The sex symbol who taught me how to kiss
Then Lana Turner gave Roger Moore a sensual massage – until her 6’ 5’’ husband put a stop to it. The gossip packed memoirs of the best-loved Bond
SCREEN hero Sir Roger Moore, who died last week aged 89, was famed for playing 007, but also starred in Ivanhoe and The Saint. Here, in the second part of our serialisation of his deliciously deadpan memoirs, he reveals the encounters he had with beautiful actresses on and off set, how he got on famously with Tony Curtis and the ups and downs of being married four times...
LANA TuRNER taught me how to kiss. Not that I thought I needed lessons: I was pushing 28 and already on my second marriage. But an actor can always learn more.
This was 1956 and we were in the middle of shooting a huge flop called Diane, in which I played a French prince called Henri. The dialogue was painful. In one scene, I had to turn to Lana and say: ‘You made me a prince — now make me a king!’ Our lips met, and I gave her the kiss of all time.
She coughed, pushed me back and said: ‘Cut! Cut! Honey, you’re a great kisser but when a lady’s over 35, she has to be careful of her neckline. So could you kiss me with the same passion but without the pressure?’
Passion without pressure . . . a great tip for a kisser. And Lana must have enjoyed our kiss, because at a lavish party on an MGM set designed as a nightclub, I was sitting on the steps beside the dance floor with a drink when I felt hands sliding up my back.
I turned my head and discovered it was Lana who was massaging my shoulders, quite sensually.
I was rather enjoying it, when I heard a deep voice say, ‘Hi honey’, and Lana’s hands jumped away. There was Lex Barker, the 6ft 5in star of Tarzan, who happened to be her husband. I got the message.
Much as I love a good story, especially the ones about myself, I resisted for a long time writing them down. My motto has always been that if I have nothing nice to say about a person, I’d rather say nothing at all. And I have no desire to hurt my friends with embarrassing revelations.
In my 60s, when I acquired my first laptop, I did make an attempt at writing down some memories. But I hadn’t managed more than about 20 pages before the device, along with some far more valuable jewellery, disappeared with our baggage at Geneva airport and was never seen again. I was almost relieved — about the manuscript, at least.
BuT, when approaching 80, I succumbed to persuasion from my darling wife Kristina and agreed to jot down some stories about the wonderful friends who have enriched my life; and above all about me — a suave, modest, sophisticated, talented, modest, debonair, modest and charming individual, of whom there is much to tell.
I was born just after midnight on October 14, 1927, in Stockwell, South London. My father, George, was 23 and a police constable stationed at Bow Street.
The first home I remember was a third-floor flat with two bedrooms and a living room-cum-kitchen in (I’m not making this up) Albert Square. Next door was a timber yard, and the smell of freshly cut wood still evokes happy childhood memories for me.
I was an only child and an obliging one, who liked nothing better than helping his mother with chores, such as black-leading the grate. But I was often ill, first with mumps and then tonsillitis, followed by double bronchial pneumonia when I was six.
The doctor told my father to prepare my mother, Lily, for the worst: when he returned the next morning, he would bring a death certificate.
According to family legend, when my fever broke in the night, I woke up and started singing Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam. This was the Thirties, long before the National Health Service, and much later I learned that my father had sold his beloved motorbike to pay the medical bill.
He and my mum were devoted to each other. As a teenager, Dad had been devastated by his own mother’s suicide. Shortly afterwards, his father married the woman who, rumour said, had been his lover for years: the affair had pushed my grandmother to kill herself. Little wonder that my dad hated my grandfather.
I was 11 when World War II broke out, and evacuated to Worthing on the South Coast. I was taken in by a couple with two sons of their own, a little older than me, who were under orders to welcome me. They made it abundantly clear that they didn’t want to.
Their mother didn’t like me, either. I will never forget being served a boiled egg for tea, and dipping a bread ‘soldier’ into the runny yolk, to be coldly informed that I was a dirty, common child.
One of my frequent illnesses got me out of there: I came out in contagious scabs all over my body, courtesy of impetigo, and another sojourn in hospital followed.
The next time I was hospitalised, I must have been over 13. This time it was a bullet wound — though it had nothing to do with the war. My friend Norman and I had ‘borrowed’ my dad’s air pistol and were mucking around with it when he decided to use my knee for target practice. I hid the injury for as long as I could; then my knee seized up and I confessed all to my mum.
When she took me to the doctor, though, he accused me of exaggerating my limp — until an X-ray revealed a lead slug buried in the bone just below the joint. It put me off guns for life.
At school, I had discovered a gift for cartoons, and designed some patriotic posters. My father proudly showed them around, and the outcome was that, aged 15-and-a-half, I was apprenticed as a trainee animator at a production company, making training films and cinema adverts.
One of my jobs was to deliver film cans to the headquarters of AK1, Army Kinematography in Curzon Street, Soho. It was here that I first met one of my closest friends in later life, Lieutenant Colonel David Niven, who was the dashing technical adviser. Naturally, he had no recollection of ever clapping eyes on me at the time.
When I first appeared on camera, I had little interest in acting, except the chance of making a few bob as an extra. My friends had heard of a major production hiring extras at Elstree, on a film called Caesar And Cleopatra, starring Vivien Leigh, and I thought it might be fun to spend a few days dressed as a Roman legionary.
The co-director Brian Hurst, who went by the nickname of the Empress of Ireland because he was Belfast-born and queenly, took a shine to my face. He urged me to consider a career as an actor.
After hours of gazing starstruck at the likes of co- stars Stewart Granger and Claude Rains, in their magnificent costumes, I didn’t
take much persuading. My parents backed me when I applied to drama school, and cheered when I was accepted at RADA.
Brian must have been hoping to get to know me better, because he invited me to a party and sat me on a sofa between writers Terence Rattigan and Godfrey Winn.
When Godfrey declared, rather suggestively, that at my age he, too, had been the most beautiful man in London, I leapt to my feet and, in my deepest voice, I announced: ‘I am not queer, you know!’ And indeed I wasn’t. I had already met my first wife, a beautiful ice-skater named Doorn van Steyn.
Once the war ended, and after a couple of years of National Service spent square-bashing with the infantry and performing with the entertainment corps, Doorn and I were married. We set up home together on the first floor of her sister’s house in Streatham.
Repertory theatre in plays like Noel Coward’s Easy Virtue helped pay the bills, while Doorn toured the country in ice shows. She never believed I could be a star, and made no secret of it. ‘Your face is too weak, your jaw’s too big and your mouth is too small,’ she said. In that painful way of all broken marriages, ours descended into bitter recrimination, culminating one night at the stage door of the Lyric Theatre in the West End, when Doorn was waiting outside.
I was understudying in a play called The Little Hut. The show’s stars, Robert Morley and David Tomlinson, were with me. Doorn was looking for an argument, and much to the delight of David and Robert, she got one. We were divorced not long afterwards.
I was a sociable fellow and not one to turn down an unexpected invitation to a weekend house party in the country at the home of one of Britain’s biggest singers, Dorothy Squires.
Highly attractive and hugely generous, Dot knew how to throw a party and I was soon a regular at the big house in Bexley, Kent, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Jackie Collins, Diana Dors, Petula Clark . . . all floating around the swimming pool in their gorgeous bikinis, while Dot’s father Arch — a Welsh fairground traveller — stared with his eyes out on stalks.
DOT did believe in my star potential. She took me to America in 1953, set us up in a Manhattan apartment and called every contact she had to get me roles. We were married in Jersey City, by a drunken justice of the peace who was very informal: ‘Do you, Dot, take Rog? Sign here.’
My career was slow to take off, and Dot had to return regularly to Britain, to record songs and perform concerts, just to keep the cash flowing. I signed a seven-year contract at MGM, making clunkers like Diane with Lana Turner.
Movies were getting me nowhere, so despite the stigma that TV roles brought, in 1956 I took a part in an early colour series called Ivanhoe. It made my name.
Then came The Alaskans — a Gold Rush melodrama which costarred the beautiful and talented Dorothy Provine. A certain amount of Press speculation surrounded the nature of our relationship, and when Dot heard about this she was naturally, shall we say, upset.
Dot had quite a temper, and it was lucky for me that she had to fly off for a cabaret booking in England before she could really let me know how cross she was.
The more tempestuous married life became, the better my career got. I landed the lead in the hit cowboy series Maverick, replacing James Garner. That was almost too successful, and I started to panic that I might spend the rest of my career playing urbane English heroes in Westerns. So when the chance of a historical epic shot in Italy arose, I grabbed it.
I don’t speak Italian, which didn’t make dealing with the director easy. When my stunt double stepped in for a dangerous shot on the first day, I was expected to take off my costume and hand it over. It’s quite tricky to explain, in sign language, why that won’t be happening.
But my inability to speak the lingo didn’t stop me from falling in love with one of the actresses, the beautiful Luisa Mattioli. By now, Dot and I barely saw each other. The marriage had disintegrated — but in 1961 that was not sufficient cause for a divorce, and Dot refused to give consent.
I’m not particularly proud of how I left Dot. But I felt I had to follow my heart, which now lay well and truly with Luisa. I have always been an incurable romantic. When I won the title role in The Saint, based on the Leslie Charteris stories about the swashbuckling
investigator, Luisa followed me to England and we bought a home near the studios.
My character, Simon Templar, drove a Volvo P1800 sports car, and I owned one in real life, which certainly helped fans to spot me.
But the series wasn’t quite as glamorous as it looks on screen. When an adventure is set in the Bahamas, you can be sure it was shot on the Elstree lot in mid-winter, with me freezing in a short-sleeved shirt.
And if you’re wondering why all the cars seem to be driving on the right . . . the cameraman simply flipped the film over, to reverse the image.
My reputation as an action hero was soon established. Comedian Jimmy Tarbuck invited me onto Sunday Night At The London Palladium and asked if I ever went on the town with all the other secret agent actors — 007 Sean Connery, Patrick Macnee from The Avengers, The Prisoner’s Patrick McGoohan and so on.
When I agreed that, yes, this happened occasionally, Jimmy asked me innocently: ‘Pussy Galore?’
‘Well, we don’t go looking for it,’ I replied. Amazingly, we got away with that on live TV without a single complaint.
Within a couple of years, Luisa and I had two children, but Dot still refused to grant a divorce. That didn’t change until the BAFTA awards dinner in 1968, eight years after we separated, when the compere Kenneth More referred to Luisa as my ‘wife’.
All hell broke loose as Dot rang every editor on Fleet Street and announced she was going to sue Kenny and ITV for libel. When she calmed down, I think she saw how ridiculous the situation was, and finally gave me a divorce. Kenneth More was my best man at my wedding to Luisa. After the ceremony, my daughter, Deborah, burst into tears. ‘Oh Daddy,’ she wailed, ‘you always said you’d marry me.’
At the same time as my divorce, I left The Saint and soon became one half of The Persuaders — me as the dashing aristocrat Lord Brett Sinclair and Tony Curtis as the brash American Danny Wilde.
The show was originally to be called the Friendly Persuaders, which was prophetic, because Tony Curtis and I quickly became great chums.
HE TOOK some persuading to sign up, though. The producer, Lew Grade, had to buy him a house in Chester Square, Mayfair: it cost £48,000, back then in 1970.
The first time I met Tony, I took along our story editor Terry Nation (the man who invented the Daleks). We were warned not to smoke in front of the Hollywood star: Tony was head of the anti-smoking lobby in America.
But after a couple of hours, I could see that chain- smoker Terry was twitching, so I politely wondered if we might all light up.
Tony fussed around, looking for an ashtray, and returned with a book of hideous medical pictures. Turning the pages, he explained that these were cancerous lungs and livers. I think it was at that moment I resolved to give up cigarettes — though I never have been able to resist a cigar.
Strangely, Tony’s evangelical view of smoking didn’t extend to marijuana. Bob Hope used to do a gag about him: ‘ Tony Curtis has been flying around London for three months, waiting to land.’
Many years later, I met a police inspector who told me that he’d been a young Met constable on duty outside No 10 when Tony and I shot a scene in Downing Street.
‘You missed your chance for a high- profile arrest and promotion,’ I told him. ‘Tony lit a giant spliff that day, right there on the Prime Minister’s doorstep.’
As The Persuaders hit the TV screens, I tried my hand as a movie producer. One of my first ventures was a film called A Touch Of Class, starring Glenda Jackson, who won an Oscar.
I would have loved Cary Grant to come out of retirement and co- star, but he was enjoying his leisure too much.
Cary epitomised that ‘touch of class’, but had an amazingly ribald sense of humour. He owned a collection of fartmaking gizmos, whoopee cushions and the like, and knew all manner of dirty songs.
To the tune of My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, he loved to belt out the Tin Soldier song: ‘I once had a box of tin soldiers / I knocked off the general’s head / I broke all the sergeants and corporals / Now I play with my privates instead.’
Once the Bond movies started, I found myself offered outstanding action roles in films such as Gold with Susannah York, The Wild Geese with Richards Burton and Harris, and many more.
When we filmed Shout At the Devil, I was starring opposite Lee Marvin, who drank so hard that he sometimes couldn’t say his lines.
In one scene he had to cradle a newborn baby, his grandson. The infant had been screaming its lungs out all morning, but when Lee picked him up and breathed neat vodka fumes over him, the noise stopped instantly. I’ve often wondered if that child grew up to be an alcoholic.
My marriage to Luisa had always been stormy, but we stayed together for many years until, after a cancer scare, I was unable to stand the fiery Italian temperament any longer. We parted, and I later married a friend and neighbour, Kristina.
In 1998, when Dot was very ill, I would phone her to ask how she was doing and find out if I could do anything to help. All our old animosities were long forgotten.
We talked about Kristina and Dot said: ‘She’s the one, isn’t she, Rog?’ I agreed that yes, Kristina was truly ‘the one’.
My bout of cancer, and Dot’s long illness, put me in mind of the last thing that Frank Sinatra ever said to me. He was an old friend. We first met at a charity gala in the Sixties and I later discovered he and his wife Mia Farrow were great fans of The Saint.
Whenever he was in London, we would have dinner at Annabel’s in Mayfair, and I attended many of his concerts the world over.
Sinatra was like no other performer. He could captivate every soul in the house. And Frank never lost his will to walk out on stage and give it everything.
‘ You gotta love livin’, kid,’ he told me. ‘Because dyin’s a pain in the ass.’
My Word Is My Bond by Sir roger Moore, published by Michael o’Mara at £9.99. To order this book for £7.49 (25 per cent discount) until June 3, 2017, go to www. mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640, p&p is free on orders over £15.