For the Time Being (13 page)

One of the less repellent tabloids did at least have a valid point when it screamed RANK DESEXES BARDOT. They were absolutely on the ball. She was, at all times, sanguine. When in Britain, Do As The British Do. Otherwise, go abroad. I do not honestly know why she ever accepted this silly film. A chance to break into international cinema? Unlikely. We had, even then, no influence. Maybe just for the fun of it? And it always looked good on one's CV to have starred, which indeed she did, in one's first British movie.

Her English was, to say the least, minimal; we learned the script together like parrots. It demanded nothing more, anyway, and she got her tongue around the banalities. The one word in which she was absolutely fluent was ‘No'. Not ‘No thank you, but …'; not
‘I'd love to, but, really, no …'; not even ‘No, I have to learn my script tonight …' None of that nonsense; just ‘No'. No explanation, no elaboration, no politesse. Just the one killer word, administered always with a charming smile: ‘No.' Not even ‘Thank you.'

It had devastating effects on the people who surrounded her. I learned that one trick from Brigitte, and have remembered it with gratitude all my life. Just say ‘No.' There ain't anything anyone can do about it.

The press people wilted; wrung hands. She never explained. People begging her to open charity balls, raffles for the dying in wherever; the idiot women who wanted her for their centrespreads covered in beads, honey, bananas or just bikinis, or sprawled on slithery satin sheets with baskets of fruit over salient areas – all got the same, polite response: ‘No.' It worked for her, and when I lifted it from her (to her amusement), it worked for me. ‘Never tell them why! Never be understanding! Always be gentle, always say “No” to anything you don't consider
comme il faut'
She was dead right.

Of course, after two days of press exposure, laid on by Rank, she was dubbed the ‘Sex Kitten' and that was that. She thought it very odd, but understood just what was expected of her. From then on, at press conferences she put a finger to her pouting lips, lifted her skirt just an inch higher, and, if anyone asked her anything she preferred not to answer, simply whispered
'Non
and leaned back provocatively. After years of Rank ladies wrapped in concrete and steel, this
'Ooh! La! La!
'(and alas there was a lot of that) was manna from Heaven.

The use of the word ‘No' did not spoil her private fun; a number of assiduous gentlemen in and around Pinewood never really heard it and, if they did, they were so overwhelmed by her charms that they really seemed not to mind. She thought most of them were rather boring, frankly, and longed for each Friday evening when she could fly back to Paris and to Clown. Or whoever.

To work with, she was huge fun: professional, aware, absolutely no problem with her make-up, hairdresser, the usual gang. She swiftly ditched her wardrobe and wore only her own, far simpler,
far
sexier, outfits which she had brought from Paris. She was wise, funny and far in advance of anything we had at that time in the UK and, of course, we didn't know how to handle her, and she slipped, thankfully, away.

We have met, over the years, in some restaurants, on a beach and, the last time, in the long studio corridor at Boulogne-Billancourt in the late seventies. She came running towards me; we were both much older, but we were old friends. Trusted and respected.

I said I had just seen the final dub of
Despair
and that would be the last film for me. She had been dubbing
her
last film. We both agreed that it was a silly profession, and that it was time we grew up and left it to
les autres idiots,
which we did. (Some years later, I bullied myself into one final appearance for Bertrand Tavernier.)

I haven't seen her since, but I shall remember her always as the fresh, amused, vaguely astonished little girl I chose that day, so long ago, in the studio with Clown. It has not always been fun for her; in time, she became revolted by the exploitation of herself and her life. I cannot pretend I am not sorry she left this capricious profession, but I am saddened by what the profession did to her. And thankful only that she finally had the sense to quit. It'll kill you if you hang on in there.

Two books on her are about to appear in this country. I don't want to read either of them. But I
did
know her, and adored her. When they write whatever they do, I bet you they won't get it right. If Brigitte now fights for animals, it is only because they are a great deal more pleasant than humans and are in desperate need of help. I promise you, she knows just what she's doing.

Daily Telegraph,
13 August 1994

On the death of Kathleen Tynan

Kathleen:

On Monday I was standing by your bed, holding your hand, small as the folded wing of a tiny bat, cold and damp, your eyes sightless, blue, empty, moving gently to the sound of my voice. I can't be certain that you knew I was there; I didn't stay longer than a moment so as not to exhaust the little time you still had left.

I may not have been your oldest friend, your closest one, or even your most intimate, but I know that you trusted me, that you loved me and that you knew always that I loved you and trusted you in exactly the same way.

It was the most glowing and prized friendship, filled at times with joyous laughter or quiet contentment; sometimes, wretchedly, with despair and misery (there has to be a ‘B' side in life).

The magical thing about you was your complete femininity, blinding, golden, tenacious and, at times, maddeningly perverse and even contrary. But you were always wholly bewitching.

I shall miss your daring, and the wondrous way that you (perfectly correctly) put us, your friends, with great finesse into our separate boxes so that you could enjoy us without our bruising each other. I shall long remember your fastidious courage, your elegance and calm and your determination to drag the wreckage of life around you, after Ken died, so that you could shelter and succour your children.

Above all I will remember your quiet resolve to have your own life, to choose and keep your own friends, to give them always your unstinting love and loyalty.

Now that you have left us, closing the door behind you, the
rooms about us will grow cold and drab without the honey glow of your presence.

The brutal wretchedness of it all is that it happened far too soon to you. Ciao, darling.

Dirk

Daily Telegraph
, II January 1995

On the death of Dilys Powell

I started off as a movie star, name above the title and all the dreadful tra-la-la, in 1947. There were a thousand fearful traps on the studio floor, and alarming outside elements, like distributors, cinema owners, fans, and perhaps the most fearful of all, The Critics. They were, then anyway, held in awe by studios. Two were held as the Most Important Of All: C. A. Lejeune, of the
Observer,
and Dilys Powell.

They were fearful because they wrote for the ‘informative' papers and spoke their minds bluntly, and if they ignored your film it was not desperate, but not terribly good either. They came to every press screening, sat apart from everyone, even from themselves, and hurried away after the lights went up.

Certainly nobody ever spoke, or dared to speak, to either. They were the ‘intellectual' critics. It was a pretty exciting event if they praised the product. They were fair, honest, intellectual and didn't actually appear to like actors. As far as Dilys was concerned, this was just about true.

She adored films, loved the whole atmosphere of them, sat enraptured (unless a horse was shot, or fell over a cliff; that she could not entertain at any price). Cruelty to animals was implacably a no-no area. But she worshipped her cinema.

I don't think I have ever met anyone, here or abroad, who was as idiotic and delighted by her job as Dilys was, and she tried never to miss a screening.

She never knew how a film was made. ‘I don't want to know that,' she said to me years later. ‘That is not my job. I don't care how it's moved, cut, what angles are used. I only want to know if it has involved me and who has done so and why? Perhaps that is
why I am so uncluttered! I'm really the child with the magic lantern: don't tell me how they lit the lamp. Just let me be enthralled.'

I didn't enthral her, it appeared, for ten long years. Then, in 1957 the BBC, in its wisdom, decided to put together a special programme about me. Dilys agreed to ‘end the programme'.

Well, she was honest, as usual, and said that I showed great promise but that I hadn't quite proved myself, as she felt certain I would, one day. Of course I was a little depressed. Ten years in, playing everything from Victorian heavies to members of the IRA and idiotic light juvenile roles, I still hadn't been taken aboard Miss Powell's raft of goodies.

She was no fool, Dilys. She'd wait a little, until the glorious day when she wrote ‘… gives the commanding performance one has long expected from him …' That was for a film called
Victim,
and I remember saying aloud: ‘I've done it! She's accepted me!' It was an amazing day.

I don't know just how many actors hung on the lines of her piece each week in the
Sunday Times.
How many of us longed, yearned as I did, for her approbation. But I know that if she had praised your work, you felt pretty good. She knew her ‘wine', and if you were in her cellar you were particularly lucky. Nobody else's opinion was as important to me as hers. I knew that she understood deeply, and once she had accepted me I worked every time with hand on heart for her.

‘Mr Bogarde, given too little to do, does far too much …' was spot on; I nodded at that in agreement and did less after that. And still she was a stranger. She was as aloof and silent and, frankly, shy as anyone I have ever met. After she described
The Servant
as ‘flawless', I threw caution over my shoulder and wrote a brief note to thank her. She, dangerously, replied. From then on we were friends.

After
Death in Venice,
she asked to meet me. We did so in my sitting-room at the Connaught, but neither of us was much good, constricted by shyness and awe. A week later I wrote and asked her to lunch. She got my letter the same morning that I got hers begging me not to invite her to lunch because she was ‘quite hopeless socially, and desperately shy'. But she accepted my
invitation, though it was an ungainly lunch, awkward, but funny, and really only made possible for her when she saw Claudette Colbert and Rex Harrison together at the next table.

We wrote now: there was no shyness in writing, no shyness in exchanging thoughts, ideas; we were true friends at last. When Leonard Russell, her second husband, died, she closed herself away in their pretty house, and drew the blinds. I took a huge bunch of white hyacinths to remind her, with their sweet smell, of her beloved Greece. We sat in the twilight gloom of her sitting-room. Empty of life apart from a yapping little dog. We didn't speak at all. It was enough for me that I was there with her, and she accepted my presence with calm and affection.

Afterwards I was often invited to lunch. She was getting deaf, and for some reason we had a good deal of fun out of that. She wore an ugly machine, which hissed and squealed, and the wretched little dog, to whom she was devoted, yapped and ran about. Nobody else was ever present, just her kind Portuguese maid who cooked and washed up.

Dilys, I would discover, kept all her friends in separate compartments. We never discussed anyone else and spoke only of the cinema and the people in it.

It was a strange but close friendship. She took her time to accept me, watched curiously from her seat in the dark, approved when I had ‘worked', cautiously disapproved when I had defaulted. When I told her I was retiring, that I would concentrate on trying to write, she merely nodded. ‘It's all a very different world, gun and blood and people being shot or hit,' she said. ‘It's quite hard to watch the screen now. I really only enjoy the old stuff. Myrna Loy, Cary Grant, they still delight me. Such style, that's all gone, it seems.' And with her death she has taken the last vestiges of it with her.

Sunday Times,
4 June 1995

The Swiss Family Robinson
by Johann David Wyss

My father, who was the first art editor of
The Times,
spent his Saturday mornings going about the junk shops of Lewes in Sussex near where we lived. I always went with him because in one particular junk shop I could buy bound copies of
Chatterbox
for a penny. Since I was desperately trying to be a writer I thought I'd better read, and
Chatterbox was
filled with a year's supply ofliterature.

One Saturday morning when I was thirteen, in 1934, something caught my eye among a pile
of Chatterboxes.
In a faded green leather cover with gold embossing was a picture of a young man of about my age struggling with a giant boa constrictor. I bought the book for a penny. It was crammed full of exciting illustrations of a family, father, mother and four boys, escaping from a terrific storm at sea. Their ship was wrecked, and they were the only survivors. They made a shelter from a sail on the first night and after that collected pieces from the sand which conveniently got washed ashore. It was all absolutely improbable and tremendously exciting, which is why I was passionate about it. They built themselves a house in a giant 'banyan tree' to protect themselves from wild beasts.

I longed to be a writer but unlike Jane Austen I found it impossible to write at 'a desk in the hall' — a wooden house such as Mr Robinson's would be perfect. So I decided to build a house for myself at the top of the orchard, where no one could come near me. I rather predictably called the house Trees. I built it from an old cold-frame and pieces of furniture from the house and from the rag-and-bone man in the village. I could write here (dreadful poetry and one-act monologue plays for myself to perform). At this stage in my life I wasn't sure whether to be just a writer, an actor or a poet — simple choices! However, Mr Robinson and his
house in the trees pushed me in the direction of writing, which is why that book changed me. The poetry was incomprehensible and the monologues were pretty dire too — but at least I'd started.