The Moon’s a Balloon

by David Niven

  I was appalled and when I discovered through a secretary in the publicity department that the story had emanated from there, I confronted jock Lawrence.

  As usual he was urbane.

  ‘Remember that first day you came in here?’ I told you then Mr. Goldwyn is the greatest but he’s rough sometimes.’

  Being suspended, I started earning a nice amount by working on the radio in the Lux Radio Theatre and other programmes—very serious they were too, with a week’s rehearsal and the performance given before a live audience of several hundreds to an unseen one of fifty million.

  Reeves Epsy spoke to me: poor man, he hated to deliver bad news. ‘Dave, Mr. Goldwyn says that you have been working on radio without his permission. Under the terms of the contract he has the right to everything you earn. However, he’ll let you keep half.’

  The next radio show I did was with Bing Crosby; the sponsor was Kraft. At the end of the show, as was often the custom, I was presented with a large hamper filled with all the Kraft products, cheeses, spreads, and sardines. When I got home, Coote helped me, and we meticulously removed half the spread from the jars, cut every cheese in half, every sardine in half, then with an envelope containing a cheque for half my salary from the show, I sent the lot to Goldwyn inside half the basket.

  It was ridiculous and childish and I was behaving like a small boy attacking a heavy tank with a water pistol but rather enjoying it. Fred and Phyllis Astaire arranged a ceasefire and Goldwyn sent for me. All smiles, he received me in his office—he had immense charm. He told me that he wanted to give me a new seven7year contract, mentioned the figures which seemed colossal to me and added that the first picture I would do would be Raffles.

  I had always wanted to tackle the part of the famous gentleman crook; now it was being dangled before me like a carrot. It all seemed perfect. ‘I’ll call Leland and have him come over and we’ll make a deal,’ said Goldwyn. I left in a high state of excitement.

  I remember that September evening very vividly because in the car park, outside Leland’s office, I listened to the hysterical voice of Hitler, addressing the Nuremberg Rally. The doom-filled tones of the commentator, Gabriel Heatter, left one in no doubt as to the intentions of the man and the rolling Sieg Heils of his massed Storm Troopers underlined them in an ominous and frightening way.

  I thought about Felix and his dire prognostications.

  Leland blithely turned down Goldwyn’s offer.

  ‘You’ve got to have some guts,’ he said, when I remonstrated. ‘Sit him out—play it uninterested—your contract is running out. He doesn’t want to lose you—he’s just playing games—I know Sam—we’ll get the deal we want.’

  I just hoped that Leland knew what he was doing, and went sailing with Flynn on one of our weekend jaunts to Catalina Island in his ketch Sirocco. Normally, the arrangement was that we provided the booze, and the girls, whoever they were, brought the food. There was one lady who had made a habit of showing up with nothing but a loaf of bread and a douche bag. We were on our way back to the mainland on the Sunday evening. The sea had kicked up quite considerably.

  About fifteen miles out of Balboa, we sighted a large cabin cruiser. She was stopped and wallowing about and signalling to us frantically. When we came near enough, we could see her name and sitting in the stern with a cigar clamped between his teeth, was the owner, Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Studios.

  ‘Give us a tow for Christ’s sake,’ yelled Cohn. ‘Goddam engine’s broke down.’

  Jobella was a heavy boat and we didn’t bring her in to Balboa till well after midnight.

  G. in his rough, tough, East Side way was only moderately grateful so the next day I thought I’d have a little fun with him. I persuaded a lawyer friend to send him an official letter quoting maritime law on the question of asking for help at sea and, mentioning the Salvage Act of 1912, I claimed one half of the.7obella.

  No answer came and I forgot all about it. One day Leland called me. ‘What the hell have you done at Columbia—you’ve been barred from the lot for life!’

  ‘I haven’t set foot in the place for three years,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you must have done something,’ said Leland.

  Then I remembered and told him about the lawyer’s letter.

  ‘But it couldn’t be that,’ I said.

  ‘Knowing Cohn, that’s exactly what it is,’ said Leland, ‘you’d better call him up and explain.’

  I called Cohn and couldn’t get him on the phone. I left messages—he never called back.

  I became nervous. There were only six major studios. Goldwyn was highly displeased with me at the moment and he had an option coming up in a few days. Suppose Goldwyn dropped me? Out for life at Columbia!! And the ‘black list’ really did exist. Too many actors who had quarrelled with their studios had sunk without trace. I might never work again anywhere. I panicked.

  Leland tried to calm me down but it was obvious that he, too, was concerned.

  Finally, Cohn consented to see me and I was granted an interview at 9 AM He kept me waiting in the outer office all morning. At lunch time, he walked out, right past me and never said a word. But I was frightened. I was chicken. I didn’t have the guts to leave too.

  After lunch, Cohn came back. He never looked at me. All afternoon I sat under the pitying eye of a secretary. Finally at 6.30—‘Mr. Cohn will see you now.’

  In his big office he growled at me, ‘Waddaya want?’

  I said, ‘About that night Errol and I towed you home…’

  ‘Yeah…well what about it?’

  ‘…did you get a lawyer’s letter about the salvage?’

  ‘Yeah, I got it. D’you want apologise?’

  ‘Look, the idea was to make you laugh—if it made you unhappy, of course, I apologise.’

  ‘Okay, I accept the apology—now get your ass outta here.’

  I didn’t work at Columbia till after Cohn died twenty years later. The ridiculous war of nerves with Goldwyn continued, though I suspected that the nerves were strictly on my side.

  I was called to the studio to make some costume tests for a picture with Gary Cooper. I began to notice a man hovering about in white tie and tails. He was posing for stills with Bob Coburn, the Goldwyn photographer—posing, I saw, half way up a ladder with a revolver in one hand and a pearl necklace in the other…obviously he was meant to look like ‘Raffles’, the gentleman crook.

  During the afternoon, I approached the man and asked him what he was doing. He was a little mystified himself.

  ‘Well, I’ve been told to put on these clothes and follow you around having these pictures taken.’

  The ‘ploy’ was pretty juvenile—to get me to rush off and sign the Goldwyn offer for fear of losing Raffles. After work, I sent Goldwyn a Boy Scout’s outfit. The name of the man was Dana Andrews.

  Finally, in the spring, Goldwyn and Leland made a deal. Goldwyn, who had a great capacity for letting bygones be bygones, welcomed me to his office with open arms and Jock Lawrence had pictures taken of the two of us signing the contract…

  Goldwyn, himself, escorted me to one of the huge star suites and ordered it to be redecorated to my taste. Olivia de Havilland was signed to play opposite me and Sam Wood to direct.

  I was pampered and spoiled and my every whim was catered to. When I asked for some of my old ‘extra’ chums to be employed in the English country house sequences, they were immediately and when I walked on the set, I thought it was the Crystal Palace. To a man they were sporting monocles. When Sam Wood fell ill, the picture was completed by a gentle and helpful Willie Wyler.

  We finished shooting on September Ist. The picture looked good and Goldwyn was delighted. My contract was munificent. Goldwyn’s plans for me were most exciting…and all this had happened in less than four years…but at that very moment when I was preening myself, something bigger than a weed was blowing into many people’s gardens.

  Hitler, without a declaration of war, was invading Poland.

/>   Doug junior with his attractive new Virginia-born wife, Mary Lee, had chartered a yacht for a weekend trip to Catalina. On board were Larry Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Ronnie Colman and Benita Hume were anchored nearby in Colman’s ketch, Dragoon. Coote and I were supposedly sailing across to join them in a small sloop, the Huralu. Coote and I drank an immense amount of rum at a party in the Balboa Yacht Club and did not quite ‘make the tide’.

  We were woken up at 6 AM by a man in a dinghy banging on the side of our boat.

  ‘You guys English?’

  We peered blearily over the side. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, lotsa luck—you’ve just declared war on Germany.’

  We never spoke a word…just went below and filled two tea cups with warm gin.

  When we finally arrived at Catalina and joined the others, we found a sombre group. Nobody knew quite what to do; like millions all over the world, it was beginning to dawn on us that we were pawns in a game that had got out of control.

  After a gloomy couple of days, Coote and I sailed back. I got a call from Felix Schaffcotsh from New York.

  ‘Hello, enemy,’ he said gaily, ‘what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll go back to England, I suppose,’ I said, very gloomily.

  Felix sounded very bright. ‘I’m leaving for Germany the day after tomorrow, let’s go together.’

  The next day, I told Goldwyn that I had been called up and had to leave immediately. Goldwyn, as usual, was far smarter than I gave him credit for. Within half an hour he had checked with the British Embassy in Washington and had been told that nobody outside the British Isles had yet been called up: and furthermore, that all British subjects should continue a normal life until such time as they received a summons. Luckily, nobody told Goldwyn that, having resigned my commission, I was no longer on the Reserve and in all probability would never be called up at all.

  I cabled my brother Max with certain instructions and was able to show Goldwyn a cable which read—

  REPORT REGIMENTAL DEPOT IMMEDIATELY ADJUTANT.

  Doug Jr. gave me a splendid send-off—a bachelor party complete with pipers. The guests included Colman, Nigel Bruce, Olivier, Brian Aherne, George Sanders, Cary Grant, Roland Young, Kerry Davis and Coote, and the next day, I took off from the Burbank airport for New York.

  As the plane circled over the San Fernando Valley, gaining sufficient height to cross the mountains, the whole of Los Angeles stretched out below me in the early morning light. Warner Brothers and Universal Studios were easy to pick out. I had a nasty feeling that I might be seeing them for the last time. I also wondered what the hell I was doing up there.

  Felix had gone ahead and made a rendezvous with me in Rome.

  Dreading the idea of being back again in the British Army, I decided to save time and money by offering myself to the Canadian Army instead so from New York, I went to Washington to ask the advice of the military Attache at the Embassy. The Military Attache was sympathetic, but explained that the few divisions at present being raised in Canada were already over-subscribed nine times down to cooks. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘the Ambassador would like to see you.’ Lord Lothian was flattering, but gave me a very peculiar directive: ‘It is, of course, admirable that you want to join up, but if you really would like my advice, the best thing you can possibly do, is to go back to Hollywood and represent your country on the screen.’

  The ship was fairly empty except for a group of extremely hostile young Germans who made it obvious that the war had already started. I was delighted when a British destroyer stopped Rex outside Gibraltar. Officers boarded her, interrogated all the passengers and over the vehement protestations of the Italian captain, removed several of the young Germans. Felix met me at Naples and we embarked on a week of liquid farewells in Rome.

  He seemed very well connected and twice I found myself at the Golf Club di Roma, playing with Count Ciano, the Foreign Minister and son-in-law of Mussolini.

  Ciano was a highly attractive man, and both times we played, beautiful Roman ladies walked round with us twittering like birds. When he heard that I was on my way to England to join up, he wished me luck very solemnly and said that he was sure it would all be settled very soon.

  Felix and I decided that we would both leave Rome on the same day. The night before, he arranged a glorious finale. It started with drinks in somebody’s Palazzo and continued through a series of visits to the houses and apartments of Felix’s smart Roman friends.

  In the early hours, we took two carefully selected girls to a night club—a Spanish one for Felix—a Norwegian for me, and all the time we drank, and drank without getting drunkards’ drunk or noisy drunk—an evident danger on this occasion. Towards dawn Felix said: ‘Let’s go to the Vatican and all kiss a Swiss Guard.’

  When we arrived, the sky above St. Peter’s was changing from black to palest blue and the iridescent beauty of the place was almost unearthly. The Spanish girl surreptitiously crossed herself, the Norwegian whispered irreverently in my ear, ‘Every time I’ve been in the place, I’ve been groped.’ Soon they were both asking to be taken home.

  Ungallantly, we did not accompany them but this was our night and they sensed it.

  Alone in a little ‘bistro’ in Trastevere, we drank Fontana di Candida as though they were never going to make any more—still we didn’t get drunk. Felix talked about the new ski lifts he was planning for Sun Valley and I talked of the pictures I was going to make. A long silence enveloped us. We watched the newly awakened swifts wheeling and darting and miraculously missing each other in the darker blue sky. Suddenly, Felix slammed his glass down on the table and jumped to his feet.

  ‘Let’s say goodbye now,’ he said almost angrily.

  I stood up. I think we both wept, anyway, drunk at last, we embraced and parted quickly. A few hours later, Felix headed north-east for the Brenner Pass to join the S.S. and I headed north-west for the French border at Modane to join God knew what.

  Felix was killed in Russia.

  ∨ The Moon’s a Balloon ∧

  TWELVE

  Duce! Duce! On every station in letters ten feet high and the train services in Italy were running perfectly. By way of Genoa and Turin, I was quickly transported to the French border and crossed into Savoie at Modane. Not a bomb had yet fallen on the French railway system but chaos was reigning supreme.

  I had the greatest difficulty convincing a pompous little official that I was not a spy.

  ‘Why does an Englishman come from Italy, monsieur?’

  At last I persuaded him I was trying to be on his side if only he would let me and with a shrug of resignation, he stamped my passport and wrote a special pass.

  ‘Se rend en Angleterre pour faire la guerre.’

  The distance between Mondane and Paris is a little over five hundred miles. The train took three full days. It was packed with drunken reservists and if I ever found a seat, I vacated it only ‘in extremis’. The corridor was jammed with eagle-eyed opportunists. At night, train and stations were blacked out and we stumbled about bitterly cold platforms looking for bread and cheese and wine being sold by ill-tempered ladies with flashlights and no change.

  Most of the time, the train stood in sidings. Nothing seemed to go past and rumours of bombings farther up the line ran up and down the coaches. I was constantly told by thick garlic-laden voices ‘that the whole thing was the fault of England, and now, having forced France to join them against the Germans, the English would never show up to fight—‘just like the last time’.

  I thought of the three million British Empire casualties including my own father, and finally, through pure exhaustion, I placated the accusing red faces by explaining that I was half French anyway.

  On arrival in Paris, I managed to find a room in an hotel on the Left Bank and slept for twenty-four hours.

  Refreshed, I decided to give myself a week in Paris, and then join the R.A.F. I wondered if, perhaps, I could do this in France so I called at the British Embassy but it
was a seething mass of expatriate British looking for permits, visas and transportation so I gave up and contacted Claude.

  Claude had appeared in Hollywood for a very short period and had twice made the hazardous crossing to Catalina aboard Sirocco.

  She had been a model in a famous Paris fashion house and had graduated to become the mistress of a rich industrialist. He had, rather sneakily, sabotaged her movie ambitions by sending her to Hollywood with a return ticket and just enough money for three months. She was now once more under his roof…actually, if not technically. He had built an apartment building in Neuilly and lived on the top floor with his plump wife and two children. Directly beneath, he had installed the beautiful Claude. She was given a certain amount of freedom but he was adamant that she must never receive gentleman friends alone in her flat.

  Although ‘Monsieur’ paid the concierge on the ground floor, he paid her so poorly that instead of being a built-in spy system for him, she had beome the gardienne of Claude’s freedom.

  Once ‘Monsieur’ was home for the evening, ‘en famille’, he never made surprise visits below, explaining to Claude, with Gallic logic, that he would never insult his wife. Claude’s only enemy then was the extreme cheapness of the materials which ‘Monsieur’ had used in the construction of his building: he could hear everything, even the squeaking of bed springs, and once had questioned her closely as to why she had got out of bed and used her bidet at four in the morning.

  Bumping about for long periods in motor cars, trains or planes always had a strange exuberant effect on my sexual ambitions: the problem now was how to gratify them without making a sound.

  If ‘Monsieur’ had had the foresight to install a pane of glass in his floor, he could have gazed down on the ridiculous spectacle of two people thrashing around below with handkerchiefs stuffed in their mouths. As it was, it was a miracle he didn’t come down to investigate because Claude, towards the end of the evening, decided to freshen me up with an alcohol rub. She intimated this in sign language and fetched a large bottle of eau de Cologne. Unfortunately, as I turned over to have my back done, I knocked the bottle out of her hand with my elbow and most of its contents went straight up my behind. Shrieking agony in whispers is a difficult thing to accomplish. Noel Coward had come to visit my beach neighbour, Cary Grant, about six months previously and, like hundreds before and since, I had fallen under his spell within a few minutes of meeting him. Quite apart from the searing talent and biting wit, there is a largely unknown gentleness and a kindliness backed by lots and lots of guts. He also has a tremendous sense of loyalty and is a tiger in defence of friends or causes.