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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (May 14, 1961)
l ill HOLLY WOOD IN THE HT Sophia Loren's untamed beauty contrasts vividly with the serenity of Lake Lucerne, seen rom the window o the star's Swiss chalet. By GEOFFREY BOCCA (Switzerland has become an inter national refuge for the tax-oppressed celebrities of the world. American, British, and German movie stars, pro ducers, and writers have learned it is possible to work out painless individ ual tax programs with Swiss cantons (states). Because the countries in-; volved recognize each other's tax laws, celebrities are legally free of the far heavier taxation in their home lands. But there is a rotten apple in this para dise, as you'll see in this concluding installment of a two-part series.) SHORTLY after he moved into the Villa les Avants, near Montreux, Noel Coward was observed filling his lungs with Swiss mountain air and thumping his chest. "Ah !" he cried. "Aahh! This is the life for me." Coward was primed for his new life in the almost: tax-free paradise that American and British stars have found in Switzerland. He had decided to leave England after discovering that despite a lifetime of work and having earned a fortune, he was thousands of pounds overdrawn, thanks to the crushing bur den of English income tax. In Switzer land, all he paid was 5 percent of the rentable value of his chalet. Something, however, went wrong. A few months after he arrived, he was seen in his villa playing solitaire with his secretary. Heaven had not arrived on earth, after all. Coward was bored to the top of his immaculate and receding hair line. To stave off loneliness, he desper ately filled the house with friends. When tfiey ceased to come, he himself escaped to London, Jamaica, or New York. Coward had come face to face with the problem found by most Hollywood stars who have decided to move to Switzerland : once you get there, what do you do with your time? Switzerland, after all, is not the most exciting country in the world. As Orson Welles said : after centuries of peace, prosperity,' and democracy, Switzerland 'is principally famous for inventing the cuckoo clock. Switzerland also has a rainy, misty climate, a solid, bourgeois people, in different restaurants, and an almost nonexistent theater. It is obvious why this is not a country an actor would live in if he did not have to find tax relief particularly as Hollywood stars, since World War II, have ex plored beyond Beverly Hills and dis covered the more sophisticated delights of New York, Paris, and Rome. Some, of course, have learned to like Switzerland, notably Yul Brynner, who has a strong civic conscience and has always interested himself in the affairs of the United Nations. Switzerland, the home of dozens of international agencies, was just right for him. As soon as he arrived, he offered his ser vices at a dollar a year to the World Refugee Organization, which has its headquarters in Geneva. He told the directors: "I can't write, I can't organize, but I can take pic tures." They sent him to the Middle East, where he photographed the -plight of refugees; then, returning to Swit zerland, he called on Anatole Litvak to help him produce a documentary movie, also without fee. As a result, Brynner , has become perhaps the most popular of all the movie stars in Switzerland. When his small son was run over and seriously hurt by a street car in Lausanne, the Swiss felt they had let Brynner down, and he received telegrams of sympathy and best wishes from people all over the country. Zither STARS have adjusted them selves to Switzerland by deliber ately adopting the simple life. Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer, who have lived at Burgenstock since 1955, return faithfully after each picture. "We just love the mountain country side and the sound of cowbells in the morning,". they say. Thejr have no telephone and make and receive their calls at the village inn. This is not necessarily an indica tion that the Ferrers are going primi tive. The country which offers secret number bank accounts will not permit secret-number telephones. All numbers are listed, and the stars have to adopt various devices to avoid being pestered by cranks, of whom Switzerland has more than her share. Other stars man age it by listing the names of their villas, or apartment addresses, instead of their own names. t : Burgenstock has another notable couple Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren, who were lured to the remote area by the Ferrers. Paulette Goddard and Erich Maria Remarque lead a simple life in the Italian-Swiss village of Porto Ronco, near Ascona. When the Nazis kicked Movie stars can legally escape heavy, taxes by living it family Wttkly, May 14. Ml
