The Other Side of the Moon: The Life of David Niven by Sheridan Morley

Author:Sheridan Morley [Morley, Sheridan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2016-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

As the GIs on war service in London discovered to their amazement, the real England had changed too. Just as the war altered British social life by introducing vast numbers of women to the concept of work outside the home, so it was also to make it impossible for the Hollywood dream of this country to go on turning up on reels of cinema celluloid. So what should the British in California do now? The demand for films about the empire had declined almost as rapidly as the empire itself, and newer forms of Hollywood movie (the big-band musical, for instance, or the Bogart-Ladd police thriller) seemed to have precious little need of the British. Even the great Casablanca had, from the old guard, used only Claude Rains and then as a French police chief while the newcomer Sydney Greenstreet, great though he was in every possible sense, was not exactly the kind of Hollywood Englishman likely to endear himself to Rathbone or C. Aubrey Smith. The thought of his vast, evil bulk on a cricket pitch was curiously implausible.

The only wartime British immigrants to Hollywood had either been women or children like Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor, and the ones who began to appear there after the war belonged to a more racy breed, one that the Americans, long used to the suavities of Colman, Howard and Niven, simply did not begin to understand. These men were savage and rowdy, given to physical violence and often drunk. Some were dirty in their personal habits. Most were graduates of the J. Arthur Rank Organization. James Mason, to quote an example, was quickly described by one columnist as ‘the rudest man in Hollywood’; his irascibility reached a peak when he smacked William Saroyan across the face for chattering during a movie. One well-known actor fought out his best love and hate scenes in public with his ex-wives, while another lashed out at several of those who came within hitting distance. Of yet another famous star, Sheilah Graham once wrote that he was the pin-up boy of the publicity girls at MGM,

‘but only because they have pinned up his picture with a knife through the heart. Robert Newton drifted through several alcoholic years in post-war Hollywood, while Rex Harrison fought such a bitter feud with California journalists in general and Louella Parsons in particular that he left, raging, and did not return for years.

These new arrivals drove Thunderbirds instead of Bentleys. They read Los Angeles papers instead of the London Times, and they wore Wilshire Boulevard sports shirts instead of old school ties. They did not seem to like Hollywood very much, but they clearly liked it a damned sight better than they liked England. They were Englishmen all, but no longer willing or able to create, in Hollywood, a little corner that was forever England. The roots sunk by these post-war Britons were to be shallow, and at the first wind of trouble they blew away. When the movie industry in Hollywood began to slump, they quit.

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