David Niven

by Michael Munn

  I would like to have liked him more but I could tell that he didn’t like me, and we never got together much after that. We saw each other at social events, but we were never great pals.

  It was apparent that he didn’t much care for me being overfriendly with Loretta Young even though it was only for the film we were making. I think he must have been in love with her – he certainly seemed jealous, or maybe it was just that he was jealous that I was her love interest and he wasn’t.

  But despite all that, at the wrap party he shook my hand and said, ‘I think you have a wonderful career ahead of you and I wish you the best of luck.’ All the same, I couldn’t be sure if he was sincere or not. I’d like to think he was, but I think he could be very shallow. I heard and saw him talk to some people like he was their best friend, but when he walked away from them his smile disappeared and he’d say something terrible about them under his breath.

  During that interview, I told Greene that David had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, although I didn’t say what it was as it hadn’t been publicly announced that he had Motor Neurone Disease. Shocked by this news, Richard Greene said, ‘I really should write to him.’ I don’t know if he ever did. Not long after I interviewed him, he had a fall and suffered head injuries that resulted in a brain tumour that killed him in 1985.

  Niven admitted to me once, ‘I wasn’t the nicest of people in Hollywood to start with.’ In 1980, when he was in London for Peter Sellers’ memorial service, he talked about how actors – Sellers in particular – were so insecure that they could be ‘real bitches’. He said, ‘Before the war, just as I was getting some success in films in Hollywood, I was so insecure that I saw every new English actor who came along as a threat to me. I felt that some of them just turned up and had instant success while I was jumping through Goldwyn’s hoops.’

  He also admitted that he made an effort to get on with the established stars ‘because they were the ones it was important to get on with’, rather than the newcomers. He said, ‘I suppose it was shallow of me, but that’s what show business can be like. I’m lucky that I do have some truly wonderful friends, and have had many, but there were and always are plenty just waiting for you to fall.’

  Four Men and a Prayer was not destined to be a classic John Ford film.

  Loretta Young did her best for David, landing him a major supporting role in her next picture, Three Blind Mice. This time he got the girl – but not for long, as the leading man Joel McCrea won her in the end. Loretta played one of three sisters who all inherit $5,000 and decide to invest it in finding them all rich husbands. Niven, as a playboy, and McCrea, as a man of high society, vie for the affections of Miss Young and Niven wins until she discovers he is just a pauper and she ultimately winds up with the wealthy one. I suppose there is a moral in there somewhere, but for now it eludes me.

  When I talked to Loretta following Niven’s death, she remembered him as ‘a great friend and a really ambitious actor, though one who struggled to be good’.

  I asked her if she felt she had contributed to his success considering that she did get him work in several of her films. She said, ‘I hope I helped him some of the way. Sam Goldwyn wasn’t doing much for him at that time. He was just loaning him out and taking good money that other studios paid for him but Goldwyn still only paid him his weekly salary. It was difficult to cast David because he was a certain type of Englishman, and there weren’t that many parts being written like that. He had to just sort of fit in wherever he could, and I convinced my studio [Twentieth Century-Fox] to put him in good supporting roles in my films. At best, that made sure he kept working.’

  I told her that David had expressed how a number of people like her had actually helped him in those early days, to which she replied, ‘We all loved David. That was the great thing about him – he was very easy to love.’

  And that opened the door for me to ask her if she and David ever really were in love. She said, ‘Oh yes, we were. We even talked about getting married, but he didn’t want a movie star for a wife. I said, “That’s good because I don’t want an actor for a husband,” because I’d already done that.’ She had married Grant Withers in 1930 and divorced him the following year.

  Although he had Merle Oberon and Loretta Young helping to guide his career, what Niven really needed was an unqualified success – something that turned him into a star. But a star part for an Englishman who had plenty of charm and wit and an authentic British stiff upper lip was rare in Hollywood. And then one came along, thanks to his friend Edmund Goulding who cast him opposite Errol Flynn in The Dawn Patrol.

  This was a remake of a 1930 World War I drama about the Royal Flying Corps. Rare for an American movie, this had an almost entirely British cast – Flynn was Australian, but his English accent made him a Hollywood Brit. He took top honours as Captain Courtney, a member of a daring squad of British pilots flying in inadequate aeroplanes in an effort to beat off the German aces and their more superior aircraft.

  Niven played Lieutenant Scott, a derring-do or die pilot who shares danger in equal measures with Courtney. It was a perfect role for Niven, and he gave the best performance of his career up till then. Film Weekly noted David Niven’s ‘clever changes of mood, from wild gaiety to agonised worry prove him to be a deeply sensitive, natural actor’.

  The critic of Picturegoer wrote, ‘Acting honours are fairly divided, but I would give pride of place to David Niven. It is a finely balanced, sincere performance.’

  Variety observed that the film ‘sparkles because of vigorous performances of the entire cast’, and added, ‘David Niven makes the character of Flynn’s great friend stand out.’

  The Dawn Patrol was filmed in early 1938, and gave the Niven-Flynn friendship a final hurrah. ‘It was wonderful to have such a good part in a good film and to work with Flynn on pretty much equal terms,’ David told me, ‘but I’d learned by then that while it was good to have a good role in a good Flynn film, it wasn’t so good to be in Flynn’s company after hours. I’d moved on, I suppose, from what we had before.’

  Many people, including Merle Oberon and Loretta Young, were urging him to distance himself from Flynn. ‘I told David he needed to be seen to be taking his career seriously if he wanted others to take him seriously,’ Young told me. ‘All that in-like-Flynn stuff wasn’t good for David. When I think back now on how I used to sit him down and give him pep talks makes me smile. He was often like a naughty schoolboy and needed to be put right. Flynn was good for his career at that time but not good for him personally, especially considering the trouble Flynn got into later.’ Loretta was referring to the case of statutory rape that was brought against Flynn in 1942.

  But there was more to the breakdown of Niven’s friendship with Flynn than a gradual breaking away from Flynn-induced antics. There was a very sudden and permanent rift between them. As Laurence Olivier put it to me, ‘Flynn goosed Niven, and Niven didn’t take kindly to that at all.’

  Ava Gardner also once referred to an episode Niven had told her about when Flynn ‘goosed’ him. So I asked David about the ‘goosing’ incident when I interviewed him in 1979. He said,

  Flynn would get very drunk, and even though I could put away a fair bit, I didn’t get smashed the way Flynn did. We had finished making The Dawn Patrol and we were celebrating our success with a couple of girls, and after we had sent the girls home, Flynn…well, he grabbed me…where a man doesn’t expect another man to be grabbed. That’s the sort of thing school boys might do, and I felt that it was time he really grew up, and I told him so, and he said, ‘Oh come on, sport, you and I, we’re pals, and there’s nothing wrong in a couple of pals having a little fun together.’ And then he tried to grab me again. I had no idea where this came from. I told him he should grow up and that I was heading home, and he got rather nasty and was almost spitting with rage. He yelled, ‘I think you’re the one who should grow up, Niven. This is Hollywood. People here are phoneys. They fuck anything that moves. What makes you so
fucking different?’ And I said, ‘Being loyal to my friends. You should try it.’ And after that I never wanted to see him again.

  He tried calling me, and he even wrote me a letter saying how sorry he was. I came to realise that most of the people who called themselves his friends were hangers on. I felt very sorry for him, and I was sorry our friendship ended the way it did. I’m still angry about what happened, and I’m sad too. I had the best times with Flynn, and I had the worst. What did Dickens say? It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and that’s what I had with Flynn.

  Over the years Niven’s path rarely crossed with Flynn’s. David did all he could to put distance between them, especially when Flynn became embroiled in a series of public scandals. I asked David in 1975 if he could remember the last time he saw Flynn. He said it was many years later, when Flynn was about 50 and looked more like 70. He said that it was a ‘joyful reunion’ during which Flynn apologised for not ever contacting him after Niven’s first wife, Primmie, died in a tragic accident.

  Niven and Flynn had a drink and then Flynn said that he had taken to reading the Bible. That’s also the story David told in Bring on the Empty Horses. It was a sentimental finale to their one time hellraising friendship. But it wasn’t what really happened.

  In 1979 David told me that in 1958 he came across Flynn in a London restaurant. ‘He looked ghastly. The drugs and the booze had bloated him and he looked like a man who should have died a long time before. I tried to avoid him but he came over and sat down, drunk, of course, and then he said, “You know, sport, when Primmie died I never came to see you, never did a goddamn thing to help. But you know how it is.”

  ‘My hackles were up and I said very coldly, “Yes, Errol, I daresay I do. You were too busy what with all the lawsuits,” and by that I meant he was probably ravaging some underage girl or getting arrested, and I think he got my meaning. He stood up and yelled, “Well you can go to hell.” I said, “I’ve been there. When my wife died. Funny that I never saw you there.”

  ‘And he threw the chair over and staggered out, and I never saw him again. I felt very sorry we couldn’t have parted as friends, but he touched a very raw nerve. He was always selfish and I guess he died selfish.’

  Dawn Patrol may have signalled the end of Niven’s friendship with Flynn but it also signalled the dawn of Niven’s film stardom. It wasn’t the kind of stardom that Colman or Cary Grant enjoyed – they were able to have films built around them and their names usually guaranteed an audience; that’s the true meaning of ‘star’ – but at last Hollywood began taking Niven more seriously.

  ‘I didn’t have to stretch myself too much,’ David told me in regards to his performance in Dawn Patrol. ‘I had the kind of military training that the character might have had, at least as far as the discipline was concerned. And I knew many men who came back from the Great War who had survived. I knew officers who had found themselves with the responsibility of sending men to certain death. And it’s true to say that the part had a lot of me in it. I’d learned a little about acting by then, but I had my own personal traits to fall back on. It didn’t require any great leap for me.’

  It was only years later, when I saw the film again on TV after David was dead, that what he had told me about his acting was true; it is all there on the screen – the British stiff upper lip, the jovial personality, the authentic military background, and the understanding of what officers of the Great War had gone through. It was, in fact, a lesson in method acting long before the term ‘method acting’ had been coined. He had learned one of the most important lessons of acting – that an actor draws on personal experience whenever he can.

  What David didn’t completely learn was to lean on the smaller experiences of life that many actors draw on. That is why there were so many David Niven performances that lacked depth; he could impersonate a skater without ice to skate on but he couldn’t always get under the skater’s skin.

  That was no great setback for a screen actor; many stars endure with just the basic understanding of acting and a whole lot of charisma. But Niven never really had quite enough charisma to make it as a major star. He was invariably someone the audience could enjoy seeing in a film that was generally crafted around somebody else. That was the rule in Niven’s career, and there were very few exceptions to the rule.

  The fact that his career lasted as long as it did, when greater stars fell by the wayside much sooner, is a testament to his sheer likeability – the audience has always liked him, but they haven’t necessarily wanted to see a film just because he was in it. He was invariably an added bonus, or sometimes he turned out to be the only worthwhile element of a rather bad movie.

  Somebody who understood this was William Wyler who wanted to cast Niven as Edgar Linton in his up-coming production for Samuel Goldwyn, Wuthering Heights. But David had sworn that he would never work for Wyler again.

  CHAPTER 11

  —

  Wuthering Wyler

  When I talked to Wyler in 1976, he told me, ‘I had two wonderful stars, Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, to play Cathy and Heathcliff, but what I needed was someone who could play the hapless Edgar and still make him more than he is in the book or the script. Cathy has to marry Edgar when she could have had Heathcliff, and she and the audience know it is a mistake, but you can’t make Edgar into a villain. He is a victim of circumstance. That makes the audience all the more torn, that makes for good drama. Principally I had to choose someone who was under contract to Goldwyn, and of all his contract players, David Niven was the one actor I knew could make Edgar into the kind of character I wanted Edgar to be.’

  But Niven was having none of it – to start with. He told me,

  I had two objections to that picture. Samuel Goldwyn told me I was going to play Edgar, which was a part I hated and didn’t want to do. Who can even like that idiot? The second objection I had was working for Wyler again, and I didn’t want to work for Wyler again…ever. So Wyler called me and said, ‘David, why don’t you want to play Edgar?’

  I said, ‘Because it is such an awful part.’

  He said, ‘It’s not, you know,’ and then he hit the ego button with ‘and you’re one of the few people who can make it better than it is.’

  So I said, ‘But Willie, I was so bloody miserable working for you on Dodsworth, and I just couldn’t go through it again. You’re a son of a bitch to work with.’

  That just made him laugh, and he said, ‘I’ve changed. I’m not a son of a bitch any more.’

  Niven was convinced. There were other reasons he did the film. One was that if he didn’t, Goldwyn was going to put him on suspension. The other reason was Merle Oberon. She, naively, felt that it would help their relationship if they worked together again, and she was the one who had suggested to Goldwyn that David should play Edgar. That, it turned out, was a mistake because Niven, always happy to be helped along in previous years by his famous friends, now resented being handed a part he simply hated. It was compounded by his dislike of Wyler.

  Merle took the same view that Wyler had, which was that Niven was one of the few actors who could make something of the role, and she also pushed David’s ego button. In the end, Niven had no good argument to turn the part down, and he went to work on Wuthering Heights in December 1938. He recalled,

  The first day of shooting, I had to drive up in a two-horse buggy with Merle at my side. We had a line of dialogue each. She would say, ‘Come in, Edgar, and have some tea.’ And I would say, ‘As soon as I’ve put the horses away.’ Not difficult stuff.

  We did the first take and Wyler said, ‘Cut! Just play it straight, David, this isn’t a comedy.’

  I had no idea I’d played it for laughs, so we did the second take, and he said, ‘Cut! What’s so funny, David? This is not a Marx Brothers picture. Do it again.’

  And we did it 40-something times, and finally Wyler said, ‘Well, if that’s the best you can do, we’d better print the first take I suppose.’

  I
said, ‘Willie, you really are a son of a bitch, aren’t you?’ and he said, ‘Yes, and I’m going to be one for the next 14 weeks.’ And he was.

  David said that it was an unhappy experience all round, not just because of Wyler but because Olivier and Oberon didn’t care too much for each other, probably because Olivier had wanted the love of his own life, Vivien Leigh, to play Cathy. If Merle thought that David would come to her rescue when Olivier called her an ‘amateur little bitch’, and just ‘a little pick-up by Korda’, she was wrong. Displaying a less than gallant stance, Niven kept his distance, partly because his ardour for her had considerably cooled, and also because the friendship between him and Olivier was strengthening.

  Niven recalled, ‘Larry and I had been friends for some time and our friendship was further grounded when we both started Wuthering Heights sharing a deep hatred for Willie Wyler.’

  Olivier actually came to like and respect Wyler a great deal, even if it was tough going, and he learned from Wyler much about the film medium which stood him in good stead later, not just as an actor but also as a very fine director. But Niven simply hated Wyler even though Wyler proved to be right about casting him – Niven was good as Edgar. Olivier thought so too. He told me, ‘He carried off the part of Edgar wonderfully. In fact, I’d say he was better than Merle in her role. He had an impossible part and he hated it, but he was perfect in it. I would watch him on set and think, “He isn’t even trying to act and here I am working my bloody guts out, and he is going to look bad on screen.” But he wasn’t bad at all.’