Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (19 page)

I know when to make good my escape.

Johnny died in April 2005, aged ninety-seven, and I attended his funeral along with many of his closest friends and family: Lord Attenborough, Stephen Fry, Leslie and Evie Bricusse, Anita Harris, Dame Helen Mirren, Dame Judi Dench, Jack Hawkins’ widow Doreen and even Cherie Blair. Dickie Attenborough, moved to tears, spoke for us all when he said, ‘We shall miss him desperately. But we shall have him with us always in the deep love and unmatched joy that he has bequeathed to all of us.’ It never stopped raining that day, and I believe they were actually tears from heaven.

The cast of
The Sea Wolves
. This photograph includes so many old friends – it makes me smile every time I see it.

Back on the set of
Sea Wolves
, Greg Peck and I often chatted over a drink at the end of the day, and one evening I realized we’d both worked with John Huston – as an actor in my
Sherlock Holmes in New York
and as a director helming
Moby Dick
in which Greg had starred.

‘Didn’t like him,’ said Greg, taking me aback a little, as I found Huston to be the consummate professional and a joy to work with.

‘As a director,’ continued Greg, ‘all he cared about was getting the shot. In the scene where I was tied to the model of the whale in the tank at Elstree Studios and the waves were crashing all around me, Huston gave various instructions to lower the model into the water, and each time he held it there for longer than I could reasonably hold my breath. I was furious – he nearly drowned me.’

On another evening we were chatting about
Roman Holiday,
that great romantic movie Greg had made with Audrey Hepburn in 1953. In the final scene where Greg’s character has to say goodbye to Audrey’s Princess Ann, knowing it’s the last time he’ll ever see her, Greg said he felt it was going to be a hugely emotional scene and one that he was not going to hold back on. As the tears of sadness ran down his cheeks, the director William Wyler leaned across and said, ‘No, Greg, don’t get upset. Get angry! Angry! Angry!’

And that’s how Greg was forced to play the scene – angry that he wouldn’t be seeing his love again. He said it was one of the defining moments of his career and he
realized just how important listening to a director like Wyler could be.

Oh, before I forget, I must mention a scene in
Sea Wolves
that I shared with the lovely Barbara Kellerman. It’s the part where my character discovers that she is in fact a Nazi spy – though not before taking a bullet in my arm. The script called for me to change jackets, wrap a bandage around my bloodied and wounded arm, with blood running down into the palm of my hand, and go to the ball, which was being staged as a grand diversion for the attack on the German ships in the harbour. I went off to make-up and, as I was sitting in a chair waiting for my call, the Indian unit nurse came in, took one look, and said ‘Oh my goodness! You have been injured!’ and proceeded to attend to my fake wound. I don’t think she’d ever worked on a film before.

I wish I’d been able to make more films with Greg and seen him more often, but sadly our geography placed us on different continents. I remember we did go fishing together once, off Cap Ferrat. We chartered a boat and forged our way out beyond the headland looking for signs of any water-propelled creatures. Having not caught so much as a herring, the captain called on the radio to other fishing boats in the area and they reported nothing in sight either. We then saw the reason: about sixty feet from us an enormous whale poked its nose up out of the water, obviously happy after its huge breakfast of fish.

Other places we used to hang out together were Crescendo and Ciro’s nightclubs on Sunset Strip, where I saw Don Rickles perform a few times. Don took great enjoyment from insulting his audience – in fact he was known as an ‘insult comic’ – particularly the more prominent famous people in the audience. One night, I was there at one table,
Gary Cooper was at another and opposite him was a Mafia boss. Rickles began giving Cooper hell, then he turned his attention to me and then to the Mafia guy, saying the most terrible and goading things. But he always capped it off by saying, ‘I’m only joking, sir, I’m only joking, sir.’ And then, ‘I’m now going to walk among you and squeeze venom all over you!’

He once said of Frank Sinatra, ‘When you enter a room, you have to kiss his ring. I don’t mind, but he has it in his back pocket.’

One time a group of us were at Frank’s weekend house, relaxing by the pool, and Don started on Gregory Peck. It was the usual wisecracking routine, ‘Who picks your clothes, Greg – Stevie Wonder?’ and so on. For the most part, Greg took it in good humour but later that night Don went a step too far with a wisecrack and Greg leapt to his feet.

‘Shall we step outside and settle this like gentlemen?’ he challenged.

‘I’m only joking, sir! I’m only joking,’ Don guffawed.

The next day, Greg’s wife Veronique had her white fluffy dog draped around her shoulders, like a stole, and we were all sitting in cast iron chairs having lunch on the terrace. Again, Don started on Greg.

‘When actors get old like you, Greg, they get mouths like flounders and can pull their lower lip over their forehead,’ he said. As he spoke, Don moved his chair, and the grating of iron against the tiled floor startled the dog, which leapt off Veronique’s lap and right under Rickles’ chair, getting snagged between the floor and chair leg as it did so. It let out such a cry. Greg placed his cutlery down, signalled to his wife and they both stood up, picked up the dog, and
went home. He simply couldn’t take any more.

Other times, Greg and I played tennis or poker, or sat around telling jokes over a Jack Daniels or two. Whenever Kristina gave me a birthday party at Le Dome in West Hollywood, on what is called The Strip, Greg and Veronique were always the first to arrive and we picked up our conversation as though the intervening months had never occurred. I remember on one occasion at the end of the 1990s, Greg said he’d wound back on film work and was greatly enjoying taking his ‘pony and trap’ around theatres, whereby he’d sit on a stage and tell stories from his life and career. I always remembered the phrase ‘pony and trap’ and when I was invited to take part in a small tour in 2012 to help promote my last book
Bond on Bond
(copies still available in all good book shops) I thought of Greg, and readily accepted. I took my pony and trap out again in 2013 – who’d have thought this boy from Stockwell would not only become an author, but a raconteur
with his own stage show? I’ll keep going until they find me out!

Our mutual friend, David Niven, was a happy constant in much of my life, and I shared many dinners with him over the years and played audience to his wonderful stories. Of course, we all knew most of them were exaggerated, borrowed or downright lies – but he told them so well. I remember one such story about how Errol Flynn and he (along with Niv’s new girlfriend) went out boating one day from LA.

Miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean they started water-skiing
(according to Niv he had introduced the sport to America!) and Flynn decided to cut Niv free and sailed off so that he could get to know the girl for himself. Niv then told us how, with only two skis for buoyancy, he swam miles back towards the shore – pursued by sharks if you please – until he was rescued by Ronald Colman.

Well, another one of those ‘is it quite true?’ stories came when Niv shared a house in Malibu with notorious bad boy Errol Flynn, which they called ‘Cirrhosis by the Sea’. One of their regular visitors was the actor John Barrymore, who used to sit in his favourite chair and smoke his pipe, looking out on to the ocean. By all accounts, after John Barrymore died he was taken to the Utter McKinley Funeral Directors store on Sunset Strip, which had a clock with a long swinging arm in the window ominously counting down time.

One evening, Niv and some friends broke in and retrieved the body, took it home, sat it in Barrymore’s favourite chair ... and awaited Errol’s return home!

Flynn’s book,
My Wicked, Wicked Ways
, was going to be made as a film by Roy Huggins, who was a producer at Warner Bros during my contract years there, and Roy wanted me to play Flynn. Alas, Errol had what you might best say was a ‘difficult’ relationship with Jack Warner, the famed studio head, stemming from the time when one of Jack’s brothers suffered a heart attack after a big argument with Flynn. One day shortly afterwards, Jack walked into the dining room of the studio and noticed a new English writer who had joined the staff who had an uncanny resemblance to Flynn.

‘Get that son of a bitch out of here!’ Jack exploded. ‘He looks like Flynn!’

‘But it’s not Flynn,’ someone said.

‘I don’t care! He
looks
like Flynn. Get him out!’

I probably didn’t help matters myself when I was called in for a meeting with old Jack Warner to discuss the role.

‘I understand Roy wants you to play Errol Flynn?’ said the great man.

‘Yes, it’s a part I’d love,’ I replied.

‘I also understand he calls me a thief in his book?’

‘Well, aren’t you?’ I asked.

‘Son of a bitch – I won’t make the movie!’

Meeting over.

I only met Errol Flynn once – when I was understudying David Tomlinson and Geoffrey Toone in
The Little Hut
. David was going out with a girl who he knew had been in a relationship with Flynn some years earlier, so on hearing Flynn was coming to town, David thought he’d have a little fun with his love and faked a telegram:

‘Darling. Am coming to London. Let’s pick up where we left off. Love Errol.’

It didn’t take long for the young lady to twig it was Tomlinson who had sent it, and she told Flynn about the gag when he landed in town.

‘I’ll fix the son of a bitch,’ said Flynn.

Flynn was a huge, tall, very imposing man and he arrived at the Lyric Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue, just in time to stand in the wings with his sleeves rolled up for when David glanced in his direction ... and Flynn was glaring at him wildly. Terrified, David couldn’t get his lines out for the next five minutes!

Charmer though he undoubtedly was, Flynn also loved to fight – and I mean fists flying, down and dirty, slugging it out. In fact, he loved fighting to such an extent that he
was often to be found sparring with a professional fighter, just to keep himself in shape.

Another legendary slugger was the director John Huston, and the story goes that one night, fed up and bored at yet another Hollywood party, Huston and Flynn decided to retire to the garden and knock seven bells out of each other. They were on good terms, there was no issue between them, they just wanted a fight. So for a goodly part of the rest of the evening, the other guests were treated to the sounds of the pair of them, toe to toe, knocking each other around the garden – at the end of which they both wound up in hospital for repairs!