For the Time Being (12 page)

… we made
Sleeping Tiger
not easily and not pleasantly: I working anonymously [black-listed by McCarthy] and without knowledge of British idiosyncrasies and with little confidence excepting what Dirk gave me. Dirk, insofar as he understood any of my political opinions, certainly didn't agree with them, so it took much courage and much acceptance to perform the unselfish act which he did. Out of it grew a profound friendship and love which has endured much testing and some provocation.

It endured all right; sometimes I wondered how. The umbilical cord which joined us got pretty stretched at times, but was never entirely severed. I stayed pretty close to him until his death. Ten years after
The Sleeping Tiger
we worked again on a modest movie which no one wanted or would pay for. ‘The Money,' Joe said, ‘isn't bright even about money!' And so it was, all his career.

I had reminded him about a small book, which he had considered during our first film together:
The Servant,
which he thought he might buy for me. Ten years on, I was too old for the ‘boy' and the book had become a film-script written by a rising young writer, Harold Pinter. ‘Over-written dreadfully,' Losey said; but he met Pinter, they paired, a new script was written. I had to play the servant because there was no money for a star like Ralph Richardson.

Thus
The Servant
was, in his word, ‘fought' on to film. Fought, because we had no support.

He got pneumonia in the first week, The Money tried to close us down and claim the insurance, and he begged me to take over directing until he was able to return. Harold, and the cast and crew, remained loyal and brave. The movie was made and I, at least, thought that he had done the impossible: switched points on the deadly predictable railway-line that was the British cinema.

Losey seemed to have broken through. Hailed by the critics, avoided by the mass audience, we won and lost. For a time, however, he prospered, his name writ large. Every film he attempted was a desperate battle to get the cash. No box-office, no backing. It was heart-breaking, desperate, but he fought on and, with Pinter, he seemed to be winning, at least critically and, if not in Britain, abroad.

We made five films together, eventually. Always under stress and pressure and lack of funds and, although we were as close as brothers, I never really knew how he ticked or who he was away from the set. I have said that I never ask questions of my friends, or question their beliefs in religion or politics. That way you get to keep them. So it was with Joe (or ‘Joseph', as he later insisted on being called). But somehow we stayed together, with some fairly hairy periods here and there. We were both pretty volatile people after all.

I suppose I
did
think that I knew him. But his biographer has delved deep, and asked the questions I never dared. I realize now that I was wrong to assume that I knew him. So close. So distant. He altered greatly with success when it came – it was not an abrupt alteration; he had always been simmering away, but, until he hit the real ‘big time', he kept his lid fairly tight.

With Harold Pinter, a spare, meticulous, controlled writer, he reached his peak. Pinter never permitted him to go to excess, which would have been fatal to his work. Given his head, which eventually he was, he rioted and brought himself down unaided.

In time, he did start to mellow. Unhappy in England, which he never really came to terms with, he went to Paris, where he was
lionized by the cinema intellectuals and gave huge, in-depth, and not always accurate, interviews. He shocked many by declaring that he was, indeed, a Marxist. This I never really took seriously. I found it too hard to accept, given his love of the rich life and the luxury he always insisted on whenever he could. Rich hotels, richer foods and wines, elegance, the best couturiers, top doctors, beautiful furniture. He treated all waiters and staff dreadfully, despising them for being ‘servants'; he was appalling to women, especially those he bedded, and even the four he married; he dumped his sons, cheated here and there, was a liar sometimes, a coward (he could never sack a player: he got someone else to do that); he was generous when he was rich; above all, he bullied the weak.

But he was respected and loved by the team with whom he worked, for the excellence of his work. In time, his demands became difficult to accept and, regretfully, people fell away. His Achilles' heel was his love of richness and vulgarity; even though he
knew
it was vulgar, it pleased him. The Burtons, at their peak, mesmerized him with ostentation and luxury; he wallowed in wastefulness and prodigality. The Mid-West boy, the Commie-intellectual-fighter, was overwhelmed far too easily by glitz.

A lot of people suffered from these bouts – if that is what they were – of self-indulgence, but the main victim, finally, was himself. The Burtons naturally meant that The Money was eager to back him almost for the first time. With funds came the largesse, lavishness as never before; but, alas, it did not mean box-office success, and finally the financiers, too, politely and firmly eased away from him and he was quietly abandoned.

He battled on undaunted: his ‘greatness' lay in his courage, his vision, his whole cinema-intellect. It lay in the incredible feeling he had for texture, shape, light, rhythm and film-pace, in the acute awareness that the camera photographed
thought
as well as the object. His understanding of the camera, the use of sound, of silence even, was total. Working for him was telepathic; we spoke no words together.

Under duress, often ailing, always struggling against The Money, he was determined, calm, brave and never questioned success.
Eventually he won. But, with too much money, more than he could handle, his innate streak of vulgarity broadened, the brilliance dimmed, and really came back to him only towards the end of his working time with
Don Giovanni.

As he faded in health he started to lose heart. Reluctantly, he was forced back to Britain. He bought two absurdly expensive houses in Chelsea, in which he sat, lost, brooding, morose. ‘They knew who I was in Paris,' he said one day. ‘I was respected there. No one knows me here now. No one gives a shit.'

He was almost right. He had returned to a British cinema that was drawing its last breaths, where The Money demanded tits and bums, bombs and bangs, smoke and grunts instead of words. He was distressed, floundering, still trying to get ‘things set up', even to the extent of easing, uncomfortably, towards television.

Life with Losey was never easy, but I loved him. At his best he was inspiring, audacious, stylish. He cared and he dared. This is the Losey I knew: he and his work are almost forgotten today, overwhelmed by an audience weaned on short-span television attention.

When he died, the cinema lost a man who made films because he actually loved them. He may have been all kinds of a scoundrel, but he was, without doubt, a great film-maker. He is our loss.

Daily Telegraph,
15 January 1994

On the death of Theo Cowan

My dear Thumper:

Bet you never thought that I'd be doing this for you? Should have been the other way around. However, you went first. In the perfect scenario, of course, it would have been me, one of your earliest ‘chicks'. So a ‘thank you' letter seems to be in order.

Thank you for unstinting love and support for over forty years. I joined the Rank team (not charm school) in 1947 – April, I recall. You were pretty cool. ('Well frankly, I was used to more rugged types. Granger, Farrar, Mason. You were a bit of a shock.')

We got through a great many years together, bad movies, not-very-good movies, and here and there a reasonably respectable one. Only now and again.

But you were
always
there. Remember the National Tours? Trains to Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow? Red carpets and station-masters in top hats? Black ties and eternal dinners with Mayors. Day after day from one city to another. You and me. Everything planned like clockwork, ready on time, never once late, not even the train, and knowing everyone's name. Even the names of their children ('She's called Alice, 8½. Their third child. Might be useful?'). You had researched it.

And we all talked together. I never forgot a name. I hope it made them come to the movie. If I got lost, turned in despair, you were always there. Tall, smiling the smile of reassurance, glasses glinting in the lights. Courage regained.

Discipline you taught; patience, humility and tact. You did amazingly well by doing exactly what you were not engaged to do – keeping me away from the worst excesses of the Popular Press.

Keeping me ‘out' rather than ‘in' the public eye, for which I will ever be grateful.

Those subtle warnings about X and Y who might look kind but couldn't be trusted with a fly-swat or a feather duster. The ‘killers' of their time. How frightened we all were of them! But it was you who said: ‘What they write today you'll eat your chips from tomorrow. Remember that through your tears.'

And it was so. Tell them from me, if they are up there with you, that you were right. And Thumper, apart from your insatiable hunger for any kind of food, particularly sandwiches and bridge-rolls full of tinned salmon or any kind of nourishment (never a drink, only tea), your strength, tact, good humour and your discretion made you highly respected and for a publicist amazingly loved.

I don't think there was anyone in our profession who did
not
know you, from here to Paris, Venice or LA. We were all encouraged by you and often shielded by you from the Tyranny of the Bosses.

When I joined Joe Losey to make ‘different' films you willingly came too – at a vastly reduced salary. Proud we were to have you; proud you were to be associated with what you called ‘a brave new attempt' which lasted for longer than we any of us expected.

When I quit the United Kingdom for new lands you were still with me, as ever, and still for no money at all, because I had none. ‘We'll settle that later,' you said, but we never did.

But you liked my house, the olives, above all the sandwiches and the tea. Your tapping your ‘sugar substitute' into your cup with fastidious care is one of my enduring memories.

Cannes, with all its jazzy, jokey nonsense, will never be the same without you, in your hideous khaki shorts and two-way sunglasses, bowling along the Croisette. You only ever dressed for Venice. ‘Venice,' you said, ‘it's different. Not a question of money here; question of worth and honour.'

Back here in London we had tea and sandwiches in this little flat. You brought me one of your self-grown amaryllis, in a too-small pot, but it flourished. In all the years we knew each other very closely I never knew anything about you. I only knew you lived ‘somewhere near Primrose Hill' and that was that.

I asked no questions and you told me no more. It's all a question as you told us – your ‘chicks' – of duty, discipline, discretion and good manners. Apart from talent!

You were coming in for tea and a sandwich ‘sometime next week'. Have to take a rain-check on that.

Love, Dirk

Daily Telegraph,
17 September 1994

A portrait of Brigitte Bardot

More than forty years ago I was despatched to Paris in order to do some shopping. It wasn't long after the war, and any excuse to get out of a still-drab and depressed England was to be greatly welcomed. Especially in this case when the ‘shopping' was for a leading lady to play opposite me in yet another film in the
Doctor
series.

This time we were to be at sea. A sexy, singing siren had to be discovered, preferably in France because they seemed to make the best models and because we simply did not have any of that kind of exotica flying about in Britain, least of all in the Rank Organisation, where a few pretty creatures were bolted into terrible steel-boned corsets. To hold one in one's arms was like holding a pillar-box. Scarlet lips as well.

So off I was sent by those splendid producers Betty Box and Ralph Thomas, with a list of, I think, three for me to choose from. A matter of height, colouring, English language and general gaiety. This creature had to entrap me, enrapture the whole audience and add ‘exotic lustre' to the whole enterprise.

The first girl I met was working at a studio outside Paris. Her anxious and charming agent was with her – to ‘' elp wiz zee translation, I spik bad,' said the ravishing creature, with a sparkle in her eye which indicated very clearly that no English, no language in fact, was really necessary: she would manage very well without.

From where I sat in the cramped little dressing-room, this amazingly glowing child – she was seventeen at the time – wrestling furiously with a vast lurcher-type of dog called Clown, was all I needed for my duties as a valiant young doctor at sea. It would save trailing across Paris to see the other two.

The elegantly, if sparingly, dressed child with her vast dog gave
little pouts and giggles, which could have been irritating but merely went happily along my ignited fuse until I sort of exploded and declared that Mademoiselle was ideal! Just what I wanted as a partner. She clapped her hands and her agent, Olga Horstig (who became mine for forty years), wiped away a tear and we all embraced. I kissed the hand of my ravishing partner, who was hitting Clown on the head with a rolled-up newspaper, and we all said ‘au revoir' and ‘à bientôt'. Brigitte Bardot was launched into the British cinema.

Poor child: at the time, she did not realize quite what she was in for, but, after her fitting for the dress in which she would sing the ‘Big Number' – which, she murmured, was ‘like singing my catechism' – and discovering that she could move quite independently within the confines of the white-satin, steel-covered corset, she became, controllably, hysterical.

She proved, before my eyes, that she could turn her body all the way round within the scarlet-sequinned, crimson-beaded gown, so that it remained absolutely rigid and nailed to the floor. Nothing moved, the breasts were cupped and ribbed in metal, the waist cinched in with iron rods, and the whole edifice looked, as it was, a static reminder of what a ‘chantoose' might possibly have worn in 1930. It had nothing whatever to do with a liner on a happy holiday cruise in 1954.