David Niven

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy seven, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

On our Dazzard Island this week is the very successful writer David Niven.

Presenter0:36

I know you've done a little light acting as well, David. We'll talk about that later.

Presenter0:41

Now, music. How much does music mean to you?

Presenter0:44

Well, I must confess, Roy, that that I know nothing about it, but I love it. Do you play an instrument? I learnt the bagpipes at one point. Did you? Yes, when I was young, a uh a Scot, and

Presenter0:56

I was very bad with that. I've done the Comb and Lew paper, that business. Do you sing? No, I can't I can't do it at all. In fact, what happened was that I was in the choir at school.

Presenter1:06

with a beautiful a voice of total purity.

Presenter1:10

and something odd happened physically to me. My voice broke.

Presenter1:14

On Pumpkin Sunday or whatever the you know, famous Sunday when all they have sheaves of wheat in the church and all the and

Presenter1:20

And I was doing a solo bit, mm-hmm, and this dreadful braying noise came out, donkey braying.

Presenter1:27

and the choir disintegrated, the rest of the garden it I went to pieces right there. From then on I was removed, and the headmaster called Sammy Day, who had played cricket for England and had the best leg cut in the business,

Presenter1:38

Thrashed me for making a shambles of the choir, which is very unfair because the physical evidence was there forever. But I could never sing after. I was so nervous after that.

Presenter1:47

Did you have any plan in choosing these eight records which may have to last the rest of your life?

Presenter1:51

I thought well now

Presenter1:53

What would cheer me up, and what would make me remember things, and what would get me through?

Presenter1:57

My what I could look upon is my ordeal, because I have no intention of staying for ever on that island.

Presenter2:01

What's the first one? You Are the Sunshine of My Life, by The Blue Mink. Why'd you choose that?

Presenter2:07

I'm ruled by two teenage daughters now. My sons are grown up and in in orbit, and the two teenage daughters play music so loud and all day long.

Presenter2:18

And this is really my was, for a long time, my eldest daughter's favourite.

Presenter2:24

So as I'm on my desert island and I want to think of my family, I'm going to have that, if I may, in honour of her.

Speaker 22:37

You are the sunshine of my life.

Speaker 22:42

That's why I'll always be around

Speaker 22:48

You are the apple of my eye.

Presenter2:49

Yeah

Speaker 22:54

Forever you stay in

David Niven2:56

My heart

Presenter2:59

You Are the Sunshine of My Life by Blue Mink

Presenter3:02

Now let's talk about your early life, David. Are you a Londoner?

Presenter3:06

I'm a Scot, but I was born in London. And I was a Scot born in London because my mother came down to see the specialist from Scotland and dropped me right in the office, almost. But I don't mean it's any offence to you. No, it was just chance, really. It's chance. You should have been born in Scotland. I should have been born in Scotland. It was intended to be, but there it is. Now, you've recovered quickly from the earlier setback of being expelled from your prep school.

Speaker 13:19

Absolutely.

Presenter3:30

Well, not very quickly. I was expelled indeed from Heatherdown. Yes. But nothing very awful, to make that rather clear. And uh then I had to go to a Crammer to try and get into the Navy.

Speaker 13:35

No

Speaker 13:36

And uh

Presenter3:39

You were at Stowe, of course? I was at Stowe after that, yes, because I failed to get into the Navy for the very good reason that I got eight out of three hundred in mathematics.

Speaker 13:41

I was still after that, yes.

Presenter3:47

And it wasn't.

Speaker 13:47

Personality.

Presenter3:49

The sort of man they wanted to steer battleships. Why did you opt to go to Sandhurst and become an army officer? Um, this was decided by my my father was killed in the first war. My mother married again, a perfectly dreadful man.

Presenter4:00

And really they wanted to get me off the books'cause we were very broke and very poor.

Presenter4:05

And uh there was a s a schoolmaster at Stowe called Major Howarth, and he suggested I become a soldier.

Presenter4:12

And the next thing I knew I was I was taking the exams to go to Santa. So it's really the way it happened. Where did you serve?

Presenter4:17

Well, I was in the Highland Light Infantry for for four and a half years and we went I was in Malta and then in in in the Citadel barracks Dover, which is now quite rightly Bostel.

Presenter4:29

Why did you leave the army?

Presenter4:31

I left the army'cause I made uh first of all I hated it.

Presenter4:35

And uh I saw no future in it. For instance, um lieutenants had sixteen years' service in my regiment before they became captains, and this seemed like idiocy to me.

Presenter4:44

I was getting nine shillings a day as a second lieutenant.

Presenter4:47

And also I went to America on a holiday.

Presenter4:51

As somebody's guest, and I saw the flash pots, and I feasted on the flash pots, and I and I couldn't face the discipline anymore.

Presenter4:58

And couldn't wait to get out and I I was rude to a general among other things. Yes. So you went back to America?

Presenter5:03

I went back couldn't wait to go back. I went via Canada. I emigrated to Canada. What did you do? I worked for a while as a well, odd jobs round the Rideau Lakes. Really was odd jobs too. And, you know, worked on a bridge and that sort of thing.

Presenter5:17

And then I went to New York, and I sold whisky, just out of prohibition.

Presenter5:21

For night.

Presenter5:22

ran an indoor pony race in Atlantic City and behaved

Presenter5:26

Rather peculiarly there, and wound up in Hollywood, broke again, and became an extra.

Speaker 15:30

Why have an extra?

Presenter5:32

I think really I had a feeling that I might be able to do it, because I'd done some amateur theatricals. Of course, nonsense, fatal mistake. And I arrived in Hollywood, registered finally after a struggle as an extra, and there were twenty two thousand of us scratching around for eight hundred jobs.

Presenter5:48

But I was one of the very, very few that got lucky. Right. At that point, let's break off for your second record. What's that? Well.

Presenter5:55

Because of my past in the Highland Brigade,

Presenter5:58

It is amazing grace.

Presenter6:51

Amazing Grace by the pipes and drums and military band of the Royal Scotch Dragoon Guard.

Presenter6:57

So you were in Hollywood. What was your first appearance there? Well, as an extra, I mean, that doesn't really count. I did.

Presenter7:03

Numerous pictures as an extra. I did twenty-seven Westerns among other things.

Speaker 17:06

Oh, it's simple.

Presenter7:07

With this voice, the English accent as they call it. I wasn't allowed to open my trap anyway. What was the first film in which you were entrusted with a line? Uh the first film really was a picture with Alyssa Landy, and I had to say goodbye, my dear, at the station, and I was such a smash in that.

Presenter7:28

that I was hard to say hello, my dear, to Ruth Chatterton in another film.

Presenter7:32

Now the contract system was operating then, and quite soon you were given one.

Presenter7:37

Well, quite soon, yes, after about six I mean incredibly lucky by Sam Goldwyn. Be great Sam Goldwyn.

Presenter7:43

And he did indeed. He signed me up. Minimum money by California State law, incidentally, but still a bonanza for me. Because you were under contract, Goldwyn, that didn't mean you didn't work for other studios. You were hired out, weren't you? All the time. And that was the great nut racket. That's the way they did it. I mean, the thing was to get you trained and get you to learn the business. So you were loaned out to other studios. And if you got l got im not important, but got uh fairly popular and wanted by other studios.

Presenter8:07

Then Goldman, for instance, would charge an immense amount of amounts of money to them.

Presenter8:12

and and pay me my normal little tiny salary so he could pay for me for the next five years by learning out for one film. Did you have any freedom? I mean, when you were given a really terrible script, could you turn it down? You could always turn it down, but then you were suspended.

Presenter8:24

Uh quite right. If you refuse to work you shouldn't be paid. But the the iniquity was that that you were suspended for the duration of the film, which was probably four months, plus half that again as a punishment, making six months.

Presenter8:36

and the whole of six months was added on at the end of your contract.

Presenter8:39

Excluding the twenty one Speechless Westerns, how many films have you done, David?

Presenter8:44

Well, I I hate the word star because it's a monstrous

Presenter8:48

thing. But as uh starring means that your name is above the title of the film. I think I'm now uh around the ninety. I mean it's eighty nine, ninety, ninety one, I've forgotten, but it's around the ninety. I do one a year now, so I'd like to get to a hundred, but I doubt it. Which do you think was the best?

Presenter9:03

Well, the best film

Presenter9:05

I thought was Around the World in Eighty Days, I think. It was a very good I thought a very good movie, and it was one of the six And a very enjoyable one. Yes, I think that was fun. Which was the worst?

Presenter9:15

I should think Bonnie Prince Charlie was the word. Unfortunately. A British film. A British film. Yes, oh dear. But it took six months to make and it was it was very peculiar. And we never were one never more than one day ahead of the writers. It was the most awful thing I've ever been through.

Speaker 29:25

Uh

Presenter9:31

Record number three. Watch that to be.

Presenter9:34

Never could say goodbye Gloria Gaynor

Presenter9:37

And Gloria Gainor is a lovely singer, I think. I happen to love this record. Pushed down my throat, I must say, by my children, but but I

Presenter9:45

Personally love it.

David Niven9:47

Wanna match it?

Presenter10:18

Never Can Say Goodbye by Gloria Gaynor. Now cinema is recognized nowadays as a director's medium. You worked with most of the great Hollywood directors. How many of them were great? Well I was so lucky because in those days, these are the really the great days of Hollywood, I worked with people like Lubitch and John Ford, and they were sensational directors. And Ford was such a sensational director, for example, that

Presenter10:42

That he never ever saw what we call the rushes, you know, the day's work the next afternoon. He knew exactly what he'd shot.

Presenter10:50

There was nothing else for the for the editor of the film to do except stick it together. He had nothing to play with.

Presenter10:55

And Carol Reid I worked with him. He's a great trick. Yes, indeed.

Presenter10:58

Your Hollywood career was interrupted for five or six years when you rejoined the British Army during the war. When you went back to the West Coast, was there any appreciable change? Had the war years added depth, do you think?

Presenter11:10

I think it had. I think and a lot of the nonsense had gone out of Hollywood. I mean, the rather lovely nonsense of terrific publicity.

Presenter11:17

and people believing their own publicity, but it was much more down to earth. And there was a whole new breed of actors, people like Marlon Brander and Jimmy Dean and Paul Newman that appeared, which was marvellous for the business, I think, and and directors too.

Presenter11:30

You were rewarded an Oscar for your performance in Terence Reaticum's Separate Tables. Now that was a subject at which there would have been raised eyebrows before the war.

Presenter11:38

It certainly would.

Presenter11:40

And not all that long after the war, too, it would have it would have been raised eyebrows. I did a picture with Loretta Young just after the war.

Presenter11:46

We did eight pictures together. I think we were a dreadful sort of team.

Presenter11:50

And we were married in this film.

Presenter11:53

and we're having breakfast in bed, both in pajamas, trays,

Presenter11:57

And we were proceeding with the scene, and the man from the Hayes office, which which was the the good behaviour office, said, Stop, cut it, Niven must have one foot on the ground.

Presenter12:06

Can you imagine? It's 1947. Let's have record number four. Number four.

Presenter12:11

Is, well, this is uh an aria from Aida with Björling, the great Swedish tenor.

Presenter12:19

And this is a great favourite of mine because my wife is Swedish.

Presenter12:22

And she adored this man, and adored this this particular piece of music.

Presenter12:26

And when she got bored with me, or angry with me, she used to put this on when we were living in California, full blast.

Presenter12:33

But it and I love it very much. This is this was this is a favorite piece.

David Niven12:42

Evolve.

David Niven12:45

Our

David Niven12:54

We won my journey.

David Niven13:15

Sera Jira Golior Sera splendor.

Presenter13:30

Cellist the Aida sung by UC Bierling.

Presenter13:33

Now, the writing bit, David, the the literary niven. You've written two tremendously successful books. The first one, an autobiography, The Moon's a Balloon. Why that title?

Presenter13:42

It's a it's a a line from a poem by E. E. Cummings, the the American poet.

Presenter13:48

And don't ask me to quote it, because I've long since forgotten what it was. But it is a very pretty poem, very short one, and I put it in the book and I took one line from that. It pointed out what I was writing about, really.

Speaker 113:51

But it is a pretty good idea.

Presenter13:57

You have done a a dummy run for that book twenty five years before, a volume called Run the Rugged Rocks. That's right. I wrote a novel. I had the great conceit to think I could write. And I thought if Sam Goldwyn consigns me to barracks once more and won't pay me, I shall write a book. And I had the great conceit to think that's all you had to do. Well, I wrote the book.

Presenter14:15

And it finally got published, and of course it was published long after I was back on the payroll, but I learnt

Presenter14:19

the lesson of how hard it is to write by doing that.

Presenter14:22

Was The Moon's a Balloon commissioned, or did you write it on on spec just because you felt like it? No, I wrote it because my my old friend Roderick Mann, who's the columnist for the Sun Express,

Presenter14:31

He's a such an old friend that he and he's

Presenter14:33

interviewed me so often that he said, Look, I cannot do it any more. It bores me. I know you too well, so you'd write it yourself. And I did. And you followed it with Bring on the Empty Horses. I think that title needs explaining too. I'll try, but I can't just anyway, Errol Flynn.

Presenter14:48

It was a great chum of mine and we shared a house together and we were in a couple of films together and one was the charge the original charge of the light brigade and the and the director was a Hungarian called Mike Curtiz who had a sketchy.

Presenter15:00

idea of the of our language.

Presenter15:02

And during the charge the time came for these four hundred riderless h chargers to appear in the scene. So he yelled through his megaphone, Bring on the empty horses So of course Finn and I fell down laughing, and then he said some unprintable things to us which are in the book.

Speaker 115:12

Then the

Presenter15:15

Good. So bring on the empty horses is all Hollywood, isn't it? Yes, it's all Hollywood, between nineteen thirty five and nineteen sixty, in the days of the great stars and the great people, when I was there. What's the next one to be?

Speaker 115:18

Or Hollywood, isn't it?

Presenter15:26

Don't know. I mean, Roy, I'm I'm fiddling. I'm really fiddling. I've got a couple of ideas. But it's such agony for me writing. But it'll it'll be done. Oh, we look forward to number three. What's number five among the records? Rock your Baby by George McCrae.

Presenter15:40

Now this is my youngest daughter's hot selection. This is played day and night in my house to this minute, and so my ears are still throbbing for it, and I really love it myself.

David Niven16:09

Rock the window.

David Niven16:18

Yeah.

Presenter16:20

Rock Your Baby by George McRae

Presenter16:22

You've done very little stage work. One production at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Presenter16:27

Oh, and uh one play on Broadway and and and another one. Um but I must confess I love the theatre as a as part of the audience. I loathe performing on the stage. Tell me about the play on Broadway. That was with Gloria Swanson, wasn't it? Yes, that was called Nina. It was a great success in French and a total disaster in English.

Speaker 116:38

Yeah.

Presenter16:44

And uh that was the famous occasion on the opening night when when Gloria had a clothing company.

Presenter16:49

and wore her own clothes she had designed on the piece and on opening night on Broadway.

Presenter16:54

I had to kiss her in the first scene, and I grabbed her, I was so frightened.

Presenter16:58

And there was a loud report, and a sort of twanging noise, and four and a half inches of white whale bone shot out of her chest and right up my nose.

Presenter17:06

And and in the morning, Walter Kerr, the Herald Tribune, the man of the Herald Tribune, his review said, We understood from the programme that Miss Swanson designed her own clothes. Like the play, they fell apart in the first act. We've got to record number six. What's that? The bell song from Lackby with Maria Kellas.

Presenter17:25

Now this I choose because I'm on my desert island and I'm badly in need of a girl's voice.

Presenter17:30

And if there's one great girl's voice in the world, it's hers.

David Niven17:34

Ain't been that before that squid that they are.

Presenter18:34

Maria Callis The Bell Song from Latin

David Niven18:36

Myth

Presenter18:37

This desert island situation, could you look after yourself all right? Could you build some kind of hut? Well, now you did tell me, Roy, that I was allowed to have a book. Yes, one book. All right. Well, what I'm going to ask you to give me is the British Army Survival Manual, because I have an urge to get off that island, and I'm going to build myself a boat at all costs and leave. Right. You know a bit about navigation, obviously. I mean, having crewed and done shark fishing and whatever. Well, a little bit, but hopefully that's also going to be in my manual. And in my manual, I'm hoping that it would tell me what animals that I could eat without being poisoned, and what shellfish I could tuck into, and that sort of thing.

Presenter19:13

I think the manual will get me through. I'm I've no intention I like you for putting me on it, but I don't want to stay there too long. Understood. Record number seven. What's that? There's Nothing Like a Dame. Now the Nothing Like a Dame comes from the South Pacific. First of all, I love the song, and I love the virility of that American chorus, but also

Presenter19:29

I'm on my desert island. I'm getting a little sex starved.

David Niven19:33

And nothing thinks like a day.

David Niven19:37

Nothing acts like a day.

David Niven19:40

Or attracts like a name.

David Niven19:44

There ain't a thing that's wrong with any man here that can't be cured by putting him near. A girl in womanly

Presenter20:02

Nothing like a dame from the American cast of South Pacific. Now we come to your last record. What have you saved till the end?

Presenter20:10

I've saved for the end once more is the breach from Henry the Fifth with Laurence Olivier.

Presenter20:15

For two reasons.

Presenter20:17

First of all, he's a personal great friend and godfather to one of my children.

Presenter20:21

and I think it's one of the most sensational speeches ever written by even Shakespeare.

Presenter20:25

and a delivery that Shakespeare would have blessed by Larry.

Presenter20:30

And I think I'm I'm in need of a friend on that island, and in need by this time of a little bit of guts, and I think it comes out of his speech.

David Niven20:36

Show us here the metal of your pasture. Let us swear that you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not, for there is none of you so mean and base that hath not noble lustre in your eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slip, straining upon the start. The game's afoot. Follow your spirit, and upon this charge, cry God for Harry, England and St. John!

David Niven21:01

Yeah.

Presenter21:07

Sir Lawrence Olivier, a speech from Shakspeare's Henry the Fifth.

Presenter21:11

If you could take just one disk of the eight, which would it be, David?

Presenter21:15

I think there's no question it would be the last one, because it's the most inspiring thing, and I think sitting on that island I'm going to need a little inspiration.

Presenter21:23

We've heard of the one book you're taking now you're allowed one luxury as well.

Presenter21:28

I'd ask for double bed.

Presenter21:30

Because

Presenter21:31

Comfort is the keynote.

Presenter21:34

And when I get

Presenter21:35

sad and and and depressed when I hear

Presenter21:38

Amazing grace, which will make me weep, I'll turn my face into that non existent pillow.

Presenter21:43

And I think the double bed would urge me on to read that British Army survival manual at all costs get off the bloody thing.

Presenter21:50

Right. And thank you, David Niven, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed myself on your island. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 122:07

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.