The Most
Interesting People
I've Met By GEOFFREY BOCCA
Both the good and the bad
are among the people who
interest me most. But all of
them have something in com
mon : toughness, resilience.
The weak, the fragile, I am ashamed
to say, have never moved me. Ras
cality amuses me when it is carried
out with sufficient devil-may-care.
Energy fascinates me. Independence
attracts me.
With no particular order in mind,
I begin with the most superb, dy-
Rosalind Russell
namic personality in Bhow business,
Rosalind Russell.
I particularly recall one evening
with Roz in, of all places, Hutchin
son, Kana., where she, Bill Holden,
and Joshua Logan were on location
for the movie, "Picnic." The tor
nado season was at its height, the
sky was the color of lint, there was
no air to breathe, and tempers were
at explosion point. With a sort of
drink-for-tomorrow-we-die attitude,
we decided to have a champagne-and-caviar
party for the whole com
pany. It turned out lively. Bill Hol
den made a lot of noise, then went
unsteadily to bed. I made a lot of
noise and, unsteadily, stayed around.
But the star of the evening was
Rosalind Russell. She sang the entire
score of "Wonderful Town," in which
she starred on Broadway. She danced,
doing high kicks with an incredible
litheness. She went into a stream of
very funny jokes. She became briefly
serious to talk about politics. She
became bored and started to sing
again. Then she acted some of the
tragic scenes from "Mourawnj5 Be
comes Electra."
One by one, the other members of
the company drifted to bed but not
Roz. At two in the morning she was
still singing, still dancing, still laugh
ing raucously, still telling stories,
and doing everything well. It was the
most remarkable piece of sustained
animal energy and sheer brilliance
I have ever seen.
From Roz to as extreme an oppo
site as one can imagine: Alfbed de
Mabicnv, who in 1943 was charged
with the murder of his father-in-law,
Sir Harry Oakes.
Sir Harry, a gold-mining million
aire, had been butchered to death
and his body set aflame in his home
in the Bahamas. De Marigny, who
had been considered something of a
playboy, had secretly married Oakes'
daughter Nancy. There were furious
quarrels between Oakes and de Ma
rigny. But, apart from that, there
was no evidence against de Marigny;
indeed, his case was airtight.
All the same, he was kept in prison
for three months before the trial,
tried, acquitted, and then deported
a scandalous injustice. No one else
was ever tried for the crime, and it
remains technically unsolved.
His wife, who stood by him during
the trial, left him. He moved from
place to place, from job to job. He
settled in Cuba; but after Castro
made life impossible for foreigners,
Alfred de Marigny
he had to move again. He asked me
if I could And him a place near my
own villa on the French Riviera, and
I said I could. He is now remarried
and has two small sons.
What I admire about Fred de Ma
rigny is his psychological strength
All the other persons involved in the
fantastic Oakes dBama- wje.Be. thifif
bitter and unhappy by it But he
the one person who suffered most is
a happy man. He realizes he has to
live the rest of his life with the mur
der, and he accepts it.
He is preparing for the day when
he must tell his own children about
his past "Sometimes my wife and I
watch tv shows with the kids," he
told me, "and often there is a situa
tion in which the hero is put in pris
on. We point out to the children that
innocent people do go to prison some
times." De Marigny's philosophy of
life is summed up in a quotation:
"Man is an apprentice, and pain is
his master, and no one understands
who has not suffered."
Another man who has always fas
cinated me is Ian Fleming. He can
do so many things better than write
thrillers. He is a wit a leading
authority on rare books, a six-handi-
U1S
Ian Fleming
cap golfer, a manic gambler who can
play poker like a ringer. When he
writes about general subjects, he does
so on a noticeably higher intellectual
level than when he writes about his
thug-hero, James Bond.
Fleming lives among a small circle
of friends who spend long evenings
insulting each other freely. "What a
dreary fellow your James Bond is,"
says his friend Noel Coward. "The
trouble with you, Ian," says another,
"is that you put up a smoke screen
of energy to hide your laziness."
Fleming puts another cigarette in
his long holder and says "The trou
ble with yen reHewa is feu haven't
Hie wR to reoogmoe a genuine origi
nal Mce myaiM. Thce ee n many
of US' left"
in his- B jxawfsj to ttn teen
in Moscow, and foreign manager of a
big English newspaper chain. To me,
the most interesting period of his life
was during the war, when he rose to
the rank of commander in the Royal
Navy very rare for a hostilities
only sailor.
After D-Day he ran what was joc
ularly known as Fleming's Private
Navy, a band of sailors most of
them peacetime professors, golfers,
and assorted eccentrics who moved
ahead of advancing Allied troops to
capture German documents and ci
phers. Casualties -were heavy.
The most impressive part of Ian's
contribution is that he remained in
London directing the venture. He is
an instinctive adventurer and roman
tic, and he must have longed to be in
the fight. But he knew that someone
had to make the grim decisions at
the Admiralty, so he did. It's ofter,
harder to decide to do than to die.
Movie stars, I regret to tell you,
are rarely very intelligent Roz Rus
sell is very much an exception to the
rule and so is Sophia Loren.
She is a girl from the slums of
Naples who, at 27, made herself not
only a great star but a great lady,
a girl who also taught herself to
speak English and French (and she
is amusing in both).
I was sitting with Sophia some
time ago on the set of a film she was
making in Pisa. "You know, Sophia,"
I said like a fathead, "a movie star
has an easy life. The last time we
saw each other you were making
'Boy on a Dolphin,' and we were sit-
Sophia Loren
ting oaround just like this."
Sophia turned her fantastic green
eyes an me, and I thought I detected
4 nasohievous gleam, but she said
4 family Wkly, Jeptewftxr I, MB