PERSONAL COLUMN

Where have all the hell-raisers gone?

ROBERT OTTAWAY

I had heard, of course, that they had to dig trenches for those leading ladies chosen to co-star with Alan Ladd, as the romantic mood would be lethally punctured if it were seen that he couldn't plant a convincing kiss above the girdle. I knew, too, that W. C. Fields would lie in wait for his partner, a gurgling nappy-length called Baby LeRoy, and spike his bottle with bourbon. But facts hadn't made me incredulous of Hollywood's cosy dreams. I still believed in Louis B. Mayer's fairies, even when I discovered that some of his raunchiest heroes really had been. So when, twenty years ago, an editor, impressed by the way I'd coped with Sir Stafford Cripps, asked me for a weekly show page, it was rather like being 'asked to quaff bubbly from Ginger Rogers's slipper. Or share a sarsaparilla with Miss Elizabeth Taylor, as she almost then was.

In the early 'fifties, it was simple to meet stars, starlets, or mere ambitious Shapes. The studio contract system still flourished, and practically any actor with a flicker of movie promise belonged to one of the major com- panies; Rank, about this time, had nearly fifty on the payroll, and it's a great test of useless knowledge at a party to ask questions • like 'who or what was Hazel Court—a block of flats, a person, or the official residence of the Princess Royal?' And, finking away in the van of all these aspiring Avas and Garys, an entire wheedling host of publicity men made sure that the least of them was never forgotten. As the majority were unemployed, they were always available for lunch, cocktails, dinner, or (but infrequently) whatever. Sometimes they were trundled unannounced into the office. Daily one was apprised by handout of their unpremeditated wit. I still treasure one that informed me that Brigitte Bardot, upon meeting Dirk Bogarde, said to him: 'Ooh, la, la, but you are so vairy 'andsome. Not a beet like your brother 'Umphrey.' It was soon obvious that the image didn't have even have a nodding acquaintance with the reality of the person put before me, My first interview was with an actress called Elizabeth Sellars, who happened to be cavorting around in oriental pants-and-bra for a revival of Flecker's Hassan on stage. That. I'm sure in retrospect, is why I picked her. Anyway, Miss Sellars was in the process of studying for the bar, I'd been reliably in- formed, and it was only her inability to get the stipulated number of dinners laid down by the Bar Council that baulked her from gaining silk, That, I thought, .would be a stimulating theme, a Portia with pulchritude. Now I'm quite sure that Miss Sellars did dream of the Woolsack; she may still, for she is not as yet a oc. But it soon emerged that she was light-years away from jousting with Quinton at the Old Bailey. Exaggeration had crept in, somehow, somewhere.

This was the first dilemma, and one reason why showbiz writing can't shed an essential falsity. Popular newspapers and magazines go along with the nimbus that interested film parties wrap around their stars. They use, and uncritically use, pin-ups that are often freely provided, and justify them through captions that inflate the talent and potential of the latest Miss Bosom. Now the majority of actors rarely have a couple of polysyllables to run together, their lives tend to be basically trivial even when the few become opulent, and they are normally reduced to a mum stupor when asked about anything but their last film or their next. So they have to be taken at their cosmetic face value or they wouldn't get their names in the paper at all. The trick is, as I soon discovered, to prepare long and meaty ques- tions, to which the baffled star must say 'yes' or `no', and then say 'she agreed that . ..' or `she didn't go along with ...' It's a form of puppetry in which all showbiz writers are as skilled as the Czechs. Donald Zec is a master of it. He once interviewed Carol White, the Cathy who never Came Home, and told her 'My antennae tell me you will be a big star'. `Your aunt who?' mumbled Miss White.

Naturally, some actors are people. Pinch them, and they will squeak. And I soon learned that the qualities of stars I frequently met in the 'fifties—Dirk Bogarde, Jack Hawkins, Kenneth More, fine fellows all, with heads properly screwed on clockwise—were, in a sense, deflationary to their reputations and so inexpressible. To tell the truth about them would be to cut them down to size. This, in a CinemaScope world where men walk thirty feet tall and women lie forty feet long, is not what the, public wants. Or, at least, it is not what editors think the public wants.

That is why Mr Roderick Mann, of the Sunday Express, largely cultivates those stars who survive, like grizzled mastodons, from the primeval age of talking pictures. He even writes of stars, like Stewart Granger. who are no longer stars, and stars, like Linda Chris- tian, who never were stars. He is recreating a never-never land, a sop to nostalgia, where Cary Grant (at sixty-seven) can still be seduced by Mae West and where David Niven (at sixty) can still make a play for Claudette Colbert. He doesn't question the mythology; be just perpetuates its illusion. The only trouble with its approach is that the gods—he used to call them 'hell-raisers'— are thinning out fast.Errol Flynn has succumbed, Victor Mature has disappeared, Peter Finch is elusive, and Ava Gardner incommunicado. What pitiful hell is raised nowadays is done by broody pop stars, puffing joints.

Disillusion began to set in when I first visited Hollywood. It had been previously ar- ranged that I should meet a few stars, including Sarita Montiel (no, don't ask me—I've forgotten), Natalie Wood, and Rock Hudson. Rock unfortunately, was embedded with some ailment when my ap- pointment was due. So the publicity man politely inquired what I wanted to ask him. 1 scribbled out a list of questions–Land the

obliging publicist proceeded to give me the answers. When I gave a demurring look, he

said 'Don't worry. I've got carte blanche. You'll get a better interview this way than by .talking to him.'

It was then that I began to review books, that supply their own answers. But habits die

hard, and editors don't forget habits. So I returned to the world of showbiz a few years later, culturally refreshed, and found that the scene had changed, and for the better. Stars were no longer under contract, so they had to be winkled out of their lairs. Also, there were far fewer of them, because the film in- dustry was in a dropsy and because TV had substituted its meteors for them. The handful of remaining stars were so huge that they played hard to get.

This, I felt, was entirely healthy. At least, if one did get within hollering distance of a star, one felt independent. Publicists had been decimated, and there was a tendency in newspapers and magazines to be more discriminating and detached in their attitude to stars. After all, 'if the big name from the latest multi-million-dollar spectacle wouldn't make himself available, there was always the latest Dr Who. And probably more • people would watch that than go to any film. Incidentally, it's one of the oddities of the film business that, in a period of declining audiences when one would think it would work overtime to get its people men- tioned in the public printS, it has bred a touchy generation of actors, some surly, some aloof, some downright rude;

Still, an undertow of ferocity between star and scribe will not come amiss. It helps to destroy that collusion which turns press coverage of actors into unpaid testimonials.

It permits the writer to question the image, examine it, hold it up to the light and report that it is transparent. And, with most young actors stomping around and declaiming their integrity, it should be welcomed by them as well.

But it won't solve the fundamental • • difficulty—that many actors are just about as interestingly vocal as Braille to the seeing man. No one really wants to read about their approach to a role, which they love to go on about, because it's little more than putting on the right nose and speaking up, when you get down to it. I know that Stanislaysky wrote reams about it—but try and count the number of actors who were ruined when they followed his advice. Yet the appetite for gossip, which showbiz writing feeds, is perennial, and not despicable. Henry vtli was lapped up on Tv through curiosity about his domestic set-ups. We read Pepys and Boswell and Horace Walpole and Aubrey for their behind-the-arras insights into character, others' and their own.

Now perhaps the likes of Mia Farrow and Julie Christie haven't that sort of im- portance: their reputations Will die with their careers. But many like them use the press to get their names known, the public is in- trigued by them and pay to see their movies. Then they find the intrusions into their privacy too much, and gird it around with `no comment' and guard dogs. It usually happens when they start to do something newsworthy, like divorcing Sinatra or giving illegitimate birth. They want fame, without paying its price. And if showbiz journalists are to become respectable, they should ensure that the bill is paid—.and not let someone else pick up the tab.