“She was in many ways an admirable woman, however, and a charming, witty hostess.”
Then she said to me, ‘I don’t know if you remember, but when you were a little boy you broke one of my most expensive teacups.’ Extraordinary that over such a span of time, that was what she remembered best about me! She was as beautiful as ever and insisted on sitting at a table where she could be seen. “After they were divorced, I didn’t see Merle for years, but sometime in the ‘50s my father, deciding that anybody was better than Alex’s new wife, ran into Merle at the Hotel du Cap and invited her to dinner with us. The tragedy of it was that Alex had a deep, deep passion for Merle, but she didn’t return it, although she had considerable affection for him. “I’ve always thought that was some indication of what their marriage must have been like. I reached for it and heard this voice from somewhere say, ‘Don’t touch it!’ After a while, I reached again-and again, ‘Don’t touch it!’ Finally, Vincent said to Alex, ‘Is Merle here? I thought she was at the studio.’ ‘Ah,’ said Alex, ‘that’s the bloody parrot! It listens to Merle all the time.’ “We sat in that beautiful living room in Bel-Air, and there was this huge box of chocolates. Trim and boyish-looking at 51, he has the direct, concentrated manner of a man used to making the most of his time. “I remember being taken over to Alex and Merle’s house by my father,” said Korda, sitting in a Beverly Hills hotel suite. But when I was a child, children were of no interest or consequence to her.” That was mainly during World War II when the entire Korda clan-Sir Alexander Korda, Michael’s illustrious producer-director uncle and Oberon’s husband at the time Vincent Korda, Michael’s distinguished art-director father, and Zoltan Korda, another uncle and eminent director-was in Hollywood exile. She was very difficult with children, although I always heard that she was wonderful with her adopted children.
“I found her a bit awesome and frightening. Korda tends to remember Oberon with more admiration than affection.
0 kommentar(er)
