For a bunch of top-notch professionals, their imitation of a local amateur drama group was startlingly realistic. The man ‘who ought to be shot’ had, indeed, earned his verdict. Since I could not shoot him, I fired him that evening, after the show. I then spent the rest of the night talking to every member of the cast. They all knew, and admitted, that this pre-congenitally malformed Maritza could not be allowed into the Palace. Everybody, that is, except Miss Mannheim. Our verbal battle was endless, heated, emotional, full of theatricals and pointless We sat in her airless dressing room, terribly brightly lit by high-powered, naked bulbs and we went round in circles, until Lucie threatened to have me thrown to a past husband of hers, a German director called Jurgen Fehling, who had become a high-ranking SS Officer in Germany – Lucie’s premature desire for ‘Wiedergutmachung’ (restitution) was a trifle illogical – ‘SS Officer in Germany downs escaped enemy of Reich on behalf of Jewish actress?’ was hardly plausible I thought! My late-night animosity towards our ‘star’ hardened, as did her appearance, in view of its considerable mileage and the bright lights. She was disintegrating rapidly at the expense of any charm she might have had.
Claiming some interest in her career as a dramatic actress in England, I explained that everybody’s notices would go up on the board here and now unless she relinquished the lead in Maritza. Finally, in the early hours of the morning, she exited in the footsteps of our so-called producer. The final scene of her departure was proof of her great talent as a dramatic actress, as were her many successes in London’s theatre later on.
Countess Maritza was re-vamped, rewritten and re-cast. Mara Loseff, Richard Tauber’s ‘nth’ wife, became the lead. John Garrick remained in the cast and Tauber, while cajoling his wife into some sort of an acting performance, propelled Garrick along with it.
The script was redone and Byng and Glenville became very funny. The orchestra was taken over by Walter Goehr and the music sounded beautiful. Someone was directing it all but I cannot, now, remember who. I do remember though, that during the dress rehearsal, I felt a. great thrill because we had a beautiful show and I felt certain that it would be a hit.
The opening night at the Palace had the audience on its feet. We lost count of the curtain calls.
The notices next morning were ghastly. Maritza closed after eleven weeks. Kálmán himself had been there for the premiere and had predicted success. He came up with a truly constructive explanation for our misfortune: ‘London,’ he said, ‘was not yet ready for Maritza.’ During the many times I went back to see the show I vainly tried to detect the cause of our failure. I couldn’t. Of course, people are ruthlessly dishonest when they talk about a show to somebody who is involved in it, and nobody failed to bemoan the injustice of the critics in the face of a performance which could have given boundless joy to thousands had it been kept alive until it made it over the hump.
However, the Sykes/Skeffington/Frank consortium decided not to provide the crutches. We closed with a very minor deficit, probably only because the accommodating bank manager had had so many free tickets. My personal feeling of frustration, in any event, was not permitted to last. There was one feature in the Palace production of Maritza that had made my investigative attendances sheer pleasure. She danced and sang her way through the show with tremendous charm and talent, looking young and crisp and golden and very, very sexy – her name was Patricia Leonard.[3] She was also, fortunately, unattached.
It was love at first sight, for both of us. It was also the marvellous experience of an old-fashioned courtship, which lasted for some weeks, before we became lovers.
In our case, at the end of one particularly enchanting evening, Pat and I returned to my Earls Court haunt hand-in-hand. We kissed long and passionately and then, suddenly, Pat stood before me, very naked and very beautiful, with skin like gold. Smiling, she raised her arms and said: ‘Do you like my body?’ It was a safe question to ask. Pat had the most perfect body I have ever seen or held in my arms and she knew it, of course. She was not tall and would not have made it as a Hefner bunny. However, she had a dancer’s body and moved beautifully and her mouth was sensuous and perfectly shaped. Her blonde hair was long and lovely and her voice was unusually low – and always a little hoarse – which made her singing something out-of-this-world.
Because of our long, gentle courtship, we were mentally and emotionally completely adjusted to each other and it was no wonder, then, that our lovemaking was of immediate perfection. Neither of us, so we discovered, had known love like this before and it is only through intensive auto-suggestion that I have persuaded myself that some moments, afterwards, have ever been as good.
15. THE JOLLY BOATMAN
MOST OF THE FRIENDS PAT AND I HAD during this period were involved in the theatre and included stars and starving kids alike. We saw all the shows, went to all the clubs and we ate, it seems, in all the restaurants in the West End.
The sandpit was paying me a reasonable salary, the Canaveral project contributed a little more. Also, Humphrey had acquired a small furniture factory in the East End of London that he christened the Cygnet Furniture Company – because the Sykes’ family crest included such a bird. The managing director left when Humphrey bought out the owner.
I know not why Sykes wanted to make furniture, nevertheless he appointed me managing director of this company also. The sales manager was an unforgettable cockney character, Dennis Blakely, who was completely bald at the age of twenty-six and he wore a red wig that must have come from Woolworths. He frequently found the wig bothersome and shoved it to the back of his head like a gangster would wear a hat in a bad movie.
I moved from Earls Court to Dolphin Square,[1] a new and well-conceived block of flats in Westminster. I furnished my new abode with Cygnet’s best furniture and used it as a showroom. It was this flat that I lent to my old friend Alice Goldstern when she fled from Munich. Tragically she was killed there during a German air raid on London.
Dolphin Square had one of the finest sports centres I had seen. So, every morning at a quarter to eight I would take the lift down and do twenty minutes of exercises in the gymnasium, followed by half-an-hour’s squash and a swim. This I did no matter how late or how drunk I had gone to bed. By the time I hit the pool I was sober and any hangover had gone. Pat and I would then eat a huge breakfast and I would be in my office by 10.00 hours – which was quite early enough for London.
Much to my regret, Pat and I never managed to live together. She had a pretty autocratic mother, a retired singing teacher, and a nosy brother whom I got off our backs by employing him at Cygnet as a salesman.
Mum however had to be lied to when her darling daughter wanted to stay away for the night, and we came up with some priceless stories. Strangely enough, mother Leonard never objected when we went on holiday together, but the odd night in London had to be camouflaged.
By this time, I owned a boat that, after renovation work, Pat and I set sail in, or rather cranked up the engine of, for the first time at Easter 1938. As Pat was unpacking crockery below deck, I approached my first Thames river lock, near Maidenhead. I had never driven a boat before and put it into reverse far too late. I hit the far gate of the lock, which was of course closed, with a tremendous wallop and the tinkling of breaking china and glass from below deck went on for an unreasonably long period – rather like a sound effect on a radio comedy show.
3
Patricia Leonard was born in Fulham on 9 November 1914. Her father, Theodore, was an actor from South Africa and her mother, Elena, was a well-known opera singer from Australia. Patricia was a starlet at seventeen and became a leading lady in many West End productions in the 1930s and during the war years including
1
Dolphin Square is a block of luxury flats, favoured by members of both Houses of Parliament and the Gentry, which were built between 1935-1937 near the River Thames in Pimlico.