Free David Niven by Michael Munn Page A

I spoke to Loretta after David died in 1983, she said,
    He was very serious about becoming an actor. None of us knew if he could act or not, but he was very handsome, very well built and he had that wonderful Niven charm. But you never know if all that is enough until you get before a camera. He told me he was desperate to try acting and wanted to get into a studio, so I took him with me to Twentieth Century-Fox where I was filming
[The White Parade]
. He had to get down on the floor of my car and I covered him with a blanket so I could get him through the gate. He came to my dressing room and watched me being made-up. He kept saying to me, ‘You don’t need make-up. You’re perfectly beautiful as you are.’ I told him everyone needed make-up for the camera. He didn’t understand that and said, ‘The camera obviously doesn’t recognise perfection when it sees it.’ It was that Niven charm. But he was sincere, it wasn’t just flattery.
    I told her, ‘He said he was quite in love with you.’
    â€˜Oh yes. Well, we did enjoy some time together. He was very attractive and very funny which girls can’t resist. He had a lot of girlfriends, and he was so charming that people just took to him. We had a lot of movie actors come to our house and they were intrigued by this young Englishman, andbefore they knew it he was telling them funny stories and making friends. That’s a special gift.’
    I told her that David had said that he often went with her and her sister Sally to various nightspots such as the Coconut Grove, the King’s Club and the Clover Club. Loretta recalled, ‘He’d
go
with us but usually ended up with some beautiful girl he’d spotted, and so we’d go home without him.’
    I told her that in the years I’d known David I had discovered that sometimes his cheerful demeanour disguised a certain amount of insecurity and even depression.
    â€˜I think you’re right,’ she said, and added,
    He was very anxious when I first knew him. He was quite nervous and twitchy, especially when he met people for the first time, and he overcame that by being so funny. He was very affected by not having his father in his life. He always wanted to have a father. When he was a child he thought his mother didn’t love him. He had a sister he adored, Grizel, and another sister and a brother, but he hardly saw them, hardly knew them. He said he never had a family life and was very insecure. But he became very independent quite young.
    Coming out to Hollywood all by himself was a remarkable demonstration of his strong sense of independence. He was quite anxious, quite nervous, but he
made
himself do all those things like coming to a foreign country and trying to get into pictures which thousands of people tried to do every day. I think he didn’t really have a clue how difficult it could be to get into pictures, so he had the benefit of ignorance and youthful ambition on his side.
    I never tried to dissuade him from becoming an actor but I told him to be prepared for a difficult time. I knew that if the camera liked him then he had a good chance. He just needed the opportunity.
    I wondered if he’d ever asked her directly for help in becoming an actor, to which she replied, ‘No, he never asked. I think he might have felt that living with us he might get to meet the right people. We must have been a useful family for him to settle in with,’ she laughed.
    I asked her if she felt that he adopted himself into her family.
    â€˜Oh yes. He did. I could tell he wanted to be a part of our family. My mother began to wonder when he was going to go because she said he could only stay a week or two until he found somewhere to live, but he arrived with tons of baggage and he settled very quickly and was in no hurry to leave. My sisters and I liked having him there.’
    After living rent-free with Loretta’s family for six weeks, he