Baffled by blondes
Byron Rogers
BARDOT, DENEUVE AND FONDA by Roger Vadim Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £10.95 There is something very sad about this book. Its subtitle (and in the 1960s sub- titles were things which got in the way of v, arious parts of Mlle Bardot's body) is The Memoirs of Roger Vadim'; 20 years on the subtitles are still in the way. But the real sadness is in how Mr Vadim never seems to have worked out what has happened to him. All he ever wanted to do was sleep with teenage brunettes and make them blonde and famous. The next mo- ment there he is at Los Angeles airport With three children by three different !vomen, all of whom are waiting for them in different cities. He puts each child on the wrong flight.
The book is thus the record of a man's puzzlement, punctuated by the odd mo- ment he looks up to wonder where it all went wrong. In its most poignant aspect this takes the form of a footnote, when Mr Vadim is puzzling over the collapse of either his third or fourth marriage: 'I hoped that by marrying a woman who was not an actress I would have a chance to settle down. I was wrong.'
The rest of the time he is making a dazed inventory of what has been. Thus, on page one: 'Perfectly curved hips, long firm thighs, charming ankles, and the arched feet of a dancer . . .' This is Brigitte Bardot, and there are many inventories of Mlle Bardot's body.
Deneuve is just bossy. Even years later Roger can still jump, seeing those features again (she is now the model for Marianne, the French national symbol). Fonda is even more frightening, being a humorless femin- ist who makes lists all the long day like someone heading a general staff. Poor Annette Stroyberg, by comparison, the second Mrs Vadim, once so beautiful, just fades away and is not even among the main titles; but Miss Stroyberg's career has slumped, and Roger does not want to know any more. The funniest bits are those involving Jane Fonda. Roger is in mid seduction when suddenly she leaps up and takes all her clothes off; he finds this aggressive and it makes him impotent. After they are married he sleeps with other women and helpfully informs Jane (for he is as much of a list-maker as she); to his surprise (Roger is often surprised), they drift apart.
The physical universe is also surprising. Miss Stroyberg waltzes along a hotel corri- dor, taking off all her clothes, but Roger has lost their room key. They are, of course, rescued by Orson Welles. Again the count-down for the seduction of De- neuve is under way but the car is locked.
The sexual permutations need a diagram for the reader to keep up. Sacha Distel seduces Brigitte, he then seduces Annette; Marcell° Mastroianni seduces Deneuve (and, like a man in a bomb-shelter, discus- ses life with Vadim).
Vadim is interested in life and makes many general observations. 'The pride of great men is as easily irritated as the skin of a newborn baby's bottom.'
Then there is an inventory of Catherine Deneuve. 'Her delicate nose, her intense but slightly cold expression, her mouth with the finely drawn lips. . .' This is when he first meets her; the naughty bits are added later.
There are inventories of the cars he has owned, the Ferraris, the Bugattis, 'my little monster, the Lancia Sports 2000', and so on. There are inventories of the famous. 'I also knew Colette, Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Salvador Dali and some great jazz musicians.' This is life as it might have appeared to someone compiling a cata- logue for a house sale. 'Some great jazz musicians' would have been Lot No. 37.
The irony is that this man should have figured so large in the imagination of all teenagers once. This was Roger the Lod- ger, who had 'em all. People often won- dered about this, mutters Mr Vadim, and the reason is simple: he just happened to be there when Bardot was 15 ('I'm a real woman,' shouted a naked Bardot, leaning out of a window), and when Deneuve was 17.
He is arch about all this ('Getting dres- sed behind a curtain without being noticed is not easy'), but, my God, does he get his come-uppance. Bardot is cracked, con- vinced she is dying when she finds her skin has turned green, forgetting the lavatory has just been painted, and then locking the door on a friend in a blazing kitchen, lest the flames damage her furniture; she is a bourgeoise, whispers Roger.
But his most irritating feature is his obsession with cataloguing. 'The young, celebrated, wild but very wise Francoise Sagan.' The physically attractive singer- crooner Sacha Distel . . .' then the lists again: 'Marie Laure de Noailles, General Corniglion-Molinier, Juliette Greco and a young American senator named John F. Kennedy . . .' There is a very long index to this book; even the extras get in.
The rest of the time passes in a kind of blur, rather like his films really, the only scene from any of which I can remember is Bardot in bed, naked with her leading man in And God Created Woman, and I can only remember that because of the folk- lore; neither got up when the director, Vadim, shouted 'Cut.'
I think it was Horace Walpole who said of Lord Anson that he had been round the world but never once in it. The saddest thing of all is the amount of time I have spent fantasising about this man.
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