High life
Exit stage left
Taki
.Hollywood closest I've ever come to going to .1 was in 1957. I was 20 years of age and was smitten by the charms of a nice Jewish girl with blue eyes and a great pair of legs, Her name was Joan Collins — still is as a matter of fact — and no, this is not going to be yet another indiscretion on my part, she started the whole thing seven years ag° when she published her autobiography an id included the poor little Greek jailbird in t. (Even more surprising was the fact that Peregrine Worsthorne read that particular passage and mentioned it to me. It goes to show, I guess, that even great men stray °nliterary matters.) I lived at the Beverly Hills Hotel and when I was not with Miss C I was fighting various Hollywood types who wanted to take my place. When Nicky Hilton's turn came I knew my time was up. Whether won or lost didn't matter. Hilton at the time 'owned' Hollywood, and a victory was bound to be a Pyrrhic one. The fact that it was a draw didn't help. (I had two black eyes and his nose was rearranged for good.) No one in Hollywood dared to speak to me after that. Worse, no gals would go out with me. It was a bit like getting caught cowering in the bottom of a trench while the rest of the company were I over the top. Right then and there decided Hollywood women were for • • well, I can't think of anything worse, so guess it will have to be Hollywood men• No more actresses for me, I swore at the tittle, and although I went back to that hellhole a couple more times, I never once went near a member of the fair sex who made her living in front of a camera. Because of my bad experiences with actors and actresses, I stayed away from what I like to call the trained seals that have disproportionate amounts of influ- ence when the great American public goes to the polls. And wondered where Jane Fonda was while Russian jets blew up Afghan villages. And periodically blew a gasket when I heard buffoons like Robert Redford and Warren Beatty talk about growth, development and radical politi.cs,' Not to mention when the ghastly Melill- Mercouri tried to con the British Museum into giving back something that the Greeks deserve as much as, say, Rupert Everett deserves the Man of the Year award. (Woman of the Year is another matter altogether, needless to say.) Last week, however, I broke my Pledge by going out with not one, but two Amer- ican actresses, and having the best time I've had since 23 July 1984 to be exact. Surprisingly, both girls are enrolled at Yale University, a place that it would be safe to say is as different from Hollywood as Laurence Olivier is from Rupert Everett. (One wants to remember the former, and forget the latter, get it?) The girls were Jodie Foster and Jennifer Beale. In case You don't know Jennifer she was the girl Who acted but did not dance in the film Plashdance. Jodie, needless to say, needs no introduction. I met both thespians through yet another Yalie, Henrietta Con- rad, an English girl who thought most Hooray Henrys might be scared off by the two Americans. And scared off they may Well have been. Jodie is extremely brainy, to say the least, and Jennifer knows that Ludwig Van Beethoven never died in the Berlin blitz. Both girls were friendly, un- heard of where American women are concerned, and both had a terrific sense of humour, which led me to doubt they were American at all. I took everyone to lunch at Aspinall's and then we ended the evening at — where else — Annabel's. The real fun began when about 20 breathless and jet-lagged Americans arrived for the party of the year, as they themselves called it. When I Inquired about the party of the year I realised those poor fools had flown over for John Jermyn's ball. That is when Miss Foster's humour came through. 'You mean You're not going to the Birley ball on Saturday?' she asked one of those idiotic soi-disant upper-crust Yankees. And while he looked confused and conferred with his other social-climbing friends, the rest of us took up the theme of Rupert Birley's ball for 800 of his closest friends. The result was that the Americans got depressed, the Earl Jerinyn went down a bit as far as social Cachet was concerned (a hard thing to do in InY humble opinion) and I got what I deserved for my bitchiness with the Yanks. When I took Miss Foster home and asked her if I could come in for a drink she answered, `No thank you. Perhaps if you were Rupert Birley', she added, 'it might have been yes.' What kills me is that I know it would have been yes because I know Rupert.
Previous page
