by Michael Munn
In July David was photographed and the picture, showing him looking very emaciated, appeared in the Sun newspaper. When he saw it he was distraught and believed he would have better privacy at Château d’Oex. He also felt that the clearer air up there would do him good. Hjördis remained at Lo Scoglietto and was later criticised for doing so, but in 1986 she told me, ‘David insisted that I stay at Lo Scoglietto so that I could have a rest from him. I think he also needed to be away from me.’
He had, she claimed, asked her to commit suicide with him. She said, ‘Before he left for the chalet, he said to me, “Let’s jump hand in hand into the pool, go down three times but only come up twice.” I was shocked.’
Fiona, then 19, came home to attend Geneva University and was often at Château d’Oex, and so was Hjördis’s nephew, Michael Winstrad; he was fond of his uncle but Hjördis seemed to resent him being there and told him he needed to return to Sweden where his mother was dying – a blatant lie, apparently. She was never able to give a rational explanation why she did that.
Meanwhile, Kristina was in Geneva and David Jnr and Jamie were both in the States. Niven’s sons were later critical of Hjördis for failing to give their father the love and care he needed in the last weeks of his life, but she was equally critical of them, telling me, ‘He was their father and we all knew he was soon going to die. They should have dropped everything to be with him.’ There was no love lost between Hjördis and her stepsons.
On 27 July, a Wednesday, Hjördis telephoned David and apparently berated him about no longer being a man and refusing to come to him when he asked her to. Hjördis was unable to recall that incident when I met her in 1986, although she conceded, ‘I may have been so drunk and so full of pills that I could have done or said anything. I am very sorry for my behaviour.’ And I believe she was. She cried often throughout the interview, and I believe she was sincere about her behaviour which she admitted was ‘unforgivable’. She also admitted that she had taken a new lover, a painter called Andrew Vicari.
David still kept her photograph on his desk.
That night he had trouble getting to sleep and stayed up late talking to Katherine about Primmie. David Bolton came to see him in the morning and saw how desperately ill he looked so he sent for the local doctor. It was decided that David needed to be hospitalised and put on a respirator, but Jamie and David Jnr, by telephone, confirmed that their father was not to be given any form of life support. David apparently made one concession to allow himself to be more comfortable; he wore an oxygen mask.
The next morning, Friday 29 July, David finally fell asleep around 3am. Katherine checked on him at 7am and when he gave her the thumbs up sign, she went downstairs to make coffee. Then she heard a noise from his bedroom and returned to find that he had taken off the oxygen mask. He smiled at her, held her hand, and passed away. He was 73.
Some years later I discussed with Sheridan Morley David’s manner of dying. Sheridan said that from what he understood, it was as though David had simply decided the time had come, had removed his oxygen mask, and then quickly slipped away. ‘I don’t think he was going to wait any longer and actually stopped living rather than choosing to die, if that makes sense.’ I said that it made perfect sense to me. I think he’d given up his life. He’d made his own decision.
As soon as Roger Moore heard the news, he drove from his home in St Paul de Vence with his daughter Deborah to help with the funeral arrangements. Fiona was also there, as well as David Bolton and a friend from David’s war days, Alistair Forbes. Fiona, Bolton and Katherine decided what suit David should wear; it was a dark green which was his favourite colour.
Hjördis arrived the next day, Saturday. Roger Moore only ever mentioned her once to me, when he was filming A View to a Kill. ‘When she arrived and saw me she said, “Are you here for the publicity?” so I quickly left and didn’t stay for the funeral because I might have ended up killing her. I’m quite sure that if he had lived, he would have divorced her.’ Moore regretted not being able to be at Niven’s funeral.
David Jnr and Jamie arrived on Saturday night.
The funeral was set for Tuesday 2 August at 2.30pm at a small Anglican Church, St Peters, in the main street of Château d’Oex. Hjördis arrived drunk, hanging on the arm of Prince Rainier.
‘I hadn’t wanted to go,’ she told me. ‘I couldn’t accept that David was dead. I couldn’t accept that he had been so ill. When the news came I broke down. I know everybody hated me, and I suddenly found I couldn’t face any of them – even my own daughters, and David’s sons. Roger Moore despised me – he has never spoken to me again. I was agoraphobic and the very thought of going to the funeral terrified me. It’s a crippling illness of the mind. Rainier was very sweet and also very strong, telling me I must go. He made me go, and if it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have been there.’
Audrey Hepburn was among the mourners, so was Capucine, and just about everyone in the village turned up. ‘The people of the village loved David,’ Hjördis said. ‘He always had time for them and he loved to chat to them. He was the perfect English gentleman at all times. I think Kristina’s real mother was at the church.’
I asked her what made her think that. She said, ‘It was just a moment of recognition in the eyes. Just a second when I saw clearly. The rest of the time I was drunk and in tears.’
She sat in the front row next to Prince Rainer, her girls and David’s lawyer, but she refused to allow David Jnr or Jamie and his family to sit with them.
Yehudi Menuhin and several of his students from his music school in Gstaad played Mendelssohn’s Andante. There were readings from Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, and the hymns sung included The Lord is My Shepherd and To Be a Pilgrim.
David didn’t expect Hjördis to outlive him by much. She would have surprised him – as she did everyone. At first, immediately following his death, she remained lost in a world of depression, panic attacks, sedatives and alcohol, and became a recluse at Lo Scoglietto. But in 1984 she took everyone by surprise when she was persuaded by her doctor friend/lover to check into a French clinic where she was treated for her alcoholism and underwent therapy and made a remarkable recovery.
She became involved with an AIDS charity and began going out a lot more, especially with Andrew Vicari. Their relationship didn’t last, but it certainly had a beneficial effect upon her.
David had thought that I would never be able to interview Hjördis. I did, in 1986. She had been sober for two years, and when she came to London, she went through David’s former PR to arrange for an interview with me. We also dined out and talked about many things in general. I was, at that time, becoming disillusioned with the Mormon Church and all religion, and she told me, ‘Whatever you believe now, what you believed then [in 1982] got David through a difficult time.’
I don’t think her stepsons ever got to know her as I did. She was sober, cohesive, confident and very personable. She accepted responsibility for her own shortcomings. But within a few years she slipped back into her old ways. She became completely estranged from her stepsons, and they became estranged from their stepsisters. While David was alive he was able to hold the family together. After his death, the family unit splintered. Even at her best, in 1986, Hjördis was barely able to keep the family together but after she slid irrevocably into alcoholism, the family had no chance of survival. That, I think, is the most tragic part of it all.
Hjördis died from a stroke on Christmas Eve 1997. She was 78. She had asked not to be buried next to David but to be cremated and her ashes scattered from Lo Scoglietto over the Mediterranean.
After David died, Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton found themselves with an unfinished book by him. They decided that not to publish it would be a greater favour to Niven than to try and edit it into something that might have made them back some of their huge advance but would have disappointed readers. That was a generous act by publishers who could have cashed in on David’s death.
At his funeral, am
ong the flowers and wreaths that adorned the church, was a huge wreath from the porters at Heathrow Airport with a card that read, ‘To the finest gentleman who ever walked through these halls. He made a porter feel like a king.’
I would say that pretty well summed up David Niven. He was a fine gentleman and a very English one at that, which is no bad thing in this day and age. He wasn’t perfect, of course, but he was a decent man to those who came into contact with him – it didn’t matter what class you were. You could be a hotel porter, a member of royalty or just a mere messenger boy as I was when I first met him in 1970.
A Brief Afterword
Why didn’t I write this book after David died? The reason is very simple. I was not an established author, I had no agent and the publishers I was then dealing with – neither of which exist any longer – didn’t feel that a biography of David Niven was possible because of The Moon’s a Balloon. Sheridan Morley proved them wrong when his excellent The Other Side of the Moon was published in 1985. Several years ago, on one of my regular rounds of radio studios to promote one of my books, I talked to Sheridan about the things Niven had told to me, and he said, ‘You have to write your book.’ But then Graham Lord’s biography Niv was published. Even shortly before Sheridan died on 16 February 2007, he continued to urge, encourage and generally enthuse me to write this book. So here it is.
Michael Munn
The Films and Television Work of David Niven
The Films
Without Regret (1935, Paramount). Elissa Landi, Robert Cavanagh, Frances Drake, Kent Taylor, Gilbert Emery, David Niven. Producer B.P. Finemann. Director Harold Young. Trivia: Elissa Landi retired from acting in 1943 and wrote poetry and six novels before dying of cancer in 1948 aged only 43.
Barbary Coast (1935, Goldwyn). Miriam Hopkins, Edward G. Robinson, Joel McCrea, Walter Brennan, David Niven (billed 9th). Producer Samuel Goldwyn. Director Howard Hawks. Trivia: The film received an Oscar nomination for its photography.
A Feather in Her Hat (1935, Columbia). Pauline Lord, Basil Rathbone, Louis Hayward, Billie Burke, Wendy Barrie, David Niven (billed 12th). Producer Everett Riskin. Director Alfred Santell. Trivia: Ruth Chatterton was originally cast in Pauline Lord’s role but decided to take a break from acting for a year.
Splendour (1935, Goldwyn). Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Paul Cavanagh, Helen Westley, Billie Burke, David Niven (billed 8th). Producer Samuel Goldwyn. Director Elliot Nugent. Trivia: The original title is actually Splendor, spelt without the ‘u’ for American prints.
Rose Marie (1936, MGM). Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Reginald Owen, Allan Jones, James Stewart, Alan Mowbray, David Niven. Producer Hunt Stromberg. Director W.S. Van Dyke. Trivia: Nelson Eddy didn’t want to be upstaged by Allan Jones and insisted that Jones’s only solo number, the aria ‘E lucevan le stelle’ from Puccini’s Tosca, be cut.
Palm Springs (1936, Paramount). Frances Langford, Sir Guy Standing, Ernest Cossart, Smith Ballew, Spring Byington, David Niven. Producer Walter Wanger. Director Aubrey Scotto. (US title Palm Springs Affair) Trivia: In an eerie coincidence, the day Sir Guy Standing died from a rattlesnake bite in the Hollywood Hills in 1936, Humphrey Pearson, co-writer of Palm Springs, died in Palm Springs of a gunshot wound.
Thank You, Jeeves (1936, 20th Century-Fox). Arthur Treacher, Virginia Fields, David Niven, Lester Matthews. Producer Sol M. Wurtzel. Director Arthur Greville Collins. Trivia: A sequel, Step Lively, Jeeves, followed in 1937 with Arthur Treacher again as Jeeves, but without the character of Wooster.
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936, Warner Brothers). Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Patric Knowles, Henry Stephenson, Nigel Bruce, Donald Crisp, David Niven. Producer Hal B. Wallis. Director Michael Curtiz. Trivia: Over 200 horses were reportedly killed during filming, resulting in the US Congress passing new laws to protect animals used in motion pictures.
Dodsworth (1936, Goldwyn). Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, Mary Astor, David Niven. Producer Samuel Goldwyn. Director William Wyler. Trivia: Walter Huston and Charles Halton repeated their roles from the Broadway play but all of Halton’s footage was cut from the film.
Beloved Enemy (1937, Goldwyn). Merle Oberon, Brian Aherne, Karen Morely, Jerome Cowan, David Niven. Producer George Haight. Director H.C. Potter. Trivia: The retired film star Eve Southern loaned Goldwyn a rare Rolls-Royce to use in the film.
We Have Our Moments (1937, Universal). Sally Eilers, James Dunn, Mischa Auer, Thurston Hall, Warren Hymer, David Niven. Producer Edmund Grainger. Director Alfred L. Werker. Trivia: Mischa Auer, famous for playing mad Russians, was a quiet, scholarly gentleman who spoke Russian, English, Italian, French, German and Spanish.
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937, Selznick International). Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Raymond Massey, David Niven. Producer David O. Selznick. Directors John Cromwell, W.S. Van Dyke. Trivia: Douglas Fairbanks Jnr tested for the double role and was devastated when it went to Ronald Colman.
Dinner at the Ritz (1937, New World). Annabella, David Niven, Paul Lukas, Romney Brent. Producer Robert T. Kane. Director Harold Schuster. Trivia: Annabella’s real name was Suzanne Georgette Charpentier.
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938, Paramount). Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton, David Niven, Elizabeth Patterson. Producer/director Ernst Lubitsch. Trivia: This was the first collaboration of screenwriters Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder.
Four Men and a Prayer (1938, 20th Century-Fox). Loretta Young, Richard Greene, George Sanders, David Niven, C. Aubrey Smith. Producer Kenneth MacGowan. Director John Ford. Trivia: Niven often tried to include the names of friends and family in his films; in this, one of his lines was ‘I knew a man named Trubshawe’.
Three Blind Mice (1938, 20th Century-Fox). Loretta Young, Joel McCrea, David Niven, Stuart Erwin. Producer Raymond Griffiths. Director William A. Seiter. 1938. Trivia: Remade as a musical, Three Little Girls in Blue, in 1946.
The Dawn Patrol (1938, Warner Brothers). Errol Flynn, David Niven, Basil Rathbone, Donald Crisp. Producer Hal B. Wallis. Director Edmund Goulding. Trivia: Seventeen vintage World War I aircraft, most of them Nieuports, were assembled. Flying them proved so hazardous, by the time filming ended, all but two of them had crashed.
Wuthering Heights (1939, Samuel Goldwyn). Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Flora Robson, Donald Crisp. Producer Samuel Goldwyn. Director William Wyler. Trivia: Niven called one of the dogs in the film ‘Trubshawe’ but Wyler cut the line out.
Bachelor Mother (1939, RKO). Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn, Frank Albertson. Producer B.G. DeSylva. Director Garson Kanin. Trivia: The screenplay by Felix Jackson was nominated for an Oscar as Best Original Screenplay.
Eternally Yours (1939, Walter Wanger). Loretta Young, David Niven, Hugh Herbert, Billie Burke. Producer Walter Wagner. Director Tay Garnett. Trivia: Tay Garnet became one of the regular directors of Four Star’s TV dramas, and also directed most of Loretta Young’s TV shows.
The Real Glory (1939, Samuel Goldwyn). Gary Cooper, Andrea Leeds, David Niven, Reginald Owen, Broderick Crawford. Producer Samuel Goldwyn. Director Henry Hathaway. Trivia: The film was re-issued in 1942 with the title A Yank in the Philippines, but the Office of War Information insisted it was withdrawn because the film’s villains, the Philippine Moros, had become allies in World War II.
Raffles (1939, Samuel Goldwyn). David Niven, Olivia de Havilland, Dame May Whitty. Producer Samuel Golwyn. Directors Sam Wood, William Wyler. Trivia: Co-screenwriter Sydney Howard died before filming began. He won a posthumous Oscar for his screenplay of Gone With the Wind.
The First of the Few (1942, British Aviation Pictures). Leslie Howard, David Niven, Rosamund John, Roland Culver. Producer/director Leslie Howard. (US title Spitfire) Trivia: Leslie Howard’s last screen appearance. He was in an aircraft shot down by the Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay in June 1943.
The Way Ahead (1944, Two Cities). David Niven, Raymond Huntley, William Hartne
ll, Stanley Holloway. Producers John Sutro, Norman Walker. Director Carol Reed. Trivia: This was a remake of an Army Kinematograph Service training film The New Lot written by Peter Ustinov and Eric Ambler which so upset the Army top brass with its frankness that they suppressed it.
A Matter of Life and Death (1945, J. Arthur Rank). David Niven, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Robert Coote. Producers/directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. (US title Stairway to Heaven) Trivia: Robert Coote played a character called Bob Trubshawe.
Magnificent Doll (1946, Universal). Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Burgess Meredith, Horace McNally. Producers Jack H. Skirball, Bruce Manning. Director Frank Borzage. Trivia: This was the least successful of all the films Ginger Rogers made without Fred Astaire.
The Perfect Marriage (1947, Paramount). Loretta Young, David Niven, Nona Griffith, Eddie Albert, Virginia Field. Producer Hal B. Wallis. Director Lewis Allen. Trivia: Lewis Allen went on to direct many successful Four Star TV productions including The DavidNiven Show, The Rifleman and The Rogues.
The Other Love (1947, Enterprise Production). Barbara Stanwyck, David Niven, Richard Conte, Gilbert Roland. Producer David Lewis. Director André de Toth. Trivia: The film was re-released in 1953 under the title Man Killer.
The Bishop’s Wife (1947, Samuel Goldwyn). Cary Grant, Loretta Young, David Niven, Monty Woolley, James Gleason, Gladys Cooper. Producer Samuel Goldwyn. Director Henry Koster. Trivia: Niven made a slight change to a line he gives during a Christmas sermon. Instead of saying, ‘You give me a tie. I give you a book,’ he said, ‘I give you a book, you give me a tie,’ because he felt it sounded better.
