David Niven by Michael Munn

Author:Michael Munn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2014-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

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The Darkest Time

After Primmie was cremated, David flew her ashes back to England and buried them at the church in Huish where they had married six years earlier. The inscription on her tombstone read, ‘Here lies Primula, loved wife of David Niven, died at Los Angeles 21st May 1946, aged 28.’

He flew straight back to Los Angeles where there was a memorial service for her on 29 May. Another was held that same day in London at the Grosvenor Chapel, attended by Grizel, Joyce and her husband plus dignitaries and titled people.

David was unable to bring himself to go anywhere near the Pink House so he went to stay with Douglas and Mary Lee Fairbanks for several weeks while Pinkie took care of the two boys. He received many letters of condolence but was unable to answer them so Mary Lee dealt with them; he kept every one of those letters in a shoe box and, over the years, he periodically took them out and read them.

Then a former girlfriend arrived in Hollywood – Ann Todd. Their affair had ended when he went to Hollywood, but she was still fond of him. ‘I was in New York and he called me up and wanted me to fly out to Los Angeles to be with him,’ she told me. ‘So, of course, I did. He was a very different man to the one I had known. He was extremely bitter. There wasn’t much more I could do other than listen to whatever he had to say. Then he really took me by surprise by trying to make love to me. He wasn’t in his right mind, and I had to yell at him and tell him to pull himself together. He just cried and cried. I thought he would never get over it, and I don’t think he ever did. He just learned to live with it.’

His friends all rallied round. Clark Gable, who knew exactly what he was going through, spent a lot of time with him just talking. Others could do little more than try to divert him. ‘I went to see him every weekend,’ said Rex Harrison, ‘and I bought him a Boxer puppy and told him his name was Phantom. Over time David learned to smile again, and some of the old spark started to come back, but he was…different.

‘Lilli and Fred [Astaire] cheered up the two lads by painting their nursery walls with Walt Disney characters and while they did that Pinkie and the boys went to stay with Ronnie Colman. Everyone got involved.’

With a lot of help, the Pink House was almost ready to be lived in, and eventually David was persuaded to move in. When the furniture and china that Primmie had chosen arrived from England, almost all of it had been smashed.

One night, after David returned from work, he discovered somebody had broken in and had stolen a case containing Primmie’s most precious possessions such as mementos from her childhood, photographs, jewellery and the letters he had written to her during the war.

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