Merv Kaufman, with a prudent peek into the curious corners of an extraordinary lady’s life.
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I never met her—no one introduced us—but her shadow proved fairly far reaching at various times in my life.
It was summertime on the UCLA campus, and I was taking two courses I wanted under my belt before formal classes resumed in the fall. One very torrid evening I agreed to meet a classmate at her sorority house—ostensibly so we could bone up for an expected quiz.
The house was humming that night. The mothers’ group had assembled, in anticipation of meeting with the decorator who was coming to present his ideas for a modest makeover before the fall “rush” period. Everyone was in sloppy clothes—the moms in scarves and pedal-pushers, the girls in shorts, blouses and T’s. No one was wearing makeup; it was too hot for that and, as it turned out, also too hot to do much studying.
Suddenly there was a stirring downstairs, in the front hall. The decorator had arrived and, it seemed, had brought his date for the evening with him. He climbed the stairs to the sorority-house living room, a man in an elegantly tailored suit and carefully combed hair, his date following uncertainly behind him.
♦◊♦
She was awesome. Tall. Unbelievably voluptuous. A sweep of tinted blond hair that touched her shoulders. And what might also be described as smoldering lips. She had some difficulty negotiating the stairs—the skirt of her two-piece dress was extraordinarily tight and fairly bursting around her boobs. As I recall, she was magnificent.
“What is this place?” she asked in a husky voice—to no one in particular—as she viewed her surroundings.
“It’s a sorority house,” I answered readily.
“O, mein Gott!” she muttered, then began peeling off her elbow-length gloves, which was like watching some kind of elegant strip-tease. A provocative gesture. I remember hearing a few of the sorority sisters actually gasp.
By the time the couple had moved into the dining room for the meeting, everyone in the house—even the cooks—had peeked around the dining room door. They couldn’t have cared less about how the decorator proposed to improve their surroundings; they just wanted to feast their eyes on their designer’s date—and whisper among themselves critically.
Who was she? And what was she doing with him?
The meeting didn’t last long; the visiting couple had someplace they had to be.
They left abruptly—the woman was smiling now. I guess she was relieved.
One astute sorority sister found a recent copy of a movie magazine, thus was able to identify their designer’s voluptuous passenger as Anita Ekberg, a recent “Miss Universe” and currently a contract player at Universal. At that point, it was unlikely that any of her films (she made over 40, ultimately) were yet in release.
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Shamelessly, everyone in the house found a window—and gawked. They saw the man open the door of his top-down Cadillac convertible so that his date could slither in. When he took his seat, the woman pulled close to him and wrapped an arm around his neck.
“Ooooh!” You could hear that moan from the women, young and old, who thronged the windows.
The car backed into Hilgard Avenue, then turned north toward Sunset, leaving a lot of curious women to ponder what that meeting had been about.
One astute sorority sister found a recent copy of a movie magazine, thus was able to identify their designer’s voluptuous passenger as Anita Ekberg, a recent “Miss Universe” and currently a contract player at Universal. At that point, it was unlikely that any of her films (she made over 40, ultimately) were yet in release.
But that didn’t stop anyone in the sorority house from talking about the evening’s ultra-glamorous visitor, a young woman whose name was destined to become world famous.
♦◊♦
My own future lay in the hands of the U.S. Army, as I was committed to two years of service—in Korea—but, thankfully, after the armistice.
I came home focused on building a future which, at that point, involved becoming a publicist in some facet of the movie industry. I landed at a small firm just off the Sunset Strip. My boss was, himself, a kind of film-industry legend.
Years earlier, when MGM was worried about the negative whispers their handsome leading man, Robert Taylor, was generating, my boss came up with a scheme that was supposed to set everything right.
When Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck, his then wife, were to sail to Europe from New York, my boss hired a so-called bobby-soxer, snuck her aboard the vessel and hid her in the Taylors’ stateroom. Then, the ceaselessly inventive publicist that he was, he led a clutch of tabloid reporters and photographers in to “discover” the allegedly smitten stowaway.
“Stanwyck was mad at me,” my boss said. But I gather the stunt did garner a lot of press, which made the studio happy.
By the time I went to work for this man, his career was somewhat in decline. He had only a handful of clients, among them John Wayne’s film company, Batjac. And, at that time, Batjac had Anita Ekberg under contract.
It was said that Ekberg was supremely unhappy about being thus exploited—with no profit accruing to her. But she had no choice. When she was finally set free, her international fame really took wing, all thanks to Federico Fellini. But that’s another story.
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What did this mean? From what I could discern, she was tethered to a long-term arrangement under which she’d be paid a modest, though escalating, salary—and “loaned” out profitably to other studios and producers eager to exploit her overheated sensuous looks.
The simple truth was that John Wayne made a bit of money from this association with his Scandinavian-born property. It was said that Ekberg was supremely unhappy about being thus exploited—with no profit accruing to her. But she had no choice. When she was finally set free, her international fame really took wing, all thanks to Federico Fellini. But that’s another story.
As indicated, I never met Ekberg, though I was aware that she and my boss had frequent soul-searching phone chats (and I think he took her to lunch once). She didn’t much need his services as a publicist at that point; his function was mainly to keep her in line and, if possible, content.
Some months before I joined the firm, Anita had married. Her spouse was a second-tier English actor named Anthony Steel, prone to heavy drinking and bad behavior. He landed in newspaper headlines often, mainly for attacking men whom he thought or imagined somehow fancied his bride.
Tony and Anita separated often during their three-year off-and-on marriage. And when she was invited to be a featured guest at the Brazilian Film Festival in Rio, she happily left him behind.
“This is not good,” my boss muttered. Then, through pleading long-distance phone calls, he sought to convince his client to send for her spouse forthwith. “Left here in town, on his own, Tony’s bound to be trouble.”
Ekberg must have realized the truth of this, for she ultimately invited Tony to join her and, obviously, funded a plane ticket so that he could. The boss was vastly relieved. “We just can’t have him in our hair,” he insisted.
My job, as it turned out, was to transport Tony Steel to the airport, sober and on time, then make sure he boarded the plane—a job that four years of college and two years of military service hadn’t quite prepared me for. But I had no choice.
♦◊♦
The night before the flight, I timed the route from my office to Bel Air and the house Anita and her spouse had been renting. I figured out how long it would take me, in traffic, to get from Bel Air to LAX, then added some “wait time,” as I figured that no matter when I’d tell Tony Steel I’d be coming for him, he wouldn’t be ready. And he wasn’t.
His flight to Brazil was to leave at 9:00 p.m., as I recall. I arrived at his house more than two hours earlier (this was that magic time before airport security cluttered everyone’s travel plans). He greeted me at the door soaking wet and wrapped in a white towel.
“Come in, come in,” he urged. I followed him, and as we moved from room to room, I saw tumblers of what appeared to be straight Scotch being sipped. Storm clouds, at least in my mind, were already gathering.
But, by golly, Tony did pull himself together. He dressed quickly, squeezed a markedly protruding belly into an elegantly fitted blazer and scrupulously toured each room to test doors and turn off lights. He gathered all the liquor glasses and rinsed them at the kitchen sink, then took one last look and nodded that he was ready.
I ‘d borrowed my dad’s big Buick, leaving my little MGA behind in our driveway, so there would be plenty of room for Tony and however much luggage he chose to take.
“Do you think I’ll be recognized?” he asked. Talk about a loaded question! I don’t recall how I answered it, but callow as I was I knew that an actor (and would-be celebrity) wouldn’t be pleased to hear that no one in all of LA would know who he was.
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Traffic was amazingly light as we descended through Bel Air and onto Sepulveda Blvd., which at that time was the best way to reach LA’s biggest airport. When we were approaching it, Tony suddenly became noticeably tense, pulling a pair of aviator-style sunglasses from his chest pocket.
“Do you think I’ll be recognized?” he asked. Talk about a loaded question!
I don’t recall how I answered it, but callow as I was I knew that an actor (and would-be celebrity) wouldn’t be pleased to hear that no one in all of LA would know who he was. Nor, conversely, did I want to suggest that he might be mobbed by fans who had caught one or another of his grade-B English movies.
I remember driving up to the airline and promising Tony that I’d join him after parking the car. Someone helped him haul his bags into the terminal; I suspect that whoever it was had no idea this man was any kind of celebrity.
When I entered the terminal, I found Tony pacing and fuming. “You son-of-a-bitch! You got me here early. How could you do that, you bastard!” There was a bit of a twinkle in his expression; he clearly enjoyed pulling my chain, just as I enjoyed the fact that we’d arrived without incident and he had his ticket in hand along with a receipt for his checked bags.
“Come with me,” he demanded suddenly. “We’re going to get a drink.” And he literally dragged me into the bar. “Oh dear, oh dear,” I thought. “This is not good at all.” Getting Tony even mildly drunk had been a stated no-no. But I had to oblige him; I also knew I had to stand by until he was on that plane and the plane was safely aloft.
I nursed a single Scotch, while Tony downed two or possibly three. I remember consulting my watch furtively, hopeful that the flight would soon be called. When it finally was, Tony took me in hand once again and, as we approached the gate, staggered convincingly—which he knew would feed my very obvious anxiety. Yes, of course, he was an actor—what did I expect?
After we reached the gate and we shook hands, he staggered off in an even more exaggeratedly drunken way—finally getting me to laugh, if only in relief.
I waited till I was sure his plane was in the air, then found a pay phone so I could report to the boss that Anita Ekberg’s trouble-making spouse was truly out of our hair.
Four days later, the LA Times had a short front-page story about a Brazilian sculptor whom Tony Steel had punched out rather rudely as a result of his having created an Anita Ekberg likeness in clay. Naked.
My boss shook his head, but all I could think of then was, “Not on my watch.”
Ekberg’s marriage to Anthony Steel lasted all of three years, after which she returned to Europe and, ultimately, became the movie icon I guess she was destined to be. (Note that she was 83 when she died January 11, 2015.) I have no idea how she felt about any of this because, as I’ve indicated, I really never knew her.
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Photo: Associated Press file photo