MOVIE GREAT WHO WAS A REAL SPY

DURING World War II, my old mate David Niven had a rolling contract with the great Sir Alexander Korda, who owned the story rights to The Admirable Crichton, a story by J.M. Barrie. He was keen that Niven should play the lead, and in order to raise the finance sent a telegram to Sam Goldwyn at MGM: SUGGEST YOU DO, FOR WAR EFFORT, ADMIRAL CRICHTON. Korda thought it was a story set in the Navy and hadn’t even read it! His knighthood, incidentally, wasn’t for services to the film industry but actually for his work in British intelligence — what better cover is there than that of a film producer, who has to travel to many different countries to set up pictures? No one suspected he was a spy.