Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (5 page)

Shelley Winters eyes up my socks – after all, she’d already taken my long johns ... At the Garrick Club in London for a party after filming
That Lucky Touch
in 1975, with (
front row, l to r
) Shelley, Lee J. Cobb, Susannah York; (
back row
) Jean-Pierre Cassel, Sydne Rome and Raf Vallone.

Shelley had a great sense of humour. One evening we were shooting in a chateau and while we were waiting for everything to be set up, Lee and half the crew – and yours truly – were playing poker. Lee was a great card enthusiast. Enter Shelley Winters, sweet-faced and innocent.

‘Oh! What’s this game?’ she asked, in wonderment.

‘Poker,’ Lee replied.

‘Oh, I think I played that once. May I join in?’ she asked with bashful sweetness.

Lee beckoned her to pull up a chair, and within thirty minutes she’d cleaned us all out! We knew never to play with her again.

A few years later, an up-and-coming young director, no doubt still wet behind the ears, was considering Shelley for a role in a film and asked her to audition. Now, you don’t ask stars of Shelley’s calibre to audition: you
invite
them to lunch to
discuss
a role, but you
don’t
ask them to come in and read! If anybody had suggested that to me, I’d have told them where to shove their script. But Shelley loved to work and – somewhat surprisingly to those around her – agreed to meet the director at his office and run through some lines. She duly reported, but arrived carrying an enormous bag over one shoulder.

The director gave the usual flannel about being delighted she had come in to read, and how he’d heard nothing but great things about her. He suggested they go through a scene but as Shelley sat down, she opened her bag, rummaged around in it for a bit, pulled out an Oscar statuette and put it down on the desk. Then she rummaged around again, and pulled out a second Oscar statuette.

‘So,’ she asked. ‘Do I still need to audition?’

Diana Dors was perhaps the Rank Organisation’s most glamorous blonde bombshell in the 1950s and 60s – and often regarded as the British Marilyn Monroe. She told the most hilarious story of returning to her hometown of Swindon to open a local fair, where the Mayor was due to introduce her to the gathered crowds but was conscious of not messing up his welcoming speech, in which he intended
to refer to Diana by her birth name of Diana Fluck. He didn’t want to fluck it up, you see.

The fair was about to commence and the rather nervous dignitary took to the podium. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘Today we are joined by a star of the big screen – and someone we are very proud to say was born in Swindon. You know her today as Diana Dors, but Swindon knows her better as – Diana Clunt!’

Diana wet herself with laughter.

Oh, and another story about Diana Dors was related to me by my old neighbour from Denham, Jess Conrad. Occasionally Jess would accompany Di to cabaret functions, as she liked to have someone to present her with a big bouquet after her act – as well as help ensure the money was paid up front. ‘Always get the money when you arrive,’ she told Jess, ‘as afterwards you’re introduced to friends, family and the champagne comes out ... and everyone forgets about the business.’

Anyhow, this one particular evening they arrived at a club and were shown into the manager’s office and after the usual, ‘Hello ... what a thrill it is ...’ etc., the manager showed them his prized plant. Well it wasn’t so much a plant, Jess said, as a triffid-like vine, and he proudly described how rare it was, how unusual that one should survive in such a climate and so on.

‘Lovely,’ said Di, feigning interest. ‘But shall we do the business side of the deal, darling?’

After paying the money over, the manager said his office was to be Di’s dressing room and that she should come and go as she liked. There was just one small snag, which Di hadn’t realized until a few minutes before she was due to go on stage: there was no en suite bathroom. Come the time that she
did
realize, in her full outfit, made-up and looking
a million dollars, she suddenly also realized that she was desperate to gain some relief, but didn’t want to have to walk through the assembled crowd to go to the loo – what would that do to her big entrance a couple of minutes later?

Ah, dear Diana Dors, a bundle of fun and a force to be reckoned with. I look a little concerned that the moose is going to take off, while Carol Hawkins looks on, bemused.

‘Well, what can we do?’ asked Jess, in a panic. ‘They’re all standing outside the door waiting for you.’

Di looked around the room and spotted the plant. I won’t go into the detail but I’m sure you know where this story is going ...

‘And you thought a horse could pee!’ laughed Jess to me some time later.

After her cabaret, Di went back into the manager’s office for a glass of champagne but there was a bit of a kerfuffle as she found the manager almost in tears, leaning over his prized plant, which was no longer growing vertically but was lying, lifeless, horizontal across the floor.

‘Oh, we won’t stay, Jess,’ said Di matter-of-factly. ‘We’ve got a long drive home.’ And with that they made their escape – they were in hysterics all the way!

I can’t resist a toilet story, if you’ll forgive me for dwelling in the smallest room for a moment more, and this one involves Tallulah Bankhead, a hugely successful American actress whose fame was such that, for example, she was the first choice to play Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone with the Wind
(only for her thirty-six years to appear a few too many when the decision was made to switch from black-and-white to glorious Technicolor, and instead the role went to Vivien Leigh, a mere decade younger ...).

Anyhow, fame aside, Tallulah was notorious for being mean with money and the story goes that she was in a lavatory in Hollywood and discovered there was no paper. With that she knocked on the wall of the next cubicle and pushed under a $10 bill.

‘Can you split that for two fives?’ she asked her neighbouring occupant.

Actually, Tallulah was deported from Britain in the early 1930s, reportedly after having worked her way through most of the boys – and many of the Masters – at Eton public school, and Scotland Yard declared her a menace.

Incidentally, when the opening night of the London musical
Gone with the Wind
(which starred June Ritchie and not Miss Bankhead, but don’t let that get in the way of me telling a good story) was marred by an obnoxious young actress and a horse that relieved itself onstage, Noel Coward was in the audience and was heard to say, ‘If they’d stuffed the child’s head up the horse’s arse, they would have solved two problems at once.’ He did have such a way with words!

As I started this chapter with a feisty – and fun – princess, I think it only right that I should end it with another one ... And you know how I like to drop the odd royal name here and there, when I can.

I first met Princess Lilian of Sweden on a visit to Stockholm for UNICEF, my first visit to the country, in fact, and Ingvar Hjartso, my liaison and contact in Sweden, had arranged a visit to the Royal Palace. The King and Queen were away at the time, so left Princess Lilian to meet with me. I discovered that she had in fact been born in Wales and had been a model, at one point married to actor Ivan Craig. She met Prince Bertil of Sweden when she was in her twenties and they fell in love, but it was many years before they were given permission to marry. Prince Bertil’s elder brother, the future King, had died very young, when his son and heir was only one year old, meaning if the reigning monarch died before the child, Carl Gustav, came of age, Bertil would have to assume the role of Prince Regent – and him being married to a commoner, and a divorcee, was not something the constitution would allow.

With Princess Lilian, the Duchess of Halland, a wonderful lady and a great friend.

However, when Carl Gustav did come of age and ascended directly to the throne, he granted Bertil and Lilian permission to marry in 1976.

Princess Lilian was greatly loved by the Swedish nation and deservedly so as she had a wonderful sense of fun, as well as duty, as I discovered when we went to lunch at a restaurant in the old town. I must admit that I sat rather stiffly for the first ten minutes, until the Princess pointed at my wine glass and said, ‘Will you hurry up and bloody well skol me as a lady can’t drink in this country until she is skoled!’