by David Lough
It was clear, however, that a wise investment strategy would be needed to ensure that the influx of money from A History of the English-Speaking Peoples saw the Churchills out to the end of their days.
Churchill told his bank manager Stanley Ball that he wanted very safe investments at one end of the scale, but speculative young oil and gas companies, preferably Canadian, at the other. Ball started at the safer end, investing £80,000 in a mixture of building society deposits and Victory Bonds that carried death duty advantages.42 All and sundry were asked to suggest ideas for the shares of young Canadian companies. Max Beaverbrook’s list was discarded because it contained too many ‘blue chip’ firms, so Churchill chose three of his own, Van-Tor Oils and Explorations, Permo Oil & Gas and Provo Oil & Gas.43 Each was active in Alberta, where he had first invested and lost practically everything thirty years earlier. Anthony Montague Browne’s friend Tom Hazlerigg, a Canadian specialist at Rea Brothers, a small merchant bank, was entrusted with investing a further £46,000.44
All went well at first. After asking for weekly valuations, Churchill watched his portfolio climb in value during July 1957 from £86,000 to £93,000, before it dropped to £77,000 in August.45 Acknowledging some ‘serious falls’, Hazlerigg advised Churchill to sit tight while he spent five weeks in Canada investigating the reasons. Storm clouds were gathering over the British economy too, as inflation grew and sterling reserves drained away from London. The Treasury’s announcement of a steep rise in interest rates was greeted by silence on the stock exchange floor in September. Uncharacteristically, Churchill continued to sit tight, advised to do so by his former private secretary Jock Colville, now the director of a City merchant bank. By early November his portfolio’s value had fallen to £55,000 and the first six months of Churchill’s complete retirement had seen his bank balances fall by nearly £50,000.46
*1 Among the many letter-drafting tricks that Montague Browne learned from Churchill was that, for gifts of under £500 in value, he would be ‘indeed obliged’; above that level, he was ‘most grateful’.
*2 Named after its first two directors, Anthony Moir and a fellow partner of Fladgate & Co., Ronald Plummer.
27
‘Good business’
Sunset, 1958–65
Exchange rate: $2.80 = £1
Inflation multiples: US x 8; UK x 20
NOW THAT HE had retired as an author and was not allowed to produce any new work, Churchill could only earn extra money by selling the rights to his old books or speeches for use in conjunction with modern technologies such as television, film or sound recording. These were industries in which both Churchill and his advisers lacked commercial expertise.
My Early Life’s progress towards the big screen had already been stalled for almost a year, waiting for a face-to-face meeting between Churchill and Jack Warner. Just before that was due to take place in September 1957, internal opposition to the project within Warner Brothers forced Warner to call off the meeting and offer to sell back the film rights to Churchill for £15,000.
Throughout the delay, Churchill’s team had kept in touch with Marjorie Thorson at Metro Goldwyn Meyer. Late in October she agreed to revive the project at MGM, but at the expense of cutting back Churchill’s guaranteed advance and switching his share of proceeds from ‘net profits’ to ‘distributor’s gross receipts’, which, she claimed, would pay more quickly, although not as much.1
Churchill’s advisers’ priority was that all his payments should escape tax by qualifying as capital receipts, even though they would not be fixed and would depend on box-office takings. Churchill was equally concerned himself to have some say over the screenplay and over the studio’s choice of director or the actor who would play him. MGM undertook to avoid any known ‘alcoholic or sex deviant or communist or man scandalously involved with women or having a criminal record’.2 In the end, after much negotiation the only immediate payment that Churchill received from MGM on signature of the contract was $750; the rest of his guaranteed $150,000 would only be paid after he had approved the screenplay, written by the British dramatist Terence Rattigan. By agreeing to these terms, Churchill’s still inexperienced team had unwittingly provided MGM with unlimited scope for delay.
The same innocence had allowed the television rights to A History of the English-Speaking People to lie dormant in M & P Investments for almost a year after the programme failed to sell in the American market. Early in 1958, however, a Harry Towers of Towers Films offered $100,000, the price that M & P’s co-owner Sir David Cunynghame had always considered realistic.3 Towers lined up Laurence Olivier as narrator and William Walton as composer, but nobody asked whether he had a buyer, or could afford to pay on his own if he did not.4 The first payment from Towers arrived nine months late and only one of the four more due in 1959 was made before Churchill authorized the start of legal proceedings. Montague Browne began again the search for a new buyer.5
It had been a disappointing year for Churchill’s film projects, and on the personal front 1958 proved no happier. Brendan Bracken died of throat cancer in August at the age of only fifty-seven;6 Churchill’s daughter Sarah had been arrested on charges of drunkenness in California after the break-up of her second marriage; and Churchill caught bronchial pneumonia while staying at La Pausa, thereafter needing care from two full-time nurses, which took his expenditure up to £50,000 a year.7 The only bright spot was his golden wedding anniversary in September, which he marked by a gift to Clementine of £5,0008 and by a joint celebratory cruise in the Mediterranean.
A year earlier the couple had been lent the use of the motor yacht Aronia*1 in Monte Carlo, an experience that brought back fond memories of cruises on HMS Enchantress. The Aronia, however, was on the small side and smelt of fumes, so on their return to harbour one day the much larger and newer yacht Christina caught Churchill’s eye. Christina belonged to none other than Aristotle Onassis, the Greek ship owner he had met previously and who had invited him to visit to the yacht.
Onassis readily agreed to host an anniversary cruise, during which the Churchills enjoyed the lavish hospitality of one of the world’s richest men. Their bodyguard later catalogued Christina’s ‘lapis lazuli baths, huge hand-carved images of jade, onyx tables, numerous valuable pictures, gold icons, and a bar with models of ships sailing around beneath a glass-topped counter’;9 equally she boasted a cinema, an operating theatre and eleven launches to carry her passengers on shore excursions.
The first cruise was such a success that Onassis offered a second early in 1959, this time from Morocco to the winter sun of the Canary Islands and back to Tangier. In advance of joining the Christina on the Moroccan coast, the Churchill party flew out to Marrakech on a plane provided by Onassis’s Olympic Airways. There the local governor’s car was put at their disposal to carry painting gear, food and the accompanying cases of Pol Roger champagne for picnics in the Atlas Mountains.
Churchill spent a month at La Pausa on his return from the Canary Islands, before a third voyage on Christina followed. This time the party sailed down the Italian coast and through the Greek islands to the city Churchill still called Constantinople, but which was now officially Istanbul.
At home Churchill’s staff continued to search for ways to exploit his past work, without undue risk to his reputation. The Second World War appeared in an abridged version, the preface carefully dated prior to Churchill’s retirement and noting for the benefit of the tax authorities that Denis Kelly had edited the book, rather than the author. This one-volume edition was accompanied by a recording of Churchill’s wartime speeches, which earned him a separate £20,000 payment from Decca Records.10
Meanwhile, the film version of My Early Life suffered another delay. Terence Rattigan had pulled out of writing the screenplay and MGM’s chosen replacement, Nigel Balchin, had been so overawed by his subject that the studio withdrew from the project after judging Balchin’s script beyond rescue. Montague Browne tried to find a replacement from the British film industry, but
The Dam Busters, its greatest post-war success, had earned only just over £500,000 from box-office takings and government subsidies combined, so it was far too small to match Hollywood.11 Without any other avenue at hand, Montague Browne turned to a British-born agent in Beverly Hills, Hugh French. Although he had never produced a film in his life, French saw in the Churchill project a chance of breaking into Hollywood’s charmed circle.
While My Early Life floundered, Montague Browne decided to revisit screen rights to The Second World War, for which an American, Jack Le Vien, had made an approach in August 1958. One of Eisenhower’s press officers during the war, Le Vien had met Churchill on several occasions while arranging news conferences at the front. After the war he had headed Pathé News until its collapse in 1956. Now he planned to make a television series about the war using the old newsreel material with which he was familiar. This idea conveniently by-passed any need for a personal appearance by Churchill (which his retirement ruled out for tax reasons), or for an actor to play his part, but Churchill cut short these discussions when his wartime American broadcasting friend Ed Murrow spoke disparagingly of Le Vien.12
In May 1959, when Churchill was invited to America by President Eisenhower, Montague Browne decided to make up his own mind on Le Vien by meeting him in New York. He found that Le Vien had a detailed plan for thirty-nine thirty-minute episodes and had already raised the funding for production costs of up to $750,000 from Screen Gems, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. Once Le Vien raised Churchill’s guarantee to $75,000 and promised him an extra 10 per cent of receipts once the series grossed $1 million, Churchill was persuaded to sign.13
Six months later a producer for America’s ABC network (to whom Screen Gems had sold most of its stake) earned a rebuke from Montague Browne for saying to a British newspaper that Churchill was not appearing ‘live’ for tax reasons.14 ‘Sir Winston was disturbed that the tax question should have been made public,’ Montague Browne wrote. ‘Sir Winston not unnaturally does not want his personal financial position to be discussed in the Press.’15
Le Vien’s television series The Valiant Years proved a financial and critical success when it appeared at the end of 1959. In contrast, Hugh French could still find no backer for My Early Life. Then, in the summer of 1960, a rival agent, Robert Morrell, put together a syndicate of American businessmen, including Fulbrights and Rockefellers, and won the backing of a prominent Hollywood producer, David O. Selznick. Morrell offered Montague Browne £3,000 to secure an option in July. He thought his offer had been accepted, but in fact his radio message had gone astray somewhere between Arkansas and the radio room of the Christina, on which Churchill was cruising at the time.16
Meanwhile Montague Browne had used the interest of Morrell’s syndicate to present Hugh French with an ultimatum: he demanded from French a cash payment of £2,000 for his own option if he wanted to remain in the driving seat. French decided to pay himself and act as the film’s producer, securing Churchill’s signature in return for the promise of an advance of $175,000 on a 5 per cent share of receipts.17 Annoyed at his syndicate’s last-minute loss of its prize, Morrell wheeled out Senator Fulbright to protest, but Montague Browne stood his ground.
French finally rewarded Montague Browne’s loyalty with the help of Jack Le Vien, who persuaded a senior producer friend from Paramount, Martin Rankin, to overcome his initial scepticism and take an interest in the rights to My Early Life. Rankin flew to London and, once there, he agreed to match almost every financial and editorial condition that Churchill’s team had included in French’s option. Paramount signed a contract in October 1960: My Early Life seemed to have found a new home at last.18
The Churchills had hesitated over their holiday plans at the beginning of 1960, before eventually accepting Aristotle Onassis’s invitation of another Christina cruise, this time to the Caribbean. When they were allowed to choose guests of their choice, Clementine set her mind against including any of the ‘South of France set’, which ruled out Emery and Wendy Reves. Informed of this by Onassis, Reves felt excluded.
Later in the year, when Churchill asked if he could stay with Reves and Wendy at La Pausa in September, the reply was no. ‘All kinds of intrigues’ had been at work, Reves claimed, thereby ‘destroying what was a happy and lovely companionship’.19 Clementine wrote to try to mend bridges, but the friendship had been damaged. Thereafter the Churchills stayed in a penthouse suite at the Hôtel de Paris, which was put at their disposal by Onassis.
By early 1960, the Churchills’ reserves had fallen to £150,000, including building society deposits of £35,000 and an investment portfolio of bonds and shares worth £73,000.20 Concerned that his Canadian shares were still struggling, Churchill asked his new manager at Lloyds Bank, Cedric Watkins, to obtain a second opinion. The bank’s stockbrokers, Simon & Coates, advised him to cut his losses, a painful process which took three months complete. Two of Churchill’s own choices, Van-Tor Oils and Explorations and Permo Oil & Gas, had cost £10,000, but were now practically worthless and proved impossible to sell;21 eight other shares, which had cost £46,000, fetched only £16,500. Hazlerigg’s one success, the Philip Hill Investment Trust, joined ICI as Churchill’s only remaining shareholdings of any significance.22
These losses worried Churchill. His household spending was now running at more than £55,000 a year. His film and greetings card contracts had brought in less than this, £37,500, in the previous twelve months and their income was forecast to fall to £20,000 over the coming year.23 However, help was to come from an unexpected quarter when Churchill chose this moment to anoint his son Randolph as his official biographer.
On establishing the Literary Trust in 1946, Churchill had told his trustees that he did not want anyone appointed as his biographer for five years after his death, when he hoped that they would consider Randolph for the role. No more had been said on the subject for almost a decade until he told Lord Camrose in 1953 that he thought Randolph had become ‘a more serious writer’.24 However, the real turning point was reached when Randolph undertook a biography of Lord Derby, the nineteenth-century Tory grandee, as suggested by his subject’s grandson. Even with research help, the task had taken Randolph six years. On reading the proofs early in 1960, Churchill approved the ‘remarkable’ result and and indicated that he would be happy for his son to act as his biographer.
The decision to accelerate the appointment was made easier when Anthony Moir advised Churchill that he could exact a capital sum for giving copyright permission for the use of quotations taken from his post-war papers which he still owned – so long as the publishing contracts for the biography were settled while Churchill was still alive. The Literary Trust therefore funded Randolph to start his work on the book with a team of researchers in 1961. It formed a joint venture with The Daily Telegraph, called C & T Publications,*2 to reuse the template of negotiation that they had successfully forged while selling the rights to Churchill’s The Second World War. The various rights fetched £535,000 worldwide when the syndicate was assembled in 1962: in Britain The Daily Telegraph paid £200,000 for newspaper extracts and William Heinemann £150,000 for the book – in each case a multiple of the sums paid for The Second World War. The American appetite was more restrained: Houghton Mifflin paid less than it had twenty years earlier for the book, while the newspaper and magazine rights went unsold.25 Nevertheless a delighted Churchill collected his copyright fee of £50,000 and the sum went untaxed as a capital receipt in the hands of a retired author.26
By then, problems had resurfaced with the film of My Early Life. Terence Rattigan and Noël Coward had both declined Paramount’s invitation to write a screenplay, so the task had fallen to one of Churchill’s favourite authors: C. S. Forester of Captain Hornblower fame. His attempt also fell flat: ‘It is like a devout Roman Catholic being asked to write the life story of the Pope,’ was Hugh French’s diagnosis.27 The film’s schedule (and Churchill’s payment) was put back a year, while two more writers tried to find a convi
ncing angle for the cinema. Even the mild-mannered Montague Browne was driven to declare the fifth attempt ‘utterly useless, so full of impossibilities of taste, of fact and of dramatic construction that I can only regard it as a bad joke’.28
By the spring of 1961 the health and energy of both Churchill and Clementine were visibly declining. Clementine spent much of March being treated for depression in a London hospital. Churchill visited her between his own spells of sunshine in Monte Carlo and the Caribbean, where he sailed on Christina, calling on the way home at New York. He was not well enough to accept President Kennedy’s invitation to visit Washington, D.C. but returned to Britain in time for the 1961 racing season.
The prize money from Churchill’s stable had dipped in 1958 and 1959,29 then recovered to £13,000 in 1960, when an early season victory by Vienna prompted her owner to remain in England rather than travel to the south of France. ‘Owing to winning a £6,000 race yesterday I have moved into the Derby sphere which I cannot desert,’ he explained to Lord Beaverbrook. ‘Good fortune ties me by the legs.’30 There was to be no Derby victory, but Churchill’s five wins that season included one by High Hat, a newcomer to his string. High Hat went on to win £17,000 in 1961, coming first three times and rounding off the season with a fourth place at the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.31 As a result, Major Carey Foster valued High Hat alone at £80,000, and the rest of the stud and racing string at a similar amount.32 These were not fanciful sums. Another victory by High Hat brought a cash offer of exactly £80,000, with shares in the offering syndicate said to be worth an extra £5,000; Churchill, however, preferred a straight offer of £80,000 from a former aide-de-camp, Tim Rogers, who was now an Irish racehorse breeder.33
