The Moon’s a Balloon

by David Niven

  ‘You gotta get your ass back East,’ Todd told me. ‘You gotta be there at the pay-out window.’

  Todd sent air tickets and installed us in the most expensive apartment in the St. Regis Hotel. There was a present for Hjordis when we arrived and the rooms were full of flowers; champagne and caviar were waiting for us. The opening was a Todd bonanza; mounted police held back the screaming crowds as the audience of a thousand famous people in evening dress filed into the theatre. Every member of the audience received a beautifully bound and illustrated programme embossed in gold on the cover with the name of each recipient. After the showing, Todd gave a champagne supper for fifteen hundred at the Astor Hotel.

  Where did he get the money for all this?’ The answer, according to Bennett Cerf of Random House, who produced the programme, was that he didn’t. The morning after the opening, his cheque made out to the publishers—bounced. No matter, Gambler Todd had got right to the wire with his last penny and when the audience had finished cheering and the ecstatic reviews were being read, there he was standing happily at the pay-out window.

  The picture won the Academy Award as the Best Picture of the Year and became one of the biggest money spinners of all time.

  Todd married Elizabeth and gave her a diamond the size of a skating rink. He bought himself a twin-engined plane.

  Hjordis and 1, with peculiar logic, decided that with a lot of good pictures now being offered to me, it was the ideal moment to go away from Hollywood for a few months so we flew off around the world.

  Shirley MacLaine came with us to Tokyo and, with her husband, Steve Parker, as guide, we saw the best of Japan. The four of us went on to Hong Kong.

  Shirley is a great traveller and a spectacular companion. She is also a lady of formidable crusading opinions and her anti-Establishment observations reverberated round the crown colony.

  When she and Steve flew back to Japan, Hjordis and I continued on to Thailand, India and Turkey. In Greece we decided to spurge so we chattered a small ketch and the boys flew out to spend their holidays with us in the Islands of the Aegean and Ionian Seas. Hjordis caused a stir in every land we visited not only because of her spectacular beauty but because her idea of travelling light was to order a local costume in each country in turn. Somehow, her purchases always seemed to be delivered on the day of our departure, consequently, she contrived to be a country behind in her clothing. Her cheongsan from Hong Kong, was, however, a huge success in Bangkok and her sari from Jaipur nearly caused a riot in a football match in Istanbul.

  Back once more in the Pink House via Sweden and England, I made My Man Godfrey at Universal before we decided to visit the scene of the Rat Pack inauguration.

  The operator at the Sands Hotel located me at a black jack table and told me Mike Todd was calling me from New York.

  ‘Get your ass over to Palm Springs,’ he said, ‘Liz and I are flying out tomorrow. Come and spend the weekend.’

  I explained that although Las Vegas is separated from Palm Springs by only a hundred miles as the crow flies, the bird would have to cross a hundred miles of mountains and desert to make the trip.

  ‘Hold the ‘phone,’ said Todd.

  After a while, he was back on the line.

  ‘Okay, I’m sending the plane out there to pick you up—we’ll come on out on a commercial—see you tomorrow night for dinner.’ He hung up.

  The following day, Todd’s twin-engined, twin-piloted pride and joy arrived from New York, picked us up and half an hour later, we were in Todd’s Palm Springs pad.

  Elizabeth Taylor has always fascinated me. I met her first when she was fifteen and got to know her well during her marriage to the gentle, self-effacing Michael Wilding. Her incredible beauty, h-er talent and her violet eyes have been the subject of endless paeons of praise; less well known are her courage, her down-to-earthiness and her staunch defence of friends. That she is completely unspoiled and natural is a miracle when one remembers that with all the attendant sycophantic adulation, she has survived being a major world movie star since she made National Velvet at tie age of ten. She was gay and relaxed during the weekend but made no secret of her annoyance that she would have to stay behind and work in Hollywood when Todd flew back to New York in a few days’ time to attend some testimonial dinner.

  On the Sunday evening, we all returned to Los Angeles in Todd’s plane. Hjordis and I needed little persuading when Todd suggested that we pick up our car and drive back to Palm Springs to relax in his beautiful house till the following weekend when he would be back again.

  On the day we reinstalled ourselves in his desert home, Todd called us and said how he wished he could be with us and how little he relished the idea of going back to New York.

  ‘Get out of the dinner,’ I said, ‘come on down.’

  He said he couldn’t as he had promised to attend. With typical thoughtfulness, he called again just before he took off to make sure we had everything and repeated once more, how much he wished he didn’t have to go. Four hours later, his plane crashed in New Mexico. The word ‘playwright’ is spelled that way for a very good reason. Shipwrights build ships, wheelwrights fashion wheels, and playwrights construct plays. If they construct them badly, they quickly fly apart at the seams.

  Terence Rattigan is an actor’s playwright. To perform the characters he has invented is a joy because they are so well drawn and the plays that present them are so well constructed that so long as you can remember, your ‘lines’ and don’t bump into the furniture, you can’t go wrong. Separate Tables is one of Rattigan’s best plays and ‘The Major’ is one of his best written characters, so I was, naturally, overjoyed when I was offered the part in the film version. Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth, Wendy Hiller, Gladys Cooper, Cathleen Nesbitt, Rod Taylor and myself rehearsed for two weeks under the expert eye of Delbert Mann—one of the best of the new brew of young directors who had been making names for themselves in ‘live’ television in New York. It was a dream company to work with.

  When the shooting was completed, Hjordis, who had just suffered through yet another miscarriage, was particularly delighted when we took off for a long-planned two weeks’ holiday with Noel Coward at his home near Port Maria in Jamaica. On the first evening over rum drinks, having just heard sad news from England, I said to Noel, ‘It’s terrible—I’ve arrived at the age when all my friends are dying.’

  ‘Personally,’ said Coward. ‘I’m delighted if mine last through luncheon…’

  ‘Incidentally,’ he added, ‘you don’t look too good yourself.’

  I wasn’t, it is true, feeling very well—feverish, and Hjordis had just discovered some spots on my back—they itched. By the next morning, more spots had appeared on my face and chest—and my fever had soared. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Noel,’ I said, ‘but there seems to be a faint possibility that I may be coming down with chickenpox.’

  Noel eyed my flushed face with mounting distaste then spoke very slowly and distinctly.

  ‘I want to make one thing crystal clear—you cannot come down with it here.’

  The next day when Hjordis counted my proliferating spots and reported to Noel that on my face and chest alone she had found over two thousand, Noel sighed resignedly.

  ‘It’s high time I wrote another play,’ he said, ‘and painted some more of my excellent pictures, so we will now pull up the drawbridge, fly the Yellow Jack…and the hell with it.’

  He then fetched the bottle.

  ‘The village postmistress,’ he said ‘swears that pure rum will stop the itching and bring down the fever.’

  While Hjordis watched apprehensively, he anointed my spots and gave me a hefty tot to drink for good measure.

  The result of this piece of folklore was instant delirium and two attempts, bravely frustrated by Hjordis, to climb out of the window into the sea.

  By the time, weeks later, that I was well enough to travel, Noel had indeed painted many excellent pictures. He had also, written a very successful play—N
ude with Violin. His real resilience, however, is demonstrated by the fact that he invited us to stay with him again.

  Children’s diseases are not to be recommended to adults. It was weeks before I could go back to work. When I did, I started Ask Any Girl with Shirley MacLaine.

  On the set one day, Shirley was called to take a phone call from New York; she let out one of her traffic-stopping shrieks.

  ‘Hey, David! come here quick!’ she yelled. ‘You’ve just won the New York Critics’ Award for Separate Tables.’

  It was a tremendous surprise, I didn’t even know I was a candidate. There were, I believe, fifteen voters and apparently after three ballots I had just scraped home over Spencer Tracy in The Old Man and the Sea. Bosley Crowther, the influential voice of the New York Times, had voted against me which, of course, he had every right to do, but finding himself in the minority, he behaved like a spoiled brat and devoted his Sunday article to saying what a disgrace it was that I had won.

  Shirley got me all excited.

  ‘If you win the New York Critics, you are almost bound to be nominated for the Academy Award! Hey! you may get the Oscar!!’

  I tried to be cool and accepted congratulations all over town as unsmugly as I could but the weeks before the announcement of the five nominees for best performance by an actor were endless. When it finally came over the radio, I was on my way home from work and my receiver was on the blink. The attendant at a gas station gave me the good news when I stopped to fill up. When I arrived at the Pink House, Hjordis had the champagne out. The phone never stopped ringing. Basically, the awards system is a good one…for the nomination, five in each category, one’s peers vote. The actors nominate the actors, the directors nominate the directors, the writers the writers, the cameramen the cameramen—and so on. Then the whole lot, all three thousand members of the Academy, vote for the winners.

  The other nominees in my category were Spencer Tracy, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis.

  I had ten weeks to wait before the final result and I started out by telling myself that at best, I was a four-to-one shot. I also felt a bit of a fake because playing the role of ‘the Major’ bad, thanks to the way it was written and directed and the formidable help I had received from that high-powered cast, been far easier than I could have imagined.

  As the ten weeks dragged by, the pressures built up. The winner of the Academy Award is supposed to add a million dollars to the potential of the picture he is in. His next film, too, is supposed to benefit largely. The advertising campaigns start in earnest one month before voting day. Film companies and some individuals spend thousands of dollars pushing their wares, everyone is speculating.

  ‘Tracy will win because everyone loves him…Newman will win because he is always so good—and it’s time he did…Poitier will win because he’s black and Hollywood is colour-conscious…Curtis will win because he’s Jewish…you can’t win because you’re British and they gave it to Alec Guinness last year,’ etc., etc. It was all very nerve-racking but as the day came hearer, I found that I wanted that Oscar desperately.

  My estimate of my chances was not very high at the best of times but it dropped to zero on the very day that the three thousand voters received their ballot sheets…there in the Hollywood Reporter, the local Bible which would be read by all of them, was a reprint of a story by the eminent film critic and columnist of the Washington Daily News, Jim O’Neill. It stated that a well-known Hollywood producer had told that newspaper’s columnist that the one person he would never vote for would be me, because I had copied Eric Portman’s stage performance entirely, had seen the play forty times and had haunted Portman’s dressing room till I had to be bodily thrown out of the theatre.

  I was sunk. I cabled O’Neill in Washington and pointed out that not only was I not clever enough, or stupid enough, to copy anybody’s performance—but it so happened that I had seen the play precisely once, four years before in London.

  O’Neill checked with Portman, who kindly corroborated this and wished me luck and O’Neill then, very graciously, apologised to me in print for ‘irresponsible reporting’. He quoted Portman’s cable and for good measure, told me, over the phone, the name of the Hollywood producer, ‘as the very least I can do’.

  It was far too late to hope to put the record straight, the votes would already have been cast and I had really given up any hope. However, I called the ‘well-known producer’ and thanked him for his help.

  After a lot of spluttering, he said, ‘Jesus; I’m trapped. I did it but I heard it from So-and-So. So-and-So told me it had come from ‘thingummibob’

  ‘—and so it went on.

  Out of curiosity, I tracked it back through eight people and there I found who had originated the story—a publicist in the publicity department of a rival studio whose job it was to further his man’s chances had decided that the best way was to chop down the opposition.

  When there is a million dollars at stake, Hollywood has never believed in kid gloves. The actor, of course, had no idea it had happened, he would never in a million years have condoned it.

  The night before the ‘Awards’, someone gave a large party for Ingrid Bergman, who, after years away from Hollywood and a romance on Stromboli which had shocked or titillated the world, had reappeared to make one of the presentations. Everyone at the party seemed to have voted for me; they didn’t say so in so many words, they were content to signal the fact across the room by making a cross in the air and pointing to their own chests and winking knowingly.

  I was greatly encouraged until I caught the eye of Rosalind Russell, a nominee for best actress for whom I had not voted—and found myself winking, pointing and drawing crosses in t-he empty air.

  The night of the awards finally was upon us. I was slightly anaesthetised because for the hour-long show, Bob Hope, Jack Lemmon and I had been pressed into service as the three masters of ceremonies and this preoccupied me with a great deal of hard work. At Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, the scene was set.

  The traditional searchlights weaved back and forth across the purple night sky and the bleachers were jammed with thousands of excited fans as the bearers of well-known faces arrived and popping flash-bulbs blinded their well-known eyes.

  I had to be there early. Before I left home, our Celtic and Nordic blood sent us dashing superstitiously about the house gathering up good luck charms. Distributed about my person were several rabbits’ feet, a silver pig that one of my sons had given to me, some heavy Swedish coins, a Hebrew inscription on beaten bronze which I hoped might have captured the Jewish vote, a Buddha with a tiny diamond in his navel which Hjordis had found in Thailand, and my other son’s first fallen tooth.

  Hjordis looked spectacular and munching tranquillisers like popcorn, arrived later with Suzanne and Peter Ustinov.

  My chores as a master of ceremonies over, I found my seat with them and sat knotted with indigestion as the show dragged on. I watched wretchedly as the happy recipients of Oscars made their carefully prepared acceptance speeches (more superstition had stopped me from preparing even one line—just in case). Ranged around the walls of the packed auditorium were five television cameras, each focused on a nominee and each ready to capture and flash to millions of viewers all over the world, looks of expectancy, disappointment, joy, studied indifference or tears.

  Irene Dunne was finally introduced and I carefully composed my generous-hearted-loser face for she it was who would open the big white envelope, sealed in guaranteed secrecy by Price Waterhouse and Company and containing the name of the winner of ‘The Best Performance by an Actor’. She opened the envelope and, after an interminable pause, read out my name. There was a roar. I didn’t wait to diagnose whether it was a roar of approval or rage. I kissed Hjordis, leapt to my feet and with tail coat flapping, I cantered down the aisle—I thought ‘I’ve got to get there quick before she changes her mind.’

  Such was my haste to get on that stage that I tripped up the steps a
nd sprawled headlong. Another roar rent the air. Irene helped me up, gave me the Oscar, kissed me on the cheek and left me alone with the microphone. I thought the least I could do was to explain my precipitous entrance, so I said…’The reason I just fell down was…’ I had intended to continue ‘because I was so loaded with good luck charms that I was top heavy…’ Unfortunately, I made an idiot pause after the word ‘loaded’ and a third roar raised the roof.

  I knew that I could never top that, so I said no more on the subject, thereby establishing myself as the first selfconfessed drunk to win the Academy Award.

  So many ingredients go into one individual’s winning an Oscar—the material, the direction, the other actors, the photography, the editing, even the music, that in reality it’s a team effort, but whatever the background and however sentimental the vote, it’s a lovely feeling to accept first prize.

  Cables and messages and scripts poured in from all over the world…King for a day?…Certainly! After that, it’s back to the old drawing-board. The message I cherished the most was an invitation to go and see Samuel Goldwyn at his home. He opened the door himself and put his arm around my shoulders. It had been eight long years since we parted company. In the drawing room, Frances caught me looking, surreptitiously, at the piano: there in its silver frame stood my photograph in uniform sent from England during the war.

  ‘Sam never took it down,’ she smiled. Live television, during its reign, proved one thing—that many actors are masochists. Without exception, the most ghastly torture ever invented for people in my profession, it incorporated all the worst features of films, radio and the legitimate theatre.

  Before an unseen audience of millions, over-dressed and under-rehearsed actors struggled with badly written scripts in front of cameras which collided with sickening regularity and scenery that wobbled and often collapsed while the whole mess was directed by egomaniac directors, drunk with power in front of consoles studded with switches and buttons. The actor’s nightmare was ever present—the dread of forgetting the lines without any possible hope of being prompted back on to the track. My partner, Dick Powell, was the genius who overcame this on one occasion. When forgetfulness set in, he continued mouthing silently and all over the country hundreds of thousands of viewers frantically twiddled their dials and phoned their repair men.