Straight on Till Morning (32 page)

On 23 June she arrived in New York, breezily telling journalists that she had returned to America ‘just because I like it better than any other place'. She also told them that she intended to divorce Mansfield by the end of the year and to become an American citizen. She did neither in the event, but readers learned that in contrast to her last visit following a crash landing in Nova Scotia, when she had needed to borrow a dress from a friend, Mrs Markham came equipped with ‘ten daytime outfits and several billowy evening gowns in her trunk'.
¹³
It was almost certainly too late to cash in on her flight of three years earlier but Beryl was desperate enough to take anything – even demonstration work. First she needed to get an American pilot's licence and she had already arranged through correspondence with Jackie Cochran to travel to California in order to do just that. Jackie put her in touch with the Ryan Aircraft Company which was looking for a demonstration pilot, but this came to nothing. In the spring of 1940 Beryl did do a significant amount of flying in the Ryan SCW
¹⁴
but she never obtained her American licence.
¹⁵

Within weeks of her arrival in California, Beryl received an offer of work from Paramount Studios. They had a motion picture called
Safari
on the stocks, in which the hero scouted big game from a small bi-plane. Beryl was offered the job of technical adviser. She rented an apartment near the studios and went to see the Paramount chiefs.
Safari
, she learned, was the story of an African hunting expedition and marked the third picture in which Edward H. Griffith had directed Madeleine Carroll. In those previous movies,
Café Society
and
Honeymoon in Bali
, Miss Carroll had appeared opposite Fred MacMurray. In
Safari
she would co-star with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Coincidentally, Madeleine Carroll's first movie was financed and directed by Mansfield in England during the early 1930s. It made Miss Carroll's reputation but almost bankrupted Mansfield.

Fairbanks was to play the lead part of Jim Logan, white hunter to the safari party which consisted of Linda Stewart (Madeleine Carroll) and Baron de Courland (Tullio Carminati) and others, but Fairbanks, Carroll and Carminati comprised the inevitable love-triangle which also included several familiar angles. The beautiful, but disillusioned heroine whose only love had been an aviator, killed in Spain, was now determined to find security and peace of mind as the wife of the rich titled sportsman financing the expedition. No one was surprised when at the end of the film the girl walked out on the despicable baron for the handsome adventurer, who at one stage in the film explained that prior to coming to Africa as a hunter, he had been an aviator with the Chinese army. Topically, he went on to tell the wide-eyed heroine, ‘I enlisted because men must fight to defend their freedom.'
¹⁶
It was all good stuff, no shocks, very entertaining escapism. That was what moviegoers wanted!

Beryl was delighted. She was not only to assist in the flying sequences. It was her job to make the natives' Swahili sound authentic, and to ensure that Miss Carroll's wardrobe was suited to Africa rather than one of the many beaches near Hollywood. ‘Authenticity. That's what we want,' Beryl was told. She thought it was all going to be the most enormous fun. And so it turned out to be.

The studio had established two locations to shoot the film. One, at Baldwin Lake, was on a ranch once owned by a gentleman called ‘Lucky' Baldwin. The ranch was east of Hollywood, not far from the Santa Anita Racetrack, and the small lake, surrounded by jungle-like growth which flourished in the Californian climate, had last been used to film
The Road to Singapore
starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. For
Safari
, an African trading post (something which amused Beryl immensely because she'd never come across one quite like it in Africa) was built on the banks of the lake, complete with a huge warehouse and wharf.
¹⁷

The other location was Sherwood Forest, west of Hollywood in the Santa Monica Hills, so-called because the leading man's father had once made his memorable version of Robin Hood there. In and around Sherwood Forest several sets were built, including a complete African village, a safari base camp, and a landing strip.

Beryl was not the only expert on the film. Ever anxious for authenticity, the director had also hired Prince Modupe, scion of an unnamed African tribe, to teach the extras Swahili and the art of drumming. In addition, the chief set designer had lived in West Africa for many years prior to the First World War and had been Supervising Architect for the German Imperial Government there. As if this were not enough, reality was further provided by a small herd of elephants which grazed loose in the Santa Monica Hills location, and a tame leopard called Nissa, whose only foible was to refuse to work with any actor unless he or she had been drenched in gardenia perfume.
¹⁸

Shooting started in August. The studio carpenter had built a practical seventy-foot stern-wheel boat. The first time out, it sank with all hands, including the two stars – however it was sailing in only four feet of water so no lives were lost and no damage done, except to the electric motor. It transpired that the turning of the ship's wheel had caused the seams to spring, but after rapid repairs the boat was able to proceed in a dignified fashion around the lake.
¹⁹

There were a series of further minor accidents during the shooting, but no serious delays resulted. Griffith, the film's director, walked into a camera boom and cut a three-inch gash in his forehead on the first day's shooting. The portable dressing room occupied by one of the supporting players, Muriel Angelus, (who filled a highly decorative but superfluous part in the story), caught fire and burned part of her wardrobe. A fire extinguisher broke loose from its moorings on the boat and hit Carminati on the head. The DH Gipsy Moth used for flying scenes backfired one day and started a small bush fire which stampeded the elephants. Apart from these diversions everything went well, and Beryl thought it ‘was the most tremendous fun'.
²⁰

Safari
was finished by 22 December, well within its production schedule and budget, and everyone went off to celebrate Christmas, feeling pleased with themselves. The single exception to this was Douglas Fairbanks Jr. A few weeks before shooting had ended on 9 December, a birthday party had been thrown for him. It had been a brilliant and enjoyable affair attended by the entire cast and the star's friends and family, including Doug Jr's father Douglas Fairbanks accompanied by his third wife, the former Lady (Sylvia) Ashley. Doug Senior appeared tired. Two days later the man who had become a Hollywood legend died of a heart attack. It was a tremendous sadness for Doug Jr. When I asked for his memories of the filming of
Safari
his reply was, understandably, that his father's death overshadowed all other memories of that period.
²¹

In December, whilst working on the set of
Safari
, Beryl was recognized by a visiting British journalist, Molly Castle (known as the Hollywood Spy), who wrote an article on her for the
Daily Mirror.

Asked by Ms Castle why she didn't write a book about her adventures, Beryl said she didn't think she could, but she might one day tell her adventure to someone who could make them the basis of a screenplay.
²²
The final paragraph of this article does seem to support the case of those who – many years later – argued that Beryl was not the author of her memoir. However Beryl's statement on this occasion was made in the aftermath of a period of success at a time when she had no financial worries. After almost a year had passed without work she was to change her mind.

In Europe war had been declared. Initially it caused only minor ripples in the Hollywood community. Life there went on much as before except that the studio writing teams were told to start working on plots with a war theme. Soon, however, even Hollywood was affected when leading actors with English affiliations such as David Niven and Douglas Fairbanks Jr deserted the community ‘for the duration'. This was serious!
²³

Beryl loved California, with its smart, pleasure-bent, luxurious lifestyle and perfect climate. She soon had a host of friends, mostly – inevitably – of the handsome male variety, at least one of whom called her by her nickname ‘Toots'.
²⁴
Anita Loos introduced her to many useful contacts through whom Beryl hoped to get work on another picture; but meanwhile she was content to live a leisurely existence. She had enjoyed a good salary from the film, she was overwhelmed with invitations and in general she quickly became as much a part of the Hollywood scene as she had previously been part of the London one.

She enjoyed beach parties at Malibu – then unspoiled by the shack-like buildings which now litter the Pacific Coast Highway – and horseriding in the hills on the ranches of her friends. She spent lazy days around swimming pools and fun days of riding in open-topped Cadillac convertibles along wide palm-lined boulevards with Glenn Miller music streaming out from the car radio; evenings at never-ending parties, a-glitter with stars of the silver screen.

From time to time her name appeared in tit-bits of gossip, usually noted as a guest at the parties which were reported in the columns of writers such as Hedda Hopper. But as time went on, when no other film job was forthcoming and as no serious relationship developed, Beryl became anxious again. Among her circle of friends at the time was the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Beryl and Saint-Exupéry had a lot in common. Born in Lyon in 1900 into a wealthy French family, he was educated first by Jesuits until his unruly behaviour proved too much for them. Then he was sent to Switzerland where he was thoroughly grounded in the classics. Near his childhood home was an airfield and as he grew to manhood, Saint-Exupéry was fascinated by the aeroplanes, stating to his outraged parents that he wished to become an aviator. After some setbacks he persuaded them to agree to this unusual career and went to Strasbourg for a formal military course in flying.

In 1926 Saint-Exe (as he liked to be called) became a commercial pilot making regular trips on the Toulouse-Dakar run. Later he established the first airmail routes in South America from Brazil to Patagonia, and from 1932 to 1935 he flew airmail from France to the Sahara. In 1935 whilst on a long-distance flight over Africa he was forced down in the desert. Lost for three days he and his companions almost died of thirst before a timely rescue. He enlisted as a captain in the French Air Corps Reserve and when France fell, he disappeared after being captured by the Germans. It was feared that he had been executed, but he turned up again in Portugal, after escaping from his captors despite having his aeroplane shot from under him. He spent the early 1940s in America and, already established as a writer, through the classics
Night Flight
and
Wind, Sand and Stars
, he published the charming fairy story
The Little Prince
; this was followed by his last book
Flight to Arras
, which was published in 1942. He then returned to Europe and was killed in mysterious circumstances whilst engaged on a wartime flying mission over the Mediterranean.
²⁵

But in the winter of 1940 the lanky poet – for his own works are nothing if not poetic – with his round, good-natured face and bright eyes set under drooping eyelids, was living in Hollywood.
²⁶
Beryl had first met Exupéry during the summer of 1932, when he flew in the King's Cup Air Race, achieving a fourth place, and she was there with Tom following her first solo flight to England. Exupéry was also a good friend of Sydney St Barbe and Hubert Broad
²⁷
whom, a year earlier, Mansfield had cited as Beryl's co-respondent in the divorce case. Beryl told friends that it was Saint-Exupéry who encouraged her to draft an outline for her autobiography,
²⁸
and on his recommendation she sent it to Ann Watkins, a New York literary agent. Work began on early chapters of her book and my personal feeling is that Saint-Exupéry did more than merely encourage her; that he may have shaped the book for her and helped her to establish a style.

There are unmistakable similarities between Saint-Exupéry's writing and Beryl's autobiographical work. It is not the purpose of this book to put forward a detailed literary assessment of the styles of these two writers, but a short example will illustrate the similarity in phraseology and even tempo which occurs in many places throughout both authors' works. In the following extract from
Wind, Sand and Stars
, which had been published shortly before Beryl started working on her memoir, Saint-Exupéry describes a room and a character: