The Elephant to Hollywood by Caine Michael

Author:Caine, Michael [Caine, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hodder
Published: 2010-09-29T23:00:00+00:00

11

An Englishman in LA

After The Man Who Would Be King, I think any movie would have been a bit of a comedown, but it was 1976, the summer was glorious, we were enjoying living at the Mill House and I was filming The Eagle Has Landed only fifteen minutes further up the Thames. Life was good and the film could have been brilliant – the cast included Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence and Anthony Quayle, as well as Jenny Agutter – but despite the book, which I love, it was never more than mediocre. I think the problem was that the veteran Hollywood director, John Sturges – who had a great reputation – had by this stage in his career rather lost interest in the movie business. He openly admitted to me one day that he only took on a picture to fund his very expensive hobby of deep-sea fishing and as soon as filming was done and he’d been paid he scarpered. I can’t pretend I haven’t taken on the occasional movie for the money, but much of the real work for directors comes in the editing and post-production work, and although it was perfectly well handled, without his input it could never have reached its potential.

The Mill House was the centre of our social world in the mid-Seventies and we welcomed our friends there – Roger and Luisa Moore, Dennis Selinger, Bryan and Nanette Forbes among others – most weekends. Sunday lunches had become quite a tradition although not all of them were as memorable as the one to which we invited Peter Sellers and his girlfriend Liza Minnelli; Liza’s father, Vincent and his companion Kay Thompson, the Broadway star; and the singer Jack Jones, with his then fiancée Susan George. Liza and Peter were so in love and I took a wonderful Polaroid photograph (then a relatively new invention) of them, as well as a group photo, to mark the occasion. Sunday lunch was just the warm-up to Liza’s birthday party which was due to be held on the following Tuesday at Rex Harrison’s flat, but when I got there, I found Liza in floods of tears. She and Peter had broken up the previous day. ‘Look!’ she said, handing me the photograph I had taken of her and Peter two days before. ‘Turn it over.’ It said, ‘Thanks for the memory, Peter.’

I didn’t know what to say. I was a friend of Peter’s and I had had no inkling that this was about to happen. I was shocked, and sad for Liza. Unable to think of anything that would be of much comfort, I grabbed a plate of food and took an empty chair at a table beside an elderly woman I recognised vaguely. I smiled at her and then did a double take: it was Marlene Dietrich. ‘Michael Caine?’ she demanded sharply. ‘Yes,’ I said, rather taken aback by her tone. ‘You are a friend of Peter Sellers?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, rather more cautiously.

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