Page 42 Daily Mail, Thursday, August 29, 201942 femailMAGAZINE
English girls, by dint of hard work, ambition,
discipline and, yes, luck, would become
internationally renowned. And, this is how it
all began...WE DIDN’T have twitter trolls, or smartphones.
We didn’t have social media, so we didn’t worry
about anything. We just had the war.
We left it to our parents to worry about that.
My sister Jackie and I threw ourselves into
entertaining and amusing ourselves all through
our childhood. Our parents were of the ‘children
should be seen and not heard’ generation, so
they let us get on with it.
We could walk to school through the London
streets without being knocked over by somebody
with their nose in a smartphone — all we had to
worry about was the Blitz, and we were too young
to understand the true extent of that danger.
Besides, picking up and collecting different
pieces of shrapnel was far more exciting.
Ignorance was bliss for little Jackie and Joan
during World War II.
We were on holiday in Bognor Regis, staying
with our maternal grandmother Ada, when war
broke out. I remember that we had the most
glorious weather on that day in September. I
was terribly excited to see that headline in the
paper that war had been declared.
In my childish innocence, it seemed
like some sort of game was afoot and
I thought I was the first in my family
to know as I ran across a field to
impart the news. Two-year-old
Jackie gazed impassively from her
crib as Mummie and her sisters pre-
tended to be very busy setting out
tea things and tossing off remarks
like, ‘Oh, it’s nothing to worry about’
and ‘It’ll all be over soon, you’ll see.’
Our innocence of the danger
remained intact through the next six
years, even while we were repeatedly
evacuated then returned to London
when it was apparently safe.W
hEN the bombs
came back, off we
trundled again in
Daddy’s Rover,
Jackie sitting next to me in the back,
sucking her thumb and reading a
book, while Mummie, Daddy and I
sang inspiring songs like We’ll Meet
Again and The White Cliffs of Dover.
Bognor, Brighton, Chichester,
Norfolk, Ilfracombe; back and forth
we went. Each time, Jackie and I
would be enrolled in a new school
and, from being outgoing children,
we became shy as the ‘old girls’ never
took kindly to the ‘new girls’,
especially being from London — we
were bullied mercilessly.
Nevertheless, the war was quite an
adventure and we were never scared.
One morning, we came out of
Edgware Road Tube station, where
we had spent the night safe from the
bombs, only to find our flat in Maida
Vale completely destroyed. Jackie
started crying inconsolably about
her lost toys and I, the heroic older
sister, did my best to comfort her
while feeling the great loss myself.
As I entered puberty, I became
upset that I was expected to wear
things like the tight girdles, itchy
stockings and suspender belts thatmy mother wore. I preferred the
corduroy trousers and loose shirts of
Daddy’s wardrobe. So, for a while I
wished I’d been a boy and dressed
like a tomboy.
however, by the time I was 15, I
reverted to embracing my female side.
Even as teenagers, Jackie and I had
definite ambitions. She wanted to be
a writer and I, after dithering about
a bit, wanted to become an actress
— but an actress in the theatre, and
not films, heaven forfend!
however, we both adored films, and
film stars, and spent endless hours
cutting pictures of our favourites
from movie magazines and pasting
them into giant scrapbooks, as well
as sending to hollywood for auto-
graphed pictures from the likes of
Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye and Tony
Curtis, most of whom obliged.
Jackie even stuck her picture of
Tony Curtis behind her bed, while I
had my picture of Irish film star
Maxwell Reed under my desk... but
more about that later.
Jackie started writing amazing
stories when she was only ten —
sophisticated plots about teenagers
in America and France with exotic
names — under the umbrella title
These Things Called Teenagers.
The concept of a teenager had just
been invented in the late 1940s. Prior
to that, people were only known as
children or adults.
Jackie was in vogue, even then. I
was called upon to illustrate these
gems which, thanks to a school
course in art, I was quite good at.
her handwriting was beautiful and
structured, as were her stories and I
cherish the copies I now have that
her daughters found after she died.
Jackie was tall and had a fantastic
figure by the time she was 12. When
we holidayed in France, boys would
whistle and try to chat us up, even
following us around Cannes (sorry
folks, this was the Fifties after all,when PC meant Police Constable).
But neither of us allowed the boys to
get too close — it was a much more
innocent time.
We were on the beach at Cannes
when I received the telegram telling
me I had passed my audition for RADA
while Jackie was happily splashing in
the water with three French boys as I
whooped with joy and ran down the
beach to tell her.
My rise to fame was meteoric. Within
a year, I’d been signed to the British
film studio Rank and during my early
years as a starlet, Jackie followed my
career closely, pasting and writing
captions of every single press mention
of me in many scrapbooks.A
T RANK I learned my
craft, and made 12 films in
three years; working with
brilliant actors but also
earning the moniker of ‘Britain’s bad
girl’ due to my penchant for playing
juvenile delinquents, naughty
heiresses or baby jailbirds.
At 20, I was literally sold to
Twentieth Century Fox and went
to hollywood.
I stayed for seven years, scoring
above-the-title credits and working
with such luminaries as Bette Davis,
Richard Burton, Gregory Peck and
Paul Newman. These were heady days
for a girl from Blighty and I learned a
lot from these amazing stars.
Jackie came to stay for a couple of
years. Almost as soon as she touched
down, however, I had to leave for
Jamaica to shoot Sea Wife with
Burton, so I gave her the keys to my
apartment and to my car! She had a
marvellous time, driving my pink
Thunderbird round Beverly hills and
hanging out with other teenagers.
She adored the American way of life
— hamburgers, drive-ins, chocolate
malts. When I returned, she hung out
with me and my more sophisticatedfriends like Gene Kelly, Paul
Newman, Sydney Chaplin
and Marlon Brando, whom
Jackie worshipped.
hollywood was unbelievably
glamorous then. Most women
were always made-up and coiffed
even for tennis or shopping, and
the parties were packed with the
most famous and gorgeous stars
and powerful studio heads.
I was invited to many of these,
and I gazed in awe at Lana Turner,
Susan hayward and Elizabeth Taylor
in their prime and primped to
perfection.
I hit Saks and I. Magnin regularly,
and soon attained my black belt in
shopping. I also started designing
many of my cocktail and evening
dresses and had them made by a
tailor to my specifications — some-
thing I still do today.
But most evenings we spent at
friends’ homes where we played
charades and word games and Jackie
and I could be casual in jeans. In fact,
I was so casual that sometimes I
didn’t even wear make-up, which the
powers-that-be at Fox considered a
heinous crime.
I was reprimanded by studio execu-
tive Darryl Zanuck’s second-in-com-
mand, Lew Schreiber, and by gossip
columnist hedda hopper, when she
wrote that I ‘looked like [I] combed
my hair with an egg-beater’.
It was at my then boyfriend Arthur’s
house that one night, Jackie met
Brando. Marlon had become a great
friend and whenever he came over to
my little apartment, he would raid the
fridge and eat all my ice cream.
Jackie and Marlon huddled in a
corner chatting for hours then, to
my dismay, sailed upstairs hand in
hand. No one still knows exactly what
happened, and now no one ever will.
The equally talented James Dean was
another regular at Arthur’s house.
One night, a group of us were dining
on hollywood Boulevard and JimmyFROM PREVIOUS PAGE
Inseparable:
Jackie (left) and
Joan in their party frocksPictures: HOLLYWOOD PHOTO ARCHIVE/MEDIAPUNCH/REX; HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTYJackie and Marlon
huddled in a corner
chatting for hours,
— then sailed
upstairs hand in
hand. Still no one
knows exactly
what happened