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99 9 the British Film colony and errol Flynn I’ve been a member of scores of clubs. Tennis. Equestrian. Flying. Golf. I’m still a proud member of two London clubs—the Savage and the Green Room—and am an affiliate member of the Players and the Lotus in New York, also the Masquers Club in Hollywood. But in Beverly Hills I am now clubless. Like so many pleasant haunts in the LA district, from the famous Garden of Allah to the elegant nightclubs Ciro’s, the Mocambo, the Trocadero, my deeply beloved Cock ’n Bull pub on Sunset Boulevard—all went the way of progress. But back in 1937 I found the famous Hollywood British film colony in its heyday. It was an expatriate group embellished with many who were major box-office bulwarks of the industry: Ronald Colman, Cary Grant, Charles Laughton, the late Sir Guy Standing, David Niven, Vivien Leigh, sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland, Ray Milland, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Claude Rains, Roland Young, Basil Rathbone, and Nigel Bruce. Not to speak of Aubrey Smith, Boris Karloff, Edmund Gwenn, Brian Aherne, Greer Garson, the wonderful Dame May Whitty, and the soon-toarrive Gladys Cooper. Not that the British film colony designated itself a club, but surely any organization whose membership depends on an accepted nomination has to fall into that category. So club it was, and I was a member—and now probably the only living survivor. When it came to exclusivity, for twenty-five years or more the colony presented a formidable wall of dis-fellowship that any British newcomer seeking social acceptance could surmount only if fortified with the right credentials. Following meticulous perusal, the newcomer would be designated in or out of this sacrosanct community. Without question, being out HitcHcock’s Partner in susPense 100 was discomforting—the shunning encountered from a Ronald Colman or C. Aubrey Smith at a mixed-nationality cocktail party would make an unaccepted Brit feel like he’d crawled out of the woodwork. Conversely, once in, colony life—with its garden parties and sports—was enjoyable; and Maggie and I appreciated our inclusion. I still find myself wondering what form of genie converted a troupe of “strolling players” into the snooty arbiter of its own countrymen. It could have been snobbery, based on the possession of luxury homes, swimming pools, tennis courts, and so on. Or perhaps the phenomenon was a male disorder, born of a nostalgic yearning to emulate the insularity employed by the gentlemen’s clubs of London’s Mayfair and Belgravia. On the other hand, colony rejection might have been due to certain diehards’ believing that “Oxford-accented” Britishers should limit their acquaintanceships to those of similar “good breeding.” To let up on such discrimination might be the first misstep to colony infestation by low-class British vaudevillians and the like. Whether the good side of the colony outweighed the bad is a matter of conjecture. But one fact remains—credentials or not, the approved acceptance into the most exclusive consortium west of the Atlantic lay with one man alone . . . Hollywood’s and Britain’s great film and stage patriarch, C. Aubrey Smith. His nod represented the welcome mat or the brush-off. Having known Aubrey well, I’m convinced that he can’t have been happy with the assignment. I truly believe that, at heart a simple soul, he was the victim of the old-school-tie, stiff-upper-lip implorations of so many of his world-famous compatriots. But Aubrey went along with the job and, despite its dinner jacket–in–the–jungle mentality, the British film colony flourished. As for Aubrey, through the passing of years I was lucky enough to have him in three of my films, and he was always worth his weight in both performance and grizzle. Offscreen he was unforgettable, crustily imposing, dominantly erect, the perfect personification of graceful gentility, and, perhaps not surprisingly, kind to the point of being adorable. Aubrey’s home was where Coldwater Canyon crests the Santa Monica Mountains, affording breathtaking views of the San Fernando Valley to the north and the sixty-mile-distant Santa Catalina Island to the south. The house was lovely, crowned by a weather vane stoutly portraying three cricket stumps topped by cricket balls, and above these, swinging in the four winds, was a cricket bat. Cricket! I never knew what the initial C of [3.137.192.3] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 10:37 GMT...

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