Her grace under pressure

Robert Morley

THE MAKING OF THE AFRICAN QUEEN OR HOW I WENT TO AFRICA WITH BOGART, BACALL AND HUSTON AND ALMOST LOST MY MIND by Katharine Hepburn

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Like the best kind of English duchess, Miss Katharine Hepburn is not exactly a dab hand when it comes to writing a book. She is, however, ready to have a go, particularly when it is to be the sort of book that this one is, profusely illustrated with her own and Mr Bogart's photographs and destined for the coffee-table. Someone must have pointed out to her that the text of such a work is no great matter. Should the reader's attention lapse, there is always another page to turn and yet another picture of the two protagonists up to their thighs in river mud, picking off the occa- sional leech and the occasional Mr Huston looking on encouragingly. Miss Betty Bacall figures now and then as a camp- follower; Miss Hepburn smiles out at us with the total insincerity of an air-hostess. In one picture Bogart actually laughs. What seems to have impressed Miss Hep- burn most about Africa was the almost total absence of rest-rooms. Going into the jungle meant going into the jungle. There is also the astonishing episode of the cardboard jerry with a hole in the bottom and the terror of not only having wet the bed but possibly the sleeping Bogarts in the berth beneath.

There was a good deal to find fault with in Africa: the very real hunger of the golf-caddies, the fact that almost everyone except the stars seemed to be underpaid, the prevalence of tropical disease and, perhaps most importantly, the script.

Mr Huston did not seem particularly worried about what was written on paper and 40 years on Miss Hepburn has surpri- singly come round to sharing his opinion. Surprisingly, because when I first met her while she played The Philadelphia Story on Broadway and afterwards when I acted with her in The African Queen, Miss Hepburn seemed to me someone who took infinite pains to secure the effect which she wished to portray. Her acting has for me the quality of determined incandescence. In all her pictures she ploughed a lone

furrow, but she was an undisputed mistress of the plough. In her book the field is unprepared for the corn she scatters so indiscriminately.

It is difficult to understand the secondary title of this book. Nowhere is there the slightest suggestion of mental strain; the problems encountered are located else- where. Again and again Miss Hepburn returns to the ever-present problem, embarrassment of bowel power.

I've been stalling along here because I wonder whether I should go into the morning problem or just avoid it. Bowels are not exactly a polite subject for conversation but they are certainly a common problem and I know we wondered exactly what would go on in regard to this. Please think of me again as the urologist's daughter. As you may recall, I had protected myself with a pot in case of trouble. The pot was the lower half of an aluminum double boiler. In case of discov- ery it might be anything. Well it might be the lower half of an aluminum double boiler. I saw the Siamese-twin outhouse for the Bogies and me and my heart sank. For though I expected to be very intimate with them — I did feel that sitting there together in the early morning would be going a bit further than the ordinary demands of co- starring in a motion picture. The question was — when would he make the trip? I can only say that after a few visits — to my horror — I would hear his palm door open (you can't hear anyone coming down a mud path). And I would leap up and out. This would never do. Must be practical. So I resorted to privacy and my pot. I was old enough to have had some early farm experi- ence with pots and was on to lining it with newspapers. Very clean and neat. . . . Some day you may find this information very useful. The toilet is an excellent thing. The outhouse is an agony. The pot? — well — a poor thing — but your own.

Miss Hepburn's bodily functions are attended to in this and many other pas- sages, but not, alas, the punctuation. Too often Miss Hepburn resorts to a morse code of her own devising.

The dust cover emphasises that there are 45 pictures and the blurb is composed by the author.

This book will tell you What it was like for me to meet John Huston, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall In London and Africa For the first time.

To work with them nonstop for about three months.

And why — Come hell or high water Through thick and through thin For better and for worse • But not quite until death did we part — It was great fun. K.H.

The picture they made together was a triumph, the book a sad echo of events that occurred more than 30 years ago. There is one memorable passage which describes Huston and Hepburn venturing into tall grass determined to shoot elephants with gun and camera. The white hunter who had accompanied them thus far advised against the manoeuvre and remained at a safe distance. 'You're just yellow', Huston told him with his usual tact. They got within 200 yards when, 'with a terrible roar, missing us by about 25 feet, crashed the whole herd. John stood transfixed. "Look at that, look at that. Isn't that great? What power. Magnificent. Well".'

They weren't shooting film, but they did manage to slaughter a Kudu. 'There was a terrible scene when each one of us tried to cut its throat to bleed it.' Miss Hepburn couldn't remember whether the knife or the will to do it was too dull.

Back on location and possibly despairing of ever starting the film, Sam Spiegel, the producer, must have been tempted to cut his own throat.