Hollywood Moviemakers Concluded I Wasn't A Woman But A Lady; Prissy and Fragil . . . .

" I yearned to sink my teeth into some roles I could chew on ". A classic beauty, Deborah had been playing rather frigid women since coming to America and the attention of the Hollywood public shortly after the war. Her screen characters always suggested that there was more here than meet the eye . . . her icy manner was just mere good breeding. However, make note of this, she loves a beer! It took the part of Karen Holmes in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY - 1953 and Ida Carmody in THE SUNDOWNERS - 1960 to make it clear that a real woman existed beneath that cool exterior. 

That's Why the Lady Is A Lady

NEW YORK TIMES PRESS STORY by Tom Burke

"  My God, they think I sit about all day with a bloomin' tiara on my head," says Deborah Kerr, "like the woman in the margarine commercial." Smiling wickedly, she looks out the windows of the Ritz Tower suite and waves a pale hand toward Park Avenue, and the Hudson, and all the moviegoers west of it. "Damn it, I am not the dowager empress! But then, they have seen me play all those ladies-in-pearls, so one really can't blame them."
True. Even her Karen Holmes, the abrasive, alcoholic nymphomaniac of "From Here to Eternity," didn't change the public's mind. Before it came "The Hucksters" and "Young Bess," and after it, "The King and I" and dozens of other films in which Deborah Kerr was, as she puts it, "about as sensual as an oyster," and always seemed, somehow, to be wearing strands of pearls, even when she was not. Her casting was understandable; she is a lady; and movie actress with breeding are rare as movie executives without suntans. But dowager empress? Ask Frank Sinatra, who was nervous about doing a picture with her ( "I believe Frank actually thought he couldn't swear in my presence" ), but enjoyed it so much that he has sent her flowers every Mother's Day since, or Robert Mitchum, who is not known for his rapport with leading ladies but gushes for 10 minutes when her name is mentioned, or Robert Stack, who got through his first Hollywood awards dinner speech because Dedborah, who was seated next to him, noted his nervousness, leaned over and whispered, " Bob, before you start, just look'em straight in the eye and say to yourself, '-----'em!' "
Or ask her directors. Vincent Minnelli, Walter Lang, John Frankenheimer, Elia Kazan -- they begin by explaining how much fun a set becomes when she is on it, then quickly add that she has been on sets consistently for 30 years because she can act. Though she has been nominated for six Academu Awards and lost ( "I did mind missing that 'Sundowners' Oscar" ), she has salvaged myriad movies with the depth, dignity and effortless reality she can breathe into a souffle scenario. This winter, soon after her 48th birthday, her 43d film, "The Gypsy Moths," will open, and she has just completed "The Arrangement." Elia Kazan, who directed the latter, a screen version of his own autobiographical novel, insisted that no other actress play the character that is really his late wife, Molly.
"Now, if you ask Gadge," says Deborah, leaning forward confidentially, "hell say that the characters are all fictional, and I don't think that any of us approached the parts as if we were playing actual people, but every so often, as we worked, Gadge would say to me, 'Remember how Molly was at a moment like this, how she would just not bend on this particular point?' That's really the way he has always worked with me: he does not get specific asbout sense memories and so on; instead, we'll sit and recall people we knew, and I'll say, 'Oh, it's the way she was,' and he'll say, 'Yes, that's it, use it!' And you know, Gadge hasn't changed one bit in the years since we first met." She smiles, looking wicked again, and adds, dryly, "If anything, he's more so. He's violent, vivid beyond belief, and utterly brilliant. His genius is his incredible enthusiasm for actors, for that curious thing that makes people act. All of us are either timid, shy and frightened, or very, very extroverted, and Gadge knows exactly how to crack the shell of your timidity, or harness your extroversion. Somehow, he makes you, as an artist, feel - 15 feet tall! For him, I'll play anything. Anything. I've always said, 'Gadge, if it's two lines as the charlady, I'll do it'"
Her eyes bright, she glances at the parson's table by the sofa, and points to the tea service the waiter has brought. "Elia Kazan," she announces, "could make that teacup act!" Of course her first brush with Kazan was in "Tea and Sympathy," on Broadway. The symbolism of the bit of white china on the table strikes her, and she laughs. "I was terrified of doing that play, and after three days of rehearsal, I said to dear Gadge, 'Let me out of my contract, let me go home!' He simply said no, but when Gadge says no, there is very little more one can say. Opening night, I  nearly collapsed. All of show business was out front, not to mention the critics, and I kept saying to myself, '------'em,' but it didn't help. The curtain went up, and I went totally blank. Thank God I had an exit right after the first little bit, to get the tea things. As soon as I was off, I croaked, 'My God, I'm going to faint!' Well, they stuck my head between my legs and gave me smelling salts and I just kept saying over and over, 'Don't make heavy weather, girl, don't make heavy weather . . .' "
She learned the  phrase from her aunt, Phyllis Smale, who headed a drama school in Bristol, and performed the amazing feat of having her first child at the age of 47. " I remember saying to her. 'Good heavens, Aunt Phyllis, uh, what was it like?' She simply said, 'Oh well, mustn't make heavy weather of things.' And those words have always given me confidence, something I lack profoundly. As a child, I was the worst sort of timid, underweight washout. I loathed boarding school, and the tapioca pudding they made us eat. I called it frog spawn. I can't look at frog spawn to this day without thinking of boarding school." "How often do you look at frog spawn?" "Oh, all the time, because we have a large pond at home in Switzerland, and in the spring, it's covered with it. At any rate, I studied dance with Aunt Phyllis, and longed to be in the ballet, but I was too tall. Acting just seemed the logical alternative. I wasn't in the least competitive or ambitious, really, and I had no notion in the world of becoming this thing called 'a movie star.'"
Enter Gabriel Pascal, the flamboyant Hungarian director. In 1939, Deborah was playing small parts in London repertory, and living at the Y.W.C.A. on 2 pounds a week. A kind agent  was treating her to lunch in a good restaurant when Pascal approached their table. "Who is this sweet little virgin?" he said to the agent. "I am Deborah Kerr," said Deborah evenly. "You should wear your hair down around your shoulders," said the director. "Pinned up that way, you look like a tart." Deborah promptly unpinned her reddish-golden hair. "Come to my office tomorrow afternoon," Pascal said, exiting.
He made her recite the Lord's Prayer, and signed her on the spot to play a Salvation Army girl in his excellent  film version of "Major Barbara." Six British films followed, including "The Adventuress," a charming story of an Irish girl who unwittingly involves herself with the Nazis. Louis B. Mayer saw it, and brought Deborah to MGM, as a threat to the valuable and rebellious Greer Garson. On the Metro lot, no one could pronounce her name. "It rhymes with car," said Deborah. "No," said Mr. Mayer, "it rhymes with star." Hedda, Louella and Sheilah quickly set about manufacturing a Kerr-Garson feud.
"Of course it was all nonsense," Deborah says, emptying her teacup with three matter-of-fact gulps, "and for ages, journalists referred to my time at Metro as the 'years of captivity,' but really, I had a ball. I found that whole Hollywood build-up thing amusing, and really rather fun. I simply went to work and did my job and assumed that directors and studio heads knew better than I did. I'm afraid I can't explain to you how I act - it's entirely instinctive with me, I don't analyze it - but I can tell you why. Because I find it enormously satisfying to pretend to be other people. And I pretend rather well. It's as simple as that. And, I mean to say, MGM was paying me heaps of money to do what I enjoyed. Oh, I realized that I was being typed, but I'm just not a scrapper, it's not my bag, or whatever the hell one says nowadays."
Finally, Bert Allenburg, "a terrific artist's agent," supervised her rebellion. He lured her from MCA, then asked if she'd like to play Karen Holmes. "I said 'Oh, Bert, they'll scream if you so much as suggest it.' He did, and they not only screamed, they kicked him out of the office. But he got to Fred Zinnemann, the director, and dear Fred, I do love him, do you know what his reaction was? He said, 'Now, why didn't I think of Deborah before?'"
With the contract signed, she panicked."I realized that all I'd wanted was a different sort of part, and that now I had one and didn't know how to play it. I couldn't sleep, I had ghastly nightmares. I'd sit and think as hard as I could of any women I'd ever met who was even vaguely like Karen, because, you know, a helluva lot of acting is simple mimicry, a helluva lot of it is just observing and imitating your fellow human beings. Then we went on location, to the army base, and it was a revelation! For the fist time, I saw army wives, the awful little houses they had to live in, the endless cocktail parties, the boredom, the bitterness. And when the picture came out, I really got a helluva lot of pleasure hearing people say, "Ohhh, she can act!' Of course, I'd been acting for years, but I had to roll about on a beach with Burt Lancaster, the male sex symbol of the time, before anyone noticed."
Robert Anderson had already noticed. While "Eternity" was still in production, he sent "Tea and Sympathy" to Deborah, and she refused it, with polite regret. The housemaster's wife looked, on paper, like "another goody-goody lady, so sort of pie. It took Gadge, the persuader of all time, to show me that she was a symbol of so many things that I myself believe in - compassion and tenderness, and the idea that a man need not conform to a schoolboy image of masculinity to be a man. God, I loved doing that play, but it was exhausting, and its effects on audiences became so painful. There were countless young men - homosexuals - who would come backstage, or write, saying, 'I wish I had met someone like you at that age.' They confused me with the character I played. Many would seek me out and actually ask me to - well, to perform for them the same service that Laura performs for Tom Lee, in the play. And what could I say? Just to have to refuse them, gently - I found it literally heart-rending.
She turns and looks out the windows, then clears her throat abruptly. "And that was only 13 years ago. Incredible! We were all so much more naive then. Many people who saw 'Tea and Sympathy' really did not understand what Tom Lee was suspected of. At the end of one performance, i heard a woman in the second row whisper to her husband. 'There, I told you he was a jew!' When we made the film, Bob Anderson battled endlessly with the censors, but we could not even imply that homosexuality was involved. And today? Well, I suppose the play would hardly make sense now, Would it? Because we no longer have the same prejudices, at least the young people don't, and that's marvelous. But we still don't know how to handle so much artistic freedom. 'The Killing of Sister George' was a fine play, but look what happened to the film! I, for one, was appalled at having to watch Caral Browne sticking her tongue down Susannah York's throat, simply because showing it ruined the drama. There was something far more gripping, in 'Eternity,' about watching Burt and me undressing, with bathing clothes underneath. It was twice as powerful, left to the imagination."
An aged messenger with a moist, crumbled face and hair like a dandelion gone to seed, arrived with papers from Deborah's press agent. She tips the old generously, and when he is gone, she says, "Poor soul, poor fellow! Up and down the streets in this heat. It breaks my heart to see people like that. What has he ever had, what does he have to look forward to?" She shakes her head; the question is unanswerable, or better left unanswered. Therefore, what has Deborah Kerr to look forward to? Perhaps a play, definitely the film of Brian Moore's novel, "THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE," which she will do as soon as a script is ready. In the meantime, life as usual, with her husband, screenwriter Peter Viertel, at their mountaintop retreat near Klosters, Switzerland. "I love working, but I must spend a good part of the year just being home. People who come for a week of skiing ask what in the world we do there the year round. With a big house, and a garden, and snow to shovel, and three young daughters to look after? What a question!"
One of the daughters is Peter Viertel's, by a previous marriage; the otherers are Deborah's, by her marriage to Tony Bartley, a Royal Air Force hero who never quite seemed to find himself after the war. Their 1959 divorce was attended by a certain amount of scandal: Bartley publicly accused Viertel of "enticing" his wife. I have been warned that this subject is verboten, but introduce it anyway. Deborah smiles and says that really, it is rather a private matter when two people who are married find, for example, that their temperaments are totally fifferent, or that one has matured and the other has not; and that certain newspapers - London's Daily Express is one - infuriate her with "reporting that really amounts to invasion of privacy. At the time of my divorce the British press descended like a pack of wolves, and I thought, well, so much for loyalty, so much for all the times I'd put myself out a bit for them. I wanted to shout, 'My children, in case you've forgotten, can read!'

Earlier, her husband has phoned to say he will be late; they are to sail for home the next morning, and he is seeing to last-minute state-side business. "Oh, I do wish you could have met Peter," she exclaims. "He's the most marvelously humorous, easy-going man. Take the matter of my - of being well-known. It doesn't impress Peter a bit. 'Christ,' he'll shout, 'my wife is a goddam movie star, which means we can't just go and get onto planes - we have to have the VIP treatment at the airport, which means all the luggage is lost and the plane leaves without us!'

Deborah laughs, too "That's why we get along. He simply refuses to make heavy weather of things."