David Niven

by Michael Munn

  Olivier even admitted that he learned from Niven. ‘David and I are very different kinds of actors and I think that is why we got on so well. He was, with all respect and love for the man, a lightweight actor and he couldn’t have performed in a stage classic ever in his life, but he could easily breathe into any part his own great charm and humour and also sincerity, which was all very much his own. And also, when it was needed, he had tremendous pathos. I learned a lot about screen acting from him, although I thought when we first started working on the picture that I knew more about acting than he did. And I did, when it comes to acting on stage, but he had a natural gift for screen acting which I had to work at. So when I call him a lightweight, it is not a criticism.’

  Although a box office success, the film was not received well critically at the time of its release in 1939, although Niven got good personal notices. The New York Times noted that, ‘the Lintons, so pallid, so namby-pamby in the novel, have been more charitably reflected in the picture. David Niven’s Edgar (and) Geraldine Fitzgerald’s Isabella are dignified and poignant characterisations of young people whose tragedy was not in being weak themselves but in being weaker than the abnormal pair whose destinies involved their destruction.’

  A casualty of the film was the Niven/Oberon love affair – by the time filming was over, so was their affair. Merle married Alexander Korda and David began seeing actress Evelyn Keyes who moved in with him. He could cope with cohabiting with an actress but not marrying one.

  The success of Wuthering Heights did a great deal for Niven, but it also inflated his ego further, as he admitted to me later. ‘I thought that to be able to play that awful Edgar and still get noticed when playing against two such excellent people as Merle and Larry meant that I was a star of great magnitude, especially coming after The Dawn Patrol. I began doing Lux Radio Theatre programmes on the wireless and decided that I wouldn’t even get Goldwyn’s permission because I was too big a star to have to ask him for his permission. A great mistake! I was under contract to him and all freelance work had to be passed by him. He wanted half of everything I earned, so when I was awarded with a glorious food hamper by one of the radio producers, I cut it in half and sent it to him.’

  Actually, Goldwyn was contractually owed everything David earned freelance and Niven was supposed to settle for his weekly wage of $500 from Goldwyn, so in a sense Goldwyn was being generous by insisting on only half of David’s earnings from radio work.

  Niven discovered that Warners had paid Goldwyn $175,000 to rent him for The Dawn Patrol so he decided to consult a leading agent, Leland Hayward, who took a look at his contract with Goldwyn and told David that Goldwyn had been making a fortune from loaning him to other studios.

  When Goldwyn heard that David had been secretly meeting with Leland, he got revenge by planting a story in the Los Angeles Examiner that success had gone to Niven’s head and he was becoming impossible to work with. Goldwyn banned Hayward from his studio and put Niven on suspension for several weeks.

  Goldwyn, however, recognised that Niven was becoming a better actor, and I think he really was fond of David. In February 1939 David’s weekly salary had been due to rise to $650 a week but Goldwyn raised it to $750 and amended his contract so that the annual increases would result in $2,250 a week in 1945. He also allowed David the use of a large suite on the studio lot and promised to give him star billing in all Goldwyn productions in which he appeared.

  His first film under the new terms was Bachelor Mother with Ginger Rogers. For the first time, David’s name appeared above the title.

  Forty years later Niven was still unimpressed by what Goldwyn intended as a show of generosity. ‘It’s true that Goldwyn gave me a career in films,’ he told me. ‘But who’s to say I wouldn’t have made it without him? He earned a fortune by loaning me to other studios, and by [1939] I felt I was actually worth a lot more than I was getting. I should have been earning $2,000 a week then, not having to wait another five or six years for that amount.

  ‘My head grew enormously. My ego was inflated like a giant balloon. I was so full of myself because I was at last a big star and I revelled in it and became very conceited. I even believed all the publicity that was being written about me.’

  With Bachelor Mother Goldwyn came up with a part that perfectly suited Niven’s talents. He played a charming playboy whose father owns a major store where Ginger Rogers, working in the toy department, finds an abandoned baby. She and David are wrongly assumed to be the parents but they nevertheless marry, and it all ends happily.

  The film opened on 1 September 1939 just 18 days before the outbreak of World War II, and it delighted critics and audiences alike. The New York Times reported, ‘The spectacle of Miss Rogers and David Niven struggling forlornly to prove their innocence of parenthood and winning co credence at al is made triply hilarious by the sobriety of their performances. That is the way farce should be handled, with just enough conviction to season its extravagances.’

  The Observer critic said, ‘I must insist that the most timely as well as the most engaging film of the week is a little thing call Bachelor Mother,’ and added, ‘Mr Niven is growing, film by film, into one of the best romantic comedians in the cinema.’

  The Daily Sketch enthused, ‘As good as Miss Rogers is, Mr Niven is better. He races through the film with so much gaiety and sophistication, with so much charm and understanding, I’d advise you to keep your girl friend from going to see this picture.’

  His next film was another with Loretta Young, and this time he shared top billing with her, in Eternally Yours. It wasn’t a Goldwyn picture, but Niven was very happy now that he was getting star billing, and I suspect he was also happy to be working with Loretta again.

  Eternally Yours was not in the same league as Bachelor Mother, telling the strange tale of the Great Arturo, a hypnotist, illusionist and daring stuntman whose wife and stage partner, played by Loretta, leaves him when he goes on a world tour. I suspect that David and Loretta made more magic off stage than on, and the outcome for audiences was a huge disappointment. The New York Times said it was ‘an amusing and irresponsible picture, though, on the whole, more irresponsible than amusing’.

  Goldwyn had something special in store for Niven – the starring role in a remake of a 1930 film, Raffles, about a cricket-playing English gentleman thief. ‘I was desperate to have that role,’ David said. ‘I almost begged Goldwyn to give it to me, but the old bastard just kept saying, “We’ll see, we’ll see.” The next thing I knew was, I was being heroic in the Philippines.’ He was referring to The Real Glory in which he co-starred with Gary Cooper. It was an action adventure about American officers, led by Cooper, who join local forces against a terrorist uprising in the Philippines. Niven played a lieutenant, something he was perfectly capable of doing, and would do so often, although the military rank would alter from film to film – but he was always an officer and a gentleman. ‘All I had to do,’ he said, ‘was pretend to be Irish among American officers and die bravely at the end while rallying the troops.’

  Directed by Henry Hathaway, it was a good, spectacular and noisy action film which the New Statesman said was ‘recommended to adolescents of all ages,’ and pointed out that ‘David Niven dies pleasantly and quietly’.

  Goldwyn then rewarded David with the role of Raffles. He was over the moon about it, feeling it would be the part that would really shoot him into the top league of movie stars. He had top billing, and his leading lady, Olivia de Havilland, had to settle for second billing. ‘It seems awfully trite to worry about billing,’ Niven told me once, ‘and I’m sure the public couldn’t give a flying fart who gets billed first or second or even third, but it matters to us. It matters to our vanity and our ego.’

  He was alarmed, however, when the film’s director, Sam Wood, fell ill and was replaced by William Wyler. ‘I thought it was an evil trick being played on me by Goldwyn because I’d become so big headed,’ David said. ‘But to my great delight and surprise, Willie
was incredibly pleasant and very helpful.’

  When I spoke to Wyler in 1976, I told him that David had called him ‘pleasant and helpful’ and he said, ‘That job was a piece of cake. I always believe that if the casting is right, the director doesn’t have to worry. Niven was so perfect for that part that he didn’t even have to try. So I didn’t have to be a mean guy!’

  I relayed this later to Niven – I often wished I could have got those two together, or any other combination of actors and directors – and he said, ‘My confidence was soaring and I felt I could do no wrong, so maybe I was actually really good and Wyler didn’t have anything objectionable to say to me. A lot of Hollywood directors can be pussy cats away from the set and ogres on the set. I later learned to deal with directors like that.’

  Raffles was popular with the public. The New York Times noted, ‘Mr Niven makes the game worth playing and the film worth seeing. His Raffles is one of the nicest tributes to burglary we have seen in many a year.’

  It would have been the first in a series of films, but halfway through production, England declared war on Germany.

  CHAPTER 12

  —

  Not a Mere Prop

  David and Robert Coote were asleep after a night’s drinking in a small sloop moored at the Balboa Yacht Club when they were awakened at six in the morning by someone banging on the side of their boat. Niven and Coote looked over the side at a man in a dinghy who said, ‘Are you guys English?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Then good luck to ya – you just declared war on Germany.’

  Niven and Coote were due to join a party on Douglas Fairbanks Jnr’s yacht just off Catalina but were late because they had drunk too much at the Balboa Yacht Club. They gave themselves a quick toast with gin and set sail for Catalina where they met up with Fairbanks, his wife Mary Lee, and their guests Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Nigel Bruce, and Ronald Colman and his wife Benita Hume. As Niven noted upon their arrival, ‘Nobody felt like celebrating any more.’

  Olivier said he would try to join the RAF. Robert Coote said he would head for Canada to join the RCAF. Niven would try to get back home and try to join whatever military service he could get into.

  Fairbanks gathered his guests together and opened champagne. ‘Well, here’s to whatever it is,’ he said.

  Olivier said solemnly, ‘To victory.’

  The British consul in Los Angeles advised the Brits that turned up to ask for help getting home to volunteer that they would be of greater service to their country to remain. The exceptions were those who were in the reserves who had to return to Britain. Niven was no longer in the reserves, having resigned his commission from the Highland Light Infantry, but he was determined he would enlist, possibly in the RAF. But getting out of Hollywood was not an easy task as he was still under contract to Goldwyn. He said,

  I wanted to get home and join up, but Goldwyn refused to release me.

  I told him that I’d been called up, which was a lie of course, and had to return to England immediately.

  He said, ‘I’ll get back to you,’ and half an hour later he called and said, ‘David, I just checked with the British Embassy in Washington. They said nobody’s been called up yet. They said the best thing for you to do is stay right here and carry on as normal.’

  So I cabled my brother Max with instructions to send me a cable, sating ‘Report regimental depot immediately Adjutant.’ I went to Goldwyn with this cable. He knew very well that I had served with the Highland Light Infantry years before but didn’t know that I had resigned my commission. So Goldwyn felt he had no choice but to release me.

  The thing was, I didn’t quite know what I was going back to. I didn’t want to go back into the British Army, so I made enquiries about joining the Canadian Army but was told they didn’t need me.

  When David abandoned plans to go to Canada, he went to Washington where Lord Lothian, the British Ambassador, encouraged him to remain in Hollywood to represent his country on the screen.

  Much of what Niven told me about his war experiences came in an interview I did with him when he was making A Man Called Intrepid in England in 1978. That interview included a great deal of detail that David generally never discussed, and it revealed many of his feelings about warfare and his personal experience of it. In it, he also spilled the beans rather carelessly about a secret Laurence Olivier had kept for many years, but once the cat was out of the bag, he told me much more, but only because it indirectly involved him.

  In 1979 I learned just a little more from him: ‘Before I was able to leave America, I was asked to remain to try and drum up support for the war effort. We were hoping America would join us, you see, but there was a lot of opposition to the very idea among many Americans, and it was to be a very secretive and really very difficult task because to do that very thing could result in one being arrested and charged. The isolationists in America were very strong, even though [President] Roosevelt was prepared to support us. So the British Government required people who could come and go at liberty in America and who could use their influence to increase support for the British.

  ‘I wasn’t against doing that, but I wanted to enlist and fight the war where it was happening. So I said, “Why don’t you ask Larry Olivier? He’s dying to do something for the war effort, and it’ll be a while before he gets home.”’

  I asked Niven, ‘And did they ask him?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Did he do it?’

  ‘Larry isn’t the kind of man to turn down that kind of request from his country.’

  I asked David who it was who had actually asked him to stay. He answered, ‘The British Embassy in Washington.’

  ‘And then they asked Olivier?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Instead of going straight to England, Niven very curiously decided to head for Italy. Sheridan Morley, in his biography of David Niven, wrote that Niven met up with several Italian skiers that he knew from Sun Valley. In The Moon’s a Balloon Niven claimed he met up with an Austrian friend, Felix Scaffcotsch – who had designed a skiing resort on Sun Valley and had never made a secret of his admiration for Adolf Hitler – in Naples for a final drink before they became official enemies. Morley wasn’t entirely convinced of that account. He told me, ‘I can’t see David enjoying a farewell drink with a Nazi SS officer. But he did go to Italy and then made his way to Paris from there.’

  The next curious event happened when David got to Paris. He told me that there he met with Noël Coward who was working in naval intelligence. ‘Noël tried to persuade me to return to America to work for naval intelligence, but I insisted I was returning to Britain, but I once more suggested that Larry Olivier might be willing. I believe it might have been Noël Coward who put Larry’s name to Churchill. In fact, Coward told me that he personally asked Larry to assist.’

  So Laurence Olivier remained in America and was recruited by SOE, working for Alexander Korda who was an SOE operative. Korda set up offices in New York which were a front for SOE while Olivier’s mission was to gain support for the British war effort in a generally isolationist America.

  When I talked to Sheridan Morley about this, he said he thought that it was very likely that Coward had tried to enlist Niven and that his whole purpose in going first to Europe rather than straight to England may have been because Coward had summoned him there.

  In Paris, Niven presented himself to the air attaché, John Acheson, at the British Embassy in Paris and announced he wanted to join the RAF. He told me,

  He said to me, ‘Oh no, you can’t do that, not here. You must go back to England,’ and he secretly put me on a mail plane that evening. So I flew back to Britain in a plane full of mail bags and a few days later presented myself to the Air Ministry.

  I was ushered before a group captain who asked me my name although it was obvious he knew who I was.

  ‘And what do you want?’

  ‘I want to join the RAF,’ I told him.

 
He shook his head. ‘Ever heard of Wilfred Lawson?’

  ‘Of course. A wonderful actor,’ I said.

  ‘He’s also a heavy drinker. We took him on and we’ve had trouble with him ever since.’

  I was pretty pissed off by now and I said, ‘Look, I’ve just come seven thousand miles [11,250 km] at my own expense and I’d like to join up.’

  ‘We don’t encourage actors to join this service.’

  This made me so angry I said, ‘Then fuck you!’

  He herded me to the door, shouting, ‘Get out! Get out of my office now.’ I was on my way out when I passed an air commodore, and I said, ‘And fuck you, too!’

  I tried the Scots Guards, but they turned me down. It was very depressing. It just seemed that, after I’d come all the way back from Hollywood, every door was slammed in my face. The problem was, nobody wanted to see a film star in uniform at that time unless he was in a film, being kept safe from the real action.

  Goldwyn didn’t help because he turned it into a publicity stunt; I had a couple of films opening in London, and he wanted my arrival in London to reap all the publicity he could get. So he got his London office on to it and I found myself giving a press conference explaining that I hoped to get into the RAF.

  The next day the papers came out with headlines like, RELAX, THE DAWN PATROL IS HERE and NIVEN SPURNS THE ARMY. There was one London film critic [Caroline Lejune] who wrote an article that said, ‘The British film fan does not want to see David Niven in the Army, the Navy or the air force. We want to see him in his proper place, up there on the silver screen helping us to forget this war.’

  This critical response depressed and distressed him. By early 1940 he was still a civilian, and little had happened in the war – it was known as ‘the phoney war’.

  One evening, sitting in the Café de Paris in London, while watching the dancers on the floor and aware that many of the young men around him were in the Rifle Brigade, he heard an announcement by the band leader: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if anyone is interested, the air-raid warning has just sounded.’ David recalled for me,