by Anne Edwards
Jay maintained his privacy, but we generally ate our meals together and he was always a part of any gathering I managed to put together. Cole Lesley joined us once and Jay, not usually so forthcoming, was wildly entertaining, doing an imitation of Carmen Miranda while holding with one hand a flowering plant on his head as he gyrated with great agility to a record of one of the Brazilian Bombshell’s famous songs, aping her inimitable accent. We were joined by a new friend, Dale Witt, a unique American woman, recently widowed and an architect of some note.
Dale and her husband had made a fortune by successfully combining their talents—he as a builder and she as the architect—to create huge tracts of medium-income houses in Florida at the end of the Korean War, increasing their success in the decades that followed. They had worked such long hours during those years that they were left with little time for vacations or just that special time together. Then he had died of a sudden heart attack. It was only then that Dale realized just how much money they had accumulated. So furious was she that it had cheated her of the years together in which they had planned to explore the world once their children were grown, she turned the business over to a management team, sold her house, bought a seaworthy yacht, took a month of navigational training, and with three of her children (the fourth and oldest, a son attending an American university, remained behind) and a staff of two—neither experienced sailors—took off from Fort Lauderdale traveling eastward to Johannesburg, South Africa. Dale’s prejourney nautical studies had not left her time for the matter of bringing a boat of that size into port. She crashed into the dock, left the boat there, and hired a safari crew (to see—not hunt—wildlife) to take her and her brood through the wilds of South Africa. After several months of travel, she realized her three younger children had to return to school. Thus her choice of Gstaad, Switzerland, with Le Rosey and several other fine schools nearby.
When the foreign right to purchase property law came into effect, Dale bought land on the very top of our mountain and designed a spectacular house with a 360-degree sash of nonreflecting window glass circling it. To reach the house, a funicular had to be constructed. One had to park one’s vehicle below to be carried upward to her unique private ski lodge in the sky. I don’t know how she was able to get the Swiss (normally a conservative people) to grant her permits for such an unusual house. But Dale was a most beautiful and determined woman (becoming a female architect in the States in the 1940s had not been an easy task either!).
I would have many adventures with Dale in Gstaad and beyond. Dale and Jay got on famously, Dale and Leon—not so.
Early one Sunday morning in January, Catherine and I were seated across from each other at the small kitchen table when Jay advanced, shouting up the stairs, “Give it to me! Biba! Give it to me!”
Our smallest poodle streaked into the kitchen with Jay in hot pursuit. She circled our table and then, as Jay went to grab her, scooted underneath it and out the other side into the connecting laundry room, Jay finally closing in on her.
“Give it to me!” he ordered as he swooped her up in his arms. I now could see that Biba had something grasped between her jaws.
“What is it?” I cried out, unable to clearly identify the object but guessing it was a bone of some sort.
Jay pulled Biba’s jaws apart, grabbed the item, dropped Biba to the floor, and held it up in the air.
“MY TEETH!” he bellowed, as Biba darted under the table again. Catherine and I stood up somewhat aghast. Jay was holding a well-gnawed set of false dentures.
“Oh my God!” he cried and then clasped his free hand over his mouth. By now Chrissy and Sandy had come on the run from another part of the house to see what all the noise was about, adding to the confusion with a foray of arrival barks.
In all the time Jay had been with me I had not been aware that the even, white, toothy smile he exhibited was dentist constructed. Nor, for that matter, had Catherine and I think most other people. We were to find out later that it had been crafted by the artistry of one of Beverly Hills’ most famous celebrity dentists (Clark Gable’s false teeth being his best kept secret—to the public, but not the cognoscenti).
Jay put them down on the table, Biba quivering beneath it. I lowered my gaze to study this dentilabial work of art, now resembling a jawbone of a prehistoric man found in some ancient digging.
“They are ruined! Ruined!” he cried in exasperation and collapsed into a chair. “And it’s Sunday!” He clasped both hands over his mouth this time.
I had to agree, the teeth were a mess.
“There is a dentist in Saanen,” I added, trying to be helpful. “This is an emergency. I’m sure a dentist would go into his office, even on a Sunday, for an emergency.”
Catherine had been silenced by her astonishment until now. “I don’t think a small town like Saanen would have a dental laboratory,” she said.
“Oh my God!” cried Jay again. “It could be days—a week! I can’t be seen like this! Toothless!” He exhibited an exaggerated, cadaver-like, pink-gum smile.
“How did it happen?” Catherine asked.
“When I was in the bathroom, she knocked over the glass on my bed table that I keep them in at night. When I came out—there she was—the little bitch—chewing on them as if they were a bone!”
“I’ll try to call that dentist in Saanen,” my daughter said sensibly and was instantly on the telephone with a directory assistant. In less than an hour we were in the dentist’s office. The teeth were beyond repair, but he took a full-mouth impression and promised to send it express to a laboratory in Bern. Jay refused to leave the house for the five days it took for the new set to be delivered to Saanen. Biba kept her distance from Jay during this time. But, once his new teeth were installed, she jumped up onto his lap, stretching her snout close to his face to sniff at them. Jay grabbed her and put her down on the floor with some force.
“They are not a bone, you thieving bitch!” he said in a tight voice.
Previous to this incident, Jay (who, by the way, loved dogs) had always favored Biba, and she had followed him everywhere and had slept on and at the foot of his bed. She must have yearned to get ahold of those teeth for a very long time before making her bold move. Jay’s bedroom door was now locked to her. She slept in the hallway just outside his room and still followed him around. However, Biba could be a charmer, and she was difficult to resist as she had such a winning way about her. Soon he relented and they were friends again. Nonetheless, his bedroom remained off-limits to her.
Shortly after the first of the year, Sidney arrived in Gstaad and stayed at the Palace. He was there ostensibly to talk to Elizabeth Taylor about starring in a film, Les Maison sous Les Arbes (The Deadly Trap in English). He was producing and cowriting the screenplay with René Clement, who would direct. The role he wanted her for was that of an emotionally fragile woman who becomes inadvertently involved with an industrial espionage scheme and is, with good reason, in fear for her life. Sidney had worked with Elizabeth on the beleaguered film Cleopatra, cowriting the adaptation with the book’s author. Filming had been interrupted, delayed, and then seemingly abandoned when Elizabeth became gravely ill. Sidney came back on the script when production restarted in Rome, Richard Burton now cast opposite Elizabeth’s Cleopatra as Marc Antony. The two entered into an adulterous affair, which became a worldwide scandal. The production suffered more lengthy delays and cost the nearly bankrupt 20th Century-Fox such severe financial problems that they had to shut down for a time. Eventually three more writers and Joseph Mankiewicz, the producer, reworked the screenplay, building up Burton’s role. Despite the acrimony between the studio, the writing staff, and the stars, Sidney had retained a friendship with Elizabeth.
Having personally experienced Sidney’s simpatico manner with women, I am certain that during those rough times, he must have been a buffer between the studio and Elizabeth. Since that fiasco Taylor and Burton had married, appearing together in a number of films, her role in one, Who’s Afra
id of Virginia Woolf?, winning her an Oscar for her performance. She had just completed shooting The Only Game in Town in Paris opposite Warren Beatty. The Burtons were well known to be having marital problems and were apparently in Gstaad to attempt a reconciliation. The fact that Sidney’s film had no role for Burton might or might not have dissuaded Elizabeth from taking the role in which Faye Dunaway was eventually cast. More likely it was the story, about industrial espionage, not a subject that held much interest for Elizabeth (nor did it to the general public when it was finally filmed and released).
Sidney was most generous with his time, and it was a joy to be with him. On the third night of his stay he asked me to join him at the Burtons’ for dinner. They had inquired if he was alone. He said he was but that he had a good friend in Gstaad. “Bring her along,” he claimed they had chimed. Of course I accepted, although I had no idea what to expect.
“Will it be a dinner party? I mean other guests?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. Their style, however, is relaxed and Liz said she would do the cooking.”
We were the only guests. Liz cooked while our host drank, getting drunker by the glass. I ventured into the kitchen to help my hostess who, in fact, seemed to have things under control. This was a weekend and she had no staff. There was, however, a prepared casserole ready to slide into the oven and a tossed salad chilling in the fridge. Her ebony hair was tied back into a ponytail and she wore only a touch of makeup. Her natural beauty and her astonishing violet eyes transfixed me. She wore a casual, deep purple, silk velvet lounge outfit and two diamond rings that commanded their own attention.
“Are you having an affair with Sidney?” she asked in that trilly voice of hers (not yet lowered from alcohol and cigarette abuse).
“Oh, no. Sidney’s a good friend.”
“They are the kind you have to watch out for,” she warned.
When the casserole was heated through, she removed it from the oven and then, dinner delayed for Richard to have another, and another drink, put it back an hour later. It was after eleven p.m. when we finally sat down to eat.
“Elizabeth made me what I am today,” Burton sneered sarcastically. His wife ignored the remark.
Our hostess drank very little and was sober throughout the entire evening. She was also warm, funny, and amazingly tolerant of her husband’s intoxication. There was little doubt of Burton’s ability to hold his liquor. He stood without wavering and spoke without slurring his words, even as his sharp tongue whipped them out in a marvel of educated language and unique composition. His tone, however, grew harsher and his attitude toward his wife was more than once—cutting—piercing, really.
Sidney joined me for Sunday brunch at Chalet Fleur-de-Lis and remained through dinner, both meals served on trays in front of the fireplace, which he helped to keep aflame by feeding it logs from the wood box while he told me of his newfound love for a Czechoslovakian woman, half his age, very lovely and intelligent, who was having a difficult time due to the political problems in her country, which remained since 1948 a Soviet-dominated state. To remarry at his age—and with her comparative youth—seemed wrong minded. Yet, if they wed, they could live comfortably in Cannes and she would be protected by his American citizenship.
I could offer him only the advice he had once given me: to follow one’s heart, not one’s head. I had not done so and had married Leon, which I now felt had been as hurtful a union to him, as it had been—and still was—to me.
“Are you planning to remain in Switzerland?” he asked.
“That had been the plan.”
“I’ve only been in Gstaad a few days,” he offered, “but I can only envision it as a stopping-off place for anyone other than its countrymen—and women. It would stifle me. There is no dialogue to be had. It is detached from the world and the people who make your life and mine vital. If you decide to stay in Europe, you should consider the South of France—even as a second home. It is a true international community. Think of the great art and artists.” He began telling me of the latest exhibits he had attended; a meeting he had with Picasso; a confrontation he endured (“very stimulating!”) with one of France’s young, new, modern artists. There was always an interesting film and crew shooting at the studios in Nice. And then, of course, many of our expat friends had moved from London to the South of France. English taxation was partially responsible. But the sun, the ocean. “It feels more like California to them. Thank heavens only as a habitat, not its habits. Creative people need solitude when we are at our craft, but we also need a city so we can exchange ideas, recharge, and be initiated back into the chaos of real life.”
I told him that I had finished work on Haunted Summer, except for some last-touch editing and would be sending off the manuscript to the publisher in a week or so.
“Have you been thinking about a new book?”
Until now, except for Jay, I had not discussed Post Mortem. I now revealed the theme and the major characters (leaving aside, I am ashamed to say, the one I planned to base on him). “No one has yet written about those of us who left home to continue our lives and are still adrift after all these years.”
“It’s time someone wrote that story,” he agreed. “I’m glad it is going to be you.”
The night sky was filled with a full galaxy of stars when he finally departed. There was the scent of new snow in the air. This was the season in Gstaad. Thousands of ski tracks would be crisscrossing the slopes and the town would be swarming with tourists. “Good for business,” old Madam Cardineau would say as she rang up one sale after another of foreign-language books, papers, and magazines on her cash register. It was, however, the time when I least liked Gstaad.
It had to end and I knew it. Each morning I awoke and told myself I would call and tell him that very day that our marriage had been a mistake. It disturbed me that it would have to be in the evening when Leon was home alone after a frazzled day in one of Shepperton’s editing studios. He seldom went out on a weeknight. He would have fixed some eggs or opened a can of sardines. Leon loved good food, but he never bothered to cook for himself. It was as though he thought he didn’t deserve a proper dinner unless someone was there to share it with him. I often joked that he had married me so that once in a while he got a real home-cooked dinner. When we spoke on the telephone when we were apart, I usually asked what he had done about dinner. “Oh, I scrambled some eggs.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, I had a big lunch with the crew,” he would reply.
Somehow, it made me feel guilty as all hell. Then—defensive. After all, he was as responsible as I was for the distance between us. Sidney had told me, “What Leon wants of you—and is afraid to ask as you would no doubt refuse—is for you to say, ‘I don’t care about your taxes—or my career. I want to be with you.’ And then for you to follow through, move back to London, into Lennox Gardens, and be free to accompany him to wherever his work takes him.”
Sidney was right. If Leon had demanded I play housewife and camp follower, I would have refused. He was also correct in saying that in my case, Gstaad—as a year-round residence—offered little stimulation. I decided that I did not want to go through with the purchase of Chalet Fleur-de-Lis and, more importantly, that I had to end my marriage. I considered it my failure as well as Leon’s, and was ready and willing to take the blame. Still, it took me weeks before I had the courage to confront him with my decision, doing so on the telephone when he told me he would be down the following weekend and be able to stay for several weeks as he was between assignments. I had thought so long on what I planned to say and believed I had phrased it as kindly as was possible under such circumstances.
I was shocked at his response, although I don’t know what else I could have expected. His voice was cold, steely. If I filed for divorce, he would contest it and file his own brief citing desertion on my part. That would mean a long delay—years, perhaps, and relieve him of any financial responsibility toward me. I countered with my intention of
not asking for any financial aid whatsoever from him—no settlement, no alimony. He would be free and clear of any liability where I was concerned. “The problem is, you are not concerned,” he replied—and hung up the phone.
I notified Mrs. Maitland’s representative that I would not be activating our proposed bill of sale and that I would be moving from Chalet Fleur-de-Lis in thirty days and that she could have access to show it during that time, and of course, keep the deposit of 10 percent of the sale price that I had given in good faith. (Chalet Fleur-de-Lis was sold almost immediately upon my notice to quit, to Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards.)
I had decided that I would take Sidney’s advice and move (with Jay and our canine family) to the South of France. Where was a big unknown. Then Jules Dassin called. He was actually looking for Leon, and when I told him my current situation, he said he knew of a house that was for rent in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, as is. As is? It had been used as a location for a film and needed some cleaning up. The owner lived in Paris and rented it out for that purpose when she didn’t have an occupant.
“You’ll find a lot of the old group nearby,” he added. “There’s been a steady march of expats from London to these sunny climes this year.”
That cinched it for me.
The town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer was almost equidistant to Nice and Monte Carlo, beautifully set on the Mediterranean coast. I called the owner in Paris. If I would do the cleanup, she would lease the property—which had a “gracious main house, a cottage for staff, several hectares of land, an orange grove, and private access to the shore by an underground stairway.” It was completely furnished. Very grand, she added. Five bedrooms, three fireplaces, an elegant master suite, and a view all the way to Somerset Maugham’s villa at the tip of St. Paul de Vance and over the Mediterranean to the horizon.
