The Moon’s a Balloon

by David Niven

  The ‘would-be stars’ did everything decently or indecently possible to get themselves placed in foregrounds with a chance of being noticed, and people in this group were occasionally singled out to say a line or play a small ‘bit’. At night they went to acting schools or formed small theatre groups. The studios sent talent scouts to cover these showcases. Unless you were a big star brought out specially from Broadway, the only door into Hollywood was within Hollywood itself.

  These were the golden days. The movie business was booming. Hundreds of films were being made each year and there was little competition in the entertainment world. Television had not been heard of. Night football and night baseball were in the future. Nobody played bingo or went bowling. This was the era of the Great Stars. The studios had not yet been emasculated by the Supreme Court in anti-trust suits and the newspapers still had several pages each day devoted to nothing but Hollywood news and gossip.

  The studios looked ahead and carefully built up their stables of favourites. When I worked in crowds at Metro Goldwyn Mayer I used to stare in awe at the names on the dressing room doors…Garbo, Gable, Norma Shearer, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, W.C. Fields, Wallace Beery, Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Louise Rainer, Robert Montgomery, Lionel Barrymore, John Barrymore, Charles Laughton and the Marx Brothers.

  The supporting actors were a powerful lot too. Frank Morgan, Louis Calhern, Robert Young, Franchot Tone, Reginald Owen, Lewis Stone, H.B. Warner. And the ‘babies’, some of them doing their school work in little canvas cubicles on the sound stages—so many hours each day by Californian law…Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, Lana Turner, Judy Garland and Ava Gardner. All those under contract to one studio at the same time. Other studios had their stables too. James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Edward G. Robinson and Bette Davies were at Warners, Gary Cooper, Charles Boyer, Claudette Colbert and Marlene Dietrich at Paramount, while Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant reigned at R.K.O.

  Small wonder that young people with stars in their eyes flocked to Hollywood from all parts of the world. There was hardly a beauty contest winner anywhere who didn’t hopefully book a one way ticket.

  Small wonder…outside Central Casting…

  DON’T TRY AND BECOME AN ACTOR FOR EVERYONE WE EMPLOY WE TURN AWAY A THOUSAND.

  And small wonder that behind cosmetic counters, serving as car hops and waitresses, selling theatre tickets, swim suits, ice creams, or their bodies were the most beautiful girls in the world.

  I soon got the feel of it and was able to take short cuts. Friends among the extras tipped me off about jobs that might be coming up, and riding very much with the Sandhurst ‘forward seat’, I worked in a number of Westerns.

  I got to know a few assistant directors and they put me on their personal lists. I also made the rounds of all the studio casting offices when the Auburn was in the mood.

  Once or twice a week, I worked as deck-hand on a swordfish boat operating out of Balboa.

  Chet Leibert had a forty-five foot charter boat rigged up for marlin fishing with rod and line from the stern and a ten-foot spear platform forward for tackling the giant broadbill. He was a dour, rather unpleasant man, but a wonderful fisherman, and generous. He gave me six dollars a day, more if we had fish to sell, and allowed me to keep my tips. I enjoyed, the fishing more than the filming. I don’t believe this is one of the thoughts of Chairman Mao but breaks, good or bad, do come when you least expect them.

  I had been doing a fruitless round of the studio casting offices and my last port of call was the United Artists studio on Santa Monica Boulevard .…’Nothing just now, call next week’…So that the sanctity of the studio could be preserved, the entrance to the Casting Office was separated from the main gate by a twelve foot high wall of wire netting. I was walking out again when he was hailed from a large limousine on the other side of the cage. ‘Hi! how’s the golf?’ It was the great Douglas Fairbanks himself. He never forgot a face but he had the greatest difficulty in coming up with a name to match it.

  Soon I was on his side of the barricade and setting him right that I was not Bobby Sweeny. He asked what I was doing in Hollywood and I told him. He thought for a moment and said kindly, ‘Gee, I hope you make it…I’m here with Sylvia at the Beach House and we’d love to see you any time you like. I’d like to take you to play at Bel Air—it’s a great course. Come around, I mean it, any time but please don’t ask me to help you with your career.’

  This was the completely honest expression of a completely honest man and a breath of fresh air in a place where the empty promise was the easy way out.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’m going to take a steam—come on in and join me.’ Actually, I would have preferred the off=er of a good hot meal but I gratefully tagged along. He greeted everyone he passed with a wide smile and ‘Hi! how are you’. It was obvious that he was greatly loved but he was never quite sure who was loving him.

  Inside the steam room, I was introduced to various mist-shrouded figures and I found myself sitting stark naked on a marble slab between Darryl Zanuck, the head of Twentieth Century, a new thrusting company which he was just forming, and Joe Schenck, his partner. Opposite sat Charlie Chaplin and Sid Grauman, a famous theatre owner. Present too were Bill Goetz, another associate of Zanuck’s, Lew Schreiber, his casting director, Bill Dover, Sam the Barber and Aiden Roark.

  The sight and proximity of these great men, combined with the intense heat was almost too much for me but I decided to sit there if it took all night. It might lead to something. They were used to these steam baths. I wasn’t. After ten minutes, my lungs felt scalded and my head was spinning. Fairbanks, above all, loved jokes of any sort, funny jokes, practical jokes, any jokes. He had, of course, caught on that I was practically broke so he couldn’t resist saying, ‘Oh, Niven, what are you planning this winter? Playing polo or bringing the yacht round?’

  ‘Polo…polo,’ I croaked and made for the exit. Sam the Barber grabbed me before I fell to the marble floor and put me forcibly into the ice-cold plunge. I was reviving when the others came out of the steam room.

  ‘Doug says you played for the British Army,’ said Zanuck. ‘Well, I played a bit in Malta,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Come and play a few chukkas on Sunday. We’ll have a good game.’

  ‘Er…my clothes haven’t arrived yet, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Aiden here will fix you up.’

  Aiden Roark was a ten goal international. He and his brother Pat both played for Great Britain. Now he was employed by Zanuck in some capacity and organised Zanuck’s polo team. A quiet, dark haired, olive-skinned Irishman, he looked more like a South American. I decided to tell him the truth and in a corner, I explained my limitations.

  ‘Don’t worry about it—I’ll lend you all the stuff you need. Just play a couple of chukkas—you’ll have fun.’

  So it was arranged. I was to play polo at the Uplifters Club the following Sunday afternoon with Darryl Zanuck. How many two dollars and fifty cents ‘extras’ were getting that break?

  On the fateful day, Aiden Roark lent me some jodhpurs that were much too tight and drove me to the ground. The first thing that worried me was when I noticed that the stands were full of people. Douglas Fairbanks and the gorgeous Sylvia Ashley were in a box. The second thing which unnerved me was the sight of the other players. Among them were ‘Big Boy’ Williams, a formidable performer, Elmer Boseke and Cecil Smith, both ten-goal internationals. The final thing, and this nearly completed my disintegration, was the sight of ‘Saint George’.

  ‘Saint George’ was a white Arab stallion. He bit savagely at everything in sight and at that moment, a groom was struggling to put him into a muzzle. ‘You can play Saint George,’ said Aiden. ‘Play him in the first and fourth chukkas. It’s only a pick up game. You play at number one and I’ll hit the ball up to you…Mark Darryl, he’s playing back on the other team…wear the red vest.’

  The bell went. It was a nightmare. I didn’t know who was playing in
which position on what team. Those great experts were hitting the ball like a rocket from every direction but during that first chukka, I was far too busy stopping Saint George from leaving the ground altogether to care. When Aiden passed the ball up to me, I made vague flourishes at it with my stick but quickly needed both hands again to control the brute. It was during one of these mad dashes that Saint George kicked a goal.

  Zanuck I tried to cover but generally passed him at high speed without making contact.

  At the end of the first chukka, Aiden was laughing so much he could hardly change ponies.

  ‘Come back in for the fourth one…you’ll find him easier now he’s worked some of it off.’

  I toyed with the idea of slinking from the ground but I still hoped that I might impress Zanuck and further my movie career so I waited apprehensively for my next appearance. My riding muscles, suddenly forced into violent action, were not reacting and causing me to shake like a leaf. This did not go unnoticed by Saint George when I mounted him once more for the fourth chukka.

  I was determined to make my mark on Zanuck and I stayed as close to him as Saint George would let me. I even hit the ball a couple of times which encouraged me enormously. The experts continued to charge about playing a spectacular game shouting oaths and instructions at each other but Aiden, I suspected, had deliberately stopped sending the ball up to me. It all seemed more peaceful.

  Suddenly, ‘Big Boy’ Williams, renowned as one of the longest hitters in the game, connected from the far end of the ground and the ball sailed over Zanuck’s head towards the goal. Zanuck turned fast and galloped off to backhand it away. I chased after him to try and ride him off the line, and if miracles could happen, to score. The two of us were now the focal point of all eyes. People were shouting and clods of earth were flying up into my face from Zanuck’s pony’s hooves.

  Saint George was the faster and we gained inexorably.

  As we drew almost level and I was getting into position to bump Zanuck off the line of the ball, Saint George leaned forward and through his muzzle sank his teeth into the seat of Zanuck’s breeches. Zanuck roared with alarm and pain and in the ensuing shambles, his pony trod on the ball. It became embedded in the turf. I caught a momentary glimpse of the white mushroom top passing below us and, trying to ignore the embarrassing action at the front end of my steed, I made a vague swipe at it as it fell astern. I missed and my stick passed beneath Zanuck’s pony’s tail. His mount being extremely sensitive in that area, with a maidenly reaction, clamped its tail to its behind. The head of my stick was thus imprisoned. I was attached by a leather thong around my wrist to the other end of the stick. Saint George had a firm grip on Zanuck’s buttocks and our horrible triangle galloped past the stands.

  Zanuck was good about it. I was not invited to play polo with him again but he mentions it to this day when I see him. Goulding came back from New York and kept his word…he really tried to help me.

  ‘You must stop being an ‘extra’ and have a good agent,’ he said. He talked to Bill Hawks, an important man in that line and I found myself with a representative. It was vitally important to ‘have something on film’ so I was delighted when I was given ‘tests’ for various roles. I did tests with Mady Christians, with Elizabeth Allen and with Claudette Colbert but I never landed the parts I was being tested for.

  Three men did the same test on the same day with Claudette Colbert for The Gilded Lily—a scene on a park bench complete with popcorn and pigeons. The other two both got contracts at Paramount but nothing happened to me…their names were Fred MacMurray and Ray Milland. I was a new face and the life blood of movies is ‘New Faces’. I also had a good agent and a powerful director pushing me; furthermore, I was meeting ‘the people who mattered’. I was interviewed and tested for dozens of roles at all the major studios. I had the contacts and the chances, none could have had more, but I was a hopeless amateur and in front of the camera, I congealed with nerves.

  As the weeks went by, I changed from being ‘a new face’ to being ‘a face that’s been around and hasn’t made it’. Invitations to the houses of the great became fewer. Tests no longer came my way and it began horribly to dawn on me that after all, it might be beyond my reach.

  Irving Thalberg had been the boy genius of Hollywood. Now just in his mid-thirties, he was the undisputed master producer of Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Married to the beautiful Norma Shearer, they were the golden couple of Hollywood.

  Production of his epic Mutiny on the Bounty was getting under weigh and having been told by Goulding of my bizarre connection with his ship, Thalberg decided that, as an additional drop in the publicity bucket, it might be worth while to sign me up as one of the non-speaking mutineers.

  He happened to phrase it more glamorously at some Friday night gathering;

  ‘I’m thinking of signing David Niven to a contract on Monday.’

  That did it. The word went round. If the great Irving Thalberg was going to put me under contract, then I must be worth having. Three studios sent people looking for me but I was out chasing marlin. When I got back on Sunday night, AI Weingand gave me a sheaf of messages. I called Goulding and told him of the sudden activity. He and Bill Hawks came over to the hotel and held a council of war. Then Goulding fetched my original and only relaxed test from the M.G.M. studios vault, put it in his car and went directly to the house of Samuel Goldwyn, Hollywood’s legendary and most successful independent producer.

  Goldwyn ran the test there and then while Frances, his wife, listened sympathetically to Goulding’s sales talk.

  On Monday morning, Goldwyn sent for me. He sat behind a huge desk in a tastefully furnished office. He was almost entirely bald, very well dressed, with small intense eyes set in a brown face. He was about fifty and looked extremely fit. He spoke without smiling in a strangely high-pitched voice.

  ‘I’m giving you a seven year contract,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay you very little, and I won’t put you in a Goldwyn picture till you’ve learnt your job: now you have a base. Go out and tell the studios you’re under contract to Goldwyn, do anything they offer you, get experience, work hard, and in a year or so, if any good—I’ll give you a role.’

  I was ushered out in a daze and taken to see the head of publicity—Jock Lawrence, a dynamo.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Jock, ‘you realise what a break you’ve got? Mr. Goldwyn never signs unknowns. He only has three people under contract—Eddie Cantor, Anna Sten and Ronald Colman. Colman’s leaving next month and he’s taking on Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea.’

  He looked at me quizzically, ‘What do you think of Mr. Goldwyn?’

  ‘He didn’t give me time,’ I said. ‘I was in and out of there in about two minutes.’

  ‘He’s the greatest,’ said Lawrence. ‘All his pictures are hits and he is the only producer in Hollywood who uses his own money—Mr. Goldwyn never goes to the banks—he’s the greatest all right but boy! can he be rough sometimes. Now, he’s told me to build you up so let’s hear all about you.’ I gave Jock Lawrence a brief risum6 of my life so far while he made notes.

  ‘Mother?’

  ‘French.’

  ‘Good, we can use that.’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Killed in the war.’

  ‘Great! What rank?’

  ‘Lieutenant.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s terrible, we’d better make him a General.’ I was taken to see Reeves Espy, Goldwyn’s assistant, a gentle, intelligent man who explained that my contract started at a hundred dollars a week for the first two years, with twelve weeks’ lay-off each year. During the first two years, Goldwyn had an option every three months to terminate the contract. In the third year, a little more money and fewer options and so on for seven years. I hardly listened…it was all too unbelievable. I was taken to see Bob McIntyre the Production Manager and Lola Unger er his assistant. Lola said, ‘We have a nice dressing room for you’ and gave me a key. ‘We’ll put your name on the door tomorrow.’

  I found my li
ttle cubby hole and sat there in a wicker chair for a long time. Then I wandered about the studio, the same United Artists Studio where Fairbanks had invited me to take a steam.

  Near the Main Gate was a familiar high wire fence. On the other side was a shuffling line of extras enquiring for work at the Casting Ofce. The Auburn had finally collapsed altogether so I walked to the hotel and told Al Weingand the good news. He was genuinely overjoyed but he also said, ‘Thank Christ, now you can pay your goddam bill!’

  Together we crossed Hollywood Boulevard to the showroom of the Ford Motor Company. The new models were in the window and priced at just under five hundred dollars. I told the snooty salesman I had just signed a seven year contract with Samuel Goldwyn and at the magic name, he became, immediately, deferential.

  ‘I’ll take that one,’ I said, pointing. He gave me some forms to sign to do with monthly payments. Then he pulled a chain—the whole window moved aside and I drove out into my Brave New World—and took Goulding and Al Weingand to lunch.

  ∨ The Moon’s a Balloon ∧

  ELEVEN

  GOLDWYN SIGNS UNKNOWN!—that was the headline of super-powerful columnist, Louella Parsons, the next morning. The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety, the twin bibles of the industry, similarly alerted their readers to this earth-shaking occurrence.

  In my new Ford, I drove out to bask in the congratulations of the Belzer-Young family.

  Within a week I had evacuated from Al Weingand’s haven and found myself a tiny, brown cuckoo-clock of a chalet at the top of North Vista Street, with a view looking over the whole of the Los Angeles Basin. I shared the chalet with several scorpions and black-widow spiders and a garage with the Madam of a well-known whore house situated immediately below me.

  I joined the Hollywood Cricket Club.

  There were twenty-two cricket clubs in California at that time. The Hollywood Cricket Club was deservedly the most famous and crashes were frequent on Sunset Boulevard on Sunday afternoons when amazed local drivers became distracted by the sight of white flannel trousers and blazers on the football ground of U.C.L. A.