by Michael Munn
By the end of 1936, Goldwyn had become so pleased with David’s progress – which meant that other studios were prepared to pay increasingly larger amounts to use Niven in their pictures – that Goldwyn raised David’s weekly salary from $150 to $250 and gave him a new contract so that he would go on to earn $1,000 a week by his seventh year with Goldwyn and not the $600 as originally agreed.
He desperately wanted to have a part in the upcoming David Selznick production of The Prisoner of Zenda which was to star Ronald Colman in the dual role of the Ruritanian king and his look-alike cousin Rassendyll. The British contingent of Hollywood often gathered on Sundays at Colman’s house and there Colman and Merle decided Niven would be well cast as the king’s aide, Fritz von Tarlenheim, a very decent role in what was expected to be a prestigious movie. Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, who was already cast in the film, was enlisted to join Merle and Colman in trying to persuade Selznick to cast David.
Niven was invited to play some tennis and lunch with Selznick and they were joined by Selznick’s wife Irene and his brother, Myron, a respected agent. The socialising went on late into the evening by which time David Selznick had made up his mind that Niven would be ideal for the part of the king’s aide.
Niven received an unusual present from his brother Max for Christmas 1936. He bought back David’s body from the hospital he had sold it to and now David owned his body once more.
In January 1937 Merle was due to fly to England to spend six months making I, Claudius, but before she left America, David joined her for a week in Philadelphia, and then another week in Boston where Merle introduced him to her good friend Noël Coward. Then she flew to England and Niven moved in with Errol Flynn. It was not a move to inspire David with thoughts of fidelity.
Flynn had just split from his wife Lili Damita and, in need of a bachelor pad, he and Niven decided to rent Rosalind Russell’s house at 601 Linden Drive. As Trubshawe noted, ‘David wasn’t just finding a place to live while Merle was away for half a year. He was putting himself into a situation where Merle wouldn’t want to marry him.’
In 1970, and again in 1971 when The Moon’s a Balloon was published, David spoke of his time with Errol Flynn as if it had been the greatest of friendships. But in 1979 he told me, ‘It’s true that Flynn and I had a great time. But he wasn’t a real friend. He was just a great pal, someone to have fun with. You couldn’t rely on Flynn at all.’
In Bring on the Empty Horses, David famously wrote of Flynn, ‘You always knew precisely where you stood with him because he would always let you down.’ Behind the humour of that line was the truth of their friendship. As far as Flynn was concerned David was someone to share in his love of booze and women. For David it was an opportunity to sow enough wild oats that Merle would never want to marry him. It’s true that he enjoyed Flynn’s company, and they certainly shared a common bond in seeking out the pleasures of bachelorhood. David, at the age of 26, was reliving his youth. As Sheridan Morley noted, he was able to find with Flynn the kind of schoolboy life he had enjoyed with Michael Trubshawe on Malta.
Part of Flynn’s appeal as far as Niven was concerned was a 65ft (20m) ketch called the Sirocco which Flynn owned. They went sailing every weekend with plenty of booze and girls on board. I don’t think David ever drank as much as Flynn did, but their boozy antics at 610 Linden Drive inspired Rosalind Russell to call the house ‘Cirrhosis-by-the-Sea’.
Flynn and Niven were not the only occupants there. Robert Coote, another British actor trying to find success in Hollywood, also moved in, and Niven and Coote became great friends. ‘Robert Coote was a greater friend to David than Flynn ever was,’ said Michael Trubshawe. ‘I’ve no doubt that for a brief period of time Niv thought Flynn to be the best thing since sliced bread. But Flynn had a nasty side to him, and he could be cruel to even those he thought of as his best friends.’
In 1979, during his ‘angry interview’, I heard David talk about Flynn in a whole new light.
There was a time when Flynn made me angrier than I can ever remember being. I was out of the house and he took a call from George Stevens who was one of the best directors in Hollywood. He wanted to know if I would be interested in a part in Gunga Din. Of course, he should have gone through Goldwyn, but he wanted to talk to me initially. Fred Astaire had worked with him and recommended me. Flynn never passed on the message.
Not long after, Fred said to me, ‘Did you accept George’s offer?’
I said, ‘What offer?’
He said, ‘I think you better call George Stevens.’
So I did, and he said, ‘I’m sorry you chose to ignore my offer.’ I said I didn’t know what offer he was talking about. So he told me about his conversation with Flynn on the telephone. He wanted me to play one of the key characters in Gunga Din but because I hadn’t had the decency to call him back, he gave the part to Doug Fairbanks [Junior]. He had also told Flynn to let me know that if I wanted, he was prepared to get RKO Studios to buy my contract from Goldwyn and they’d do more for me than Goldwyn ever did.
I said, ‘I swear, George, Flynn never said a word to me or I would have been on the phone to you the moment I’d heard.’
Stevens said, ‘If you want to get on in Hollywood, don’t hang around with sons of bitches like Flynn who doesn’t give a damn for anyone but himself. He’ll ruin you.’ And he was right. Flynn almost wrecked my career because he thought it was funny not to tell me about the most important phone call I ever had at that stage of my career. I never forgave him for that.
In The Moon’s a Balloon David wrote affectionately about Flynn, and he told me, ‘He was a shit, of course, but once you knew that it didn’t matter because we all have our faults, and we should love our friends complete with their faults.’
But in the 1979 ‘angry interview’ he said to me, ‘There never was a bigger shit than Flynn. For a short time it was a lot of fun, but I knew I could never trust him. If I told him a secret, he would tell someone else – always. I told him something very important once, and I told him not to tell a certain person, and he told, and I found myself in hot water. I could have done without Flynn in my life.’
Flynn may have let David down badly, but David was responsible for his own actions which landed him in the veritable hot water. No sooner had Merle left America to head for England than David began a fling with actress Virginia Bruce. ‘I swear, that fucking Flynn blabbed to someone knowing it would get into the newspapers,’ David told me. Sure enough, the newspapers in January 1937 were reporting on the romance between Niven and Virginia Bruce. ‘I really didn’t know what to tell reporters.’
Merle, of course, got to hear about it and was extremely distressed as she began work on I, Claudius. Goldwyn wasn’t pleased either and told Niven, according to Ray Milland, ‘Keep your dick in your pants and out of the newspapers.’ David Selznick, who David was about to go to work for on The Prisoner of Zenda, also berated him. Studios and independent producers were very wary about the public perception of their stars.
Filming began on The Prisoner of Zenda in early 1937 and Niven began it with trepidation. He told me,
I really wasn’t sure how best to play the part. It was such a dull character. Out of sheer desperation I started playing it for laughs, thinking this would brighten the role and the scenes I was in. But the director wasn’t impressed when he saw what I was doing and he threatened to fire me from the film. I was so depressed I got home and Flynn and I drank our way into near oblivion. I said to him, ‘This is it. The end has come for me.’
He said, ‘Cheer up, sport, there’ll be plenty more offers of work.’ That was easy for him to say. He had a watertight contract with Warner Brothers. And he’d already lost me an important role in an important film and maybe a better contract.
I was convinced my Hollywood career was over. Myron Selznick actually told me that my carousing with Flynn wasn’t helping my career at all. He said that studios were becoming reluctant to use me because of my reputation as a hellraising chum of
Flynn’s rather than a serious and hard working actor. I began to realise I really needed to distance myself from Flynn.
I returned to the Zenda set the next morning, expecting to be fired, only to discover that director John Cromwell and David Selznick had viewed the rushes from the day before and discovered to their surprise that they really liked what I was doing in the part, and I was told to carry on. I’ve rarely been so relieved in my life.
It was a difficult film to make and, typical of Selznick, he brought in other directors to shoot retakes, including W.S. ‘Woody’ Van Dyke and George Cukor. It was a formula that worked for Selznick who was to hire several directors to get Gone With the Wind onto film a couple of years later; it certainly worked on The Prisoner of Zenda which was a popular success.
In England, shooting on I, Claudius had come to a stop in March when a car crash left Merle with concussion and a cut over her left eye and ear. She needed four weeks convalescence but Charles Laughton, who was playing Claudius, was not going to be available due to other obligations so the film was abandoned.
The time that Niven and Flynn shared at ‘Cirrhosis-by-the-Sea’ was not as long as one might assume by the amount of space David gave to it in The Moon’s a Balloon. In fact, when Flynn’s wife Lili returned to him, David moved out and rented a bungalow at 8425 De Longpre Avenue.
Still depressed over losing the chance George Stevens had offered him, David cheered a little when he was given top billing with French actress Annabella in Dinner at the Ritz, a romantic murder story set in London, Paris and the French Riviera. Despite the seemingly glamorous backdrop to the film, it was filmed over six weeks at Denham Studios in England and was produced by New World which Twentieth Century-Fox had set up primarily as a vehicle for Fox’s new discovery, Annabella, whose career had gone well in France. But Dinner at the Ritz was typical of the poor films Fox was finding for her and her career diminished and she became better known, in 1939, as the wife of Tyrone Power. The film was another low point in Niven’s career.
Making the film did, at least, allow him his first return to England, in July 1937. He looked up old friends, particularly Michael Trubshawe who lived in Norfolk, and he was reunited with Merle Oberon.
‘I think by then Merle had realised that she couldn’t have Niv exclusively,’ Trubshawe told me. ‘She was really charming to him, and when he was with her one could see he was certainly in love with her. I think she gave him a certain sophistication that he certainly didn’t have in the Army. He still told stories and did his impressions of peculiar people, but there was a polish to him, and a new confidence. He was also enjoying his fame a great deal, but he wasn’t big headed about it.’
Curiously, Niven did think he was big headed at the time. He told me in 1978, ‘With The Prisoner of Zenda I thought I was a better actor than I was and a bigger star than I was. I got a little cocky, you see. And I didn’t feel that Goldwyn was doing his best for me. He put me into some stinkers.’
Trubshawe didn’t notice the cockiness. ‘I asked him to come and open a village fete and to play for our village cricket team. In many ways he hadn’t changed at all. He was happy to do all those things and we had a fine time. He said to me, “I’m sure all this success I’m having isn’t going to last.” I told him he’d be a star for the rest of his life. He said, “You are a good chum, Trubshawe.” We talked about the old days, and it was a lot like old times. I had no idea that things would change so much for him and between us.’
David also took the opportunity to spend time with his sisters Grizel and Joyce – and also with Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt. In 1982 David said, ‘I had begun to have success in Hollywood, and he said, “Well, done, my boy. At least you didn’t end up in prison.”’
I don’t think Trubshawe ever knew that Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt was Niven’s real father, but he knew that David and ‘Uncle Tommy’ had had a difficult relationship.
‘I think that summer was the last time they ever met,’ said Trubshawe. ‘I don’t think there was any hostility between them any more. David told me he wanted to see if the old man was proud of his achievements. Apparently, he was. He told Niv he and David’s mother never really expected David to ever achieve much in life. They even thought he might end up a criminal and behind bars, which Niv found very amusing.’
Niven confided to Trubshawe that he felt it was time to end his womanising. ‘He told me he felt he needed to settle down, if only he could find the right woman,’ said Trubshawe. ‘I told him he had Merle. He had already blown it with Ann Todd. He had glamorous actresses falling over themselves to sleep with him. So I asked him, “Which one of them do you want to marry? Is it Merle?” He said, “Good God, old bean, I don’t want to marry an actress.” He wanted a wife who wasn’t in the business, who wouldn’t be doing love scenes with Tyrone Power or Clark Gable. He said, “I couldn’t bear to see a wife of mine making love on the screen to another man.”
‘He just didn’t think a typical Hollywood marriage could work. He saw what happened to those big star marriages and the high divorce rate in Hollywood. He said, “When I get married, there’ll be no divorce.” And he was true to his word, despite some terrible times ahead.’
Niven returned to America without Merle who was still working in England. He recalled, ‘I went to stay with Edmund Goulding for the weekend at his home in the desert of Palm Springs and was delighted and surprised to find Greta Garbo standing naked in his swimming pool. She would later come to my house, when I was first married, and my two sons had to get used to seeing Greta Garbo naked in their swimming pool.’
Niven spent time at San Ysidro ranch with Virginia Bruce, whom he was still seeing, and they also enjoyed the hospitality of William Randolph Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies at their grand and legendary San Simeon castle.
He had also begun an affair with Norma Shearer. For him, she would emerge from her reclusive shadows, and they often dined and danced. Dancing, as Niven had told me, often involved a lot more than moving around a ball room.
Goldwyn next loaned David out to Paramount to co-star with Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife. Niven’s role was brief, as a charming and elegant foil to Cooper who played a much married millionaire. The film didn’t do well, being made at a time when America had little sympathy for millionaires. ‘In these days it’s bad enough to have to admire millionaires in any circumstance,’ wrote the film critic of the New York Times, ‘but a millionaire with a harem complex simply can’t help starting the bristles on the back of a sensitive neck.’ That critic did, however, feel that the film was ‘enlivened by the supporting presence of Edward Everett Horton, Herman Bing, David Niven and Warren Hymer’.
Although David was still with Merle Oberon, now back in the US, as well as seeing Virginia Bruce and Norma Shearer, he saw the New Year in with Loretta Young, along with Ronald Colman and some other Hollywood luminaries at a mountain resort at Lake Arrowhead.
Niven enjoyed the Hollywood life to the hilt: ‘There was nothing like it, old bean, if I wasn’t filming, I was at Ronnie Colman’s or at San Simeon, or skiing.’
He discovered a great love for skiing at the new ski resort at Sun Valley in Idaho. He recalled, ‘My instructor was a nice young fellow called Marti Arrougé. I called Norma Shearer from there and she was so desperately lonely that I said, “Come and join me,” and when she met Marti, who was 12 years younger than she, they fell in love and got married.’
Niven moved out of his bungalow and, with Robert Coote and an Australian fortune hunter called Walter Kerry Davis, rented one of Marion Davies’s guest cottages on Ocean Front at Santa Monica. Flynn, still one of Niven’s closest friends, occasionally stayed with them whenever his marriage was going through yet another sticky patch. Douglas Fairbanks Jnr also moved in for a while, and in March 1938 Noël Coward came to stay, and although they’d met before, this visit established a friendship with Niven that lasted until Coward died. The house on Ocean Front was a place of fun, laughter, booze and gi
rls.
Merle Oberon had not completely given up on David, and she was able to get him a part in a film she made with Gary Cooper, The Cowboy and the Lady, but every one of his scenes was cut from the film for reasons not at all clear. David thought it was because he was ‘so bloody awful in it’. That was bad news because other producers suddenly lost interest in him.
Loretta Young came to his aid, persuading director John Ford to cast him in Four Men and a Prayer in which Loretta starred as an American girl in love with one of four brothers whose father, a British colonel, played by C. Aubrey Smith, is court-martialled. David played one of the colonel’s four sons.
Loretta’s love interest in the picture was played by British actor Richard Greene, a new arrival in Hollywood and one which David eyed with some envy. I interviewed Greene in Norfolk in 1981, and found him to be frank about his uneasy working relationship with Niven. He told me,
Four Men and a Prayer was not only my first film in Hollywood but my first film, period. Niven was rather put out that I was coming in with what was the lead male role – that is, I was the one who got Loretta Young – while he had been working for four years or so in Hollywood and still wasn’t getting top billing. I quickly noticed that he would look at me – glance at me – rather enviously and suspiciously.
He wasn’t unpleasant to me when we spoke, although he didn’t speak to me much at all when we weren’t in front of the camera. I thought he seemed rather nervous, as if I was the opposition and he was afraid I would be better than him. I suppose that was his own lack of confidence as an actor. He made up for it by being the life and soul of the party, telling endless anecdotes in a state of never ending good cheer and bonhomie. But I could never figure out what was really going on behind that grin of his. I felt that he’d smile at me and be thinking, ‘Who do you think you are, you bastard, coming onto my territory and thinking you can be better than me?’ Well, I never did think I was better than he, and I can admit that he was the one who went on to greater stardom than I ever did.
