices. The
Financial Times
said, ‘David Niven is superb. His hauteur never varies a fraction but beneath it powerful forces can be seen at work.' The
Sunday Times
claimed, ‘David Niven as the imperturbable traveller could hardly be bettered.'
Variety
proclaimed, ‘David Niven, as Fogg, is the perfect stereotype of the unruffled English gentleman and quite intentionally, a caricature of the 19th-century British propriety.'

The film won the Oscar for Best Picture, probably because it was pretty sensational in its day, although, unlike other films of the period, it hasn't stood the test of time so well. The film's director, Michael Anderson, shot long travelling scenes – much like in the original Cinerama travelogues – in which the camera was perched on the front of trains or on boats and other forms of public transportation, with relatively little of its 2 hours and 50 minutes devoted to the actual story. Unless viewed on a giant curved screen – and there were few cinemas in the world equipped for Todd-AO as it was originally intended – it quickly becomes wearisome. But that didn't matter in 1956 when it was one of
the
films to go and see.

But before it was a hit, before the reviews glowed about Niven's performance and before the Best Picture Oscar, David, upon finishing the film at the end of 1955, prepared for the next one he had agreed to do,
The Silken Affair
, another British production.

Before he set off for England, Hjördis was hospitalised early in 1956. She had been pregnant, a secret she and David chose to keep because she had fallen pregnant before and each time had miscarried. It had happened again, only this time there were complications and she had to undergo a hysterectomy.

Despite her failings as a stepmother, Hjördis had hoped to have
children of her own, and as one pregnancy after another failed, the depression she was prone to became worse. I have read and heard that by this time she wasn't allowing David to have intercourse with her, but the fact that she was pregnant shows that they were obviously having sexual relations. It was only when she was pregnant that she didn't allow him to have intercourse with her, and that depressed David – or rather, it sent him into a sulk and seeking satisfaction elsewhere.

I've also read and heard that she was seeing other men at this time, but this I don't believe. It has been said that she sent him into the arms of other women, but David was responsible for his own actions. I am amazed at how many enemies Hjördis earned and how little consideration was ever given to what she went through.

In 1986, Hjördis told me,

After my last miscarriage I was very ill and was told I would never have children. When I had my womb taken away I felt like a part of me had been destroyed. I didn't feel complete any more.

I don't show my emotions. That is the Swedish part of me, but losing my babies was shattering. It was for David too. He could show his emotions far more than I could. People thought I didn't care, but I did. I felt like my babies had died and I was mourning for them, but because I didn't show how I felt, people thought I was a bitch. They had no idea how much I was hurting. Only David knew. He understood that Swedish part of me.

I had terrible depression after the miscarriage. People told me I should cheer up. I couldn't cheer up. My soul was in darkness. But when they looked at me all they saw was a cold Swede. They thought I was just down in the mouth.

After six weeks in hospital she was well enough to go with him to England when he made
The Silken Affair
at Elstree Studios. He played a dull accountant who livens up his life by cooking the books of various companies, making a failing silk stocking manufacturer appear to be a success while turning one of that company's successful rivals into a failure, at least on paper.

The film actually begins well but the joke wears thin, although Niven's performance still makes it very watchable, as many of the critics noted. The
Daily Telegraph
thought the film ‘agreeable, civilised entertainment with enough style and wit to atone for the bits that don't come off'. The
Financial Times
praised Niven saying he ‘remains one of the most accomplished light comedians in the business', and the
Daily Mail
thought
that Niven in this film ‘has a chance to show that when he is properly suited he has no equal in his own field of precise, polished comedy'.

Like many of Niven's films, it came and went and was rarely heard of or seen again.

He took time off from filming
The Silken Affair
so he and Hjördis could fly to Monaco to attend the wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier on 19 April. Hjördis took to Prince Rainier and they stayed friends for many years but they did not, as far as I know, have an affair.

In May the Nivens returned to Hollywood for a five week break and then set off in June for Rome where David was to film
The Little Hut
for MGM at Cinecittà Studios. It was the rather saucy story of three people stranded on a desert island. Based on a rather risqué play, it revolved around a
ménage à trois
as the husband allows his best friend to share his wife. Stewart Granger was the husband, Ava Gardner the wife and Niven the best friend. The film suffered because it had to be toned down. But it is an engaging film, and all three stars are excellent in it.

Stewart Granger, however, hated doing the film.

I
had
to do
The Little Hut
because I was under contract. David wasn't, but he accepted anything that was offered to him. Ava Gardner had to be in it too because she was under contract to Metro.

I couldn't bare the thought of trying to do comedy opposite David Niven's moustache because he only has to play with it or twitch it while somebody else is talking and he steals the whole scene with no effort. That's the genius of David. He wasn't given credit for being a good comedian, but he knew exactly how to get the laughs. No, he
stole
the laughs, and I don't blame him.

But I was pretty inconsolable about the prospect of making that film, because of Niven's moustache, and because it was to be shot in Rome which was a separation from Jean [Simmons] that I didn't need right then because she was pregnant.

It was fun to make, even if the film didn't turn out well. Ava was very happy because she was in love with Walter Chiari who was an Italian comedian who had a part in the film. And David is always great to work with because he never lets your spirits drop. He is funny and never missed an opportunity to make you laugh.

One day I was in a furious temper, and he said, ‘Whatever's up, old bean?'

I said, ‘This film is taking forever to make. I asked Mark Robson [the director] when we were going to finish because I had to get back to Jean before the baby comes, and you know what he said?'

David said, ‘I can't begin to guess.'

I said, ‘He told me that he was going as quickly as he could and the baby would just have to wait. He said the baby had to
wait
, for God's sake.'

And David, very dryly said, ‘Then simply cable Jean and say,
Will be home late. If I'm not there start without me.'

For a moment I was so mad at
him
that I wanted to knock him on his arse, but two seconds later I burst into laughter.

I got home just in time for the baby to be born. I sent a cable to David and said, ‘Have a beautiful baby girl. Jean did wait after all.' He replied, ‘Congratulations Dad. Trust a woman not to be early.'

David and Hjördis returned to England in the late summer of 1956 where he made the effort to see Trubshawe. ‘It wasn't quite the same,' Trubshawe told me. ‘He wasn't talking about the old days any more and I was.'

In September the Nivens took a brief holiday in Sweden but were back in Los Angeles in October for the premiere of
Around the World in 80 Days
. The film suddenly made Niven into a major star. His reputation on television was further enhanced in December by another Emmy nomination for one of his Four Star productions.

But there was sadness on 14 January 1957 when Humphrey Bogart, who had been suffering from lung cancer, died. David went to the funeral, ushering and throwing out newspaper photographers. He spent a lot of time with Lauren Bacall to help her through the grief. That was one of his great gifts; helping people through times of grief. He did the same for me when I lost my grandfather.

He went to work on a good film,
Oh Men! Oh Women!
, a comedy in which he played a psychiatrist who has a client, played by his old friend Ginger Rogers, who pours out her troubles over her husband, leading him to crack up. The
Financial Times
loved it, calling it a ‘shrewd and wicked farce'. The critic at the
Sunday Despatch
said, ‘I haven't laughed so much for a long time.' But the
Observer
called it ‘a dull consulting room comedy. The ugliest sort of fun.'

Like almost all of Niven's films, this one has generally dimmed into near obscurity even though it was relatively successful. The same is true of his next film,
My Man Godfrey
, an entertaining remake of a very good 1936 comedy about a tramp who becomes a butler. William Powell originally had Niven's role, and Carole Lombard, as the butler's socialite boss, had the role June Allyson now took. Somehow it didn't quite work. As the
New York Times
said, ‘Maybe June Allyson and David Niven are just not Miss Lombard and Mr Powell.'

There were further TV productions, but not so many, and he was now getting more film work coming his way. He was eager to accept his next assignment,
Bonjour Tristesse
, filmed in the south of France, and directed by Otto Preminger who once again was pushing the boundaries of censorship. Niven played a middle-aged playboy with a taste for pretty young girls and has a particularly close almost incestuous relationship with his teenage daughter, played by Jean Seberg. Deborah Kerr played a former flame of Niven's who tries to steer him away from his philandering ways. This unorthodox tale ends tragically with Kerr driving her car into the sea.

The problem with the film is that people expected it to be another Niven comedy, but it had an edge to it, and so did Niven's performance. The critics didn't know what to make of it, and neither did the public which stayed away. It's actually a film worth watching; uneven but quite absorbing, largely due to the performances of Niven, Seberg and Kerr.

While making the film David and Deborah Kerr became firm friends – it was a friendship to last the rest of David's life. There were suggestions that the two had an affair, but I don't believe they did. It was just a very happy and healthy friendship.