David Bret: Autobiographies

Paris-born David Bret is one of Britain's foremost show business biographers and has spent 50 years writing about the famous and infamous. Now, he dishes the dirt on himself!  He speaks affectionately about his long-suffering mother and eccentric family. He recalls celebrities who became mutual confidants: French singer Barbara, Dorothy Squires and Marlene Dietrich. He remembers show business friends with fondness: Damia, Serge Reggiani, Alice Sapritch, Melina Mercouri, Joey Stefano and recalls his meeting with Greta Garbo. He writes of his friendship with Peter Sutcliffe in pre-Yorkshire Ripper days. But while speaking of these people with affection, he takes no prisoners when discussing his enemies--especially the physically and mentally abusive father who make his childhood and youth a misery. Also he does not hold back when discussing his many love affairs. David Bret has never been less than honest in sticking his head above the parapet in his best-selling books and when expressing his opinions on a myriad of topics, and he is wholly unsparing when writing about himself.

Foreword

I’ve been around. One benefit of my life is that I never settled down. To date there have been nineteen homes and aside from Grange Farm, where I lived twice, once I left a place I never returned. Thus those I left behind have not changed because I was never there to watch them grow old or leave this world. This made writing these memoirs that much easier, though I have had to think long and hard who or what I should include here, and who or what I should not. In the end I decided to write everything and be damned, and to change a few names here and there to save a few blushes—primarily my own.

   I’ve had highs and lows, success, and thankfully and most gratefully in my professional life not that much failure. I’ve loved and lost, experienced joy and pain in equal measure, had friends and lovers who were ordinary men and women, and a few who were famous—if not bordering on the infamous. I’ve lived life to the full to make up for the miseries of my youth, but even then I grasped life with both hands to get me through the horrors of living with an abusive father.

   Were it not for the adoration and my need to protect my mother from this man, I would have been dead years ago. I guess that makes me a survivor. When I love, I do so unconditionally, but I bear grudges and when I hate—which is not often, and only under extreme duress—it is with every fibre in my being, which I guess makes me a formidable enemy.  Have I told the truth, from A to Z? Yes, I have! And would I do it all again, the good and the bad? You bet! Well, most of it!

David Bret

August 2016

David Bret is an Anglo-French biographer, novelist, historian and broadcaster, with over fifty published titles to his credit. This collection represents poems penned by him over a 50-year period. But minutely edited, they tell of his frequently complicated and controversial private life—his loves, platonic and otherwise, and his life-long involvement with the entertainments industry. The French chanson, pop and rock, opera, royalty, British and European comedy icons, Hollywood movie idols, matinee idols, porn stars and even a serial killer. David Bret has known and associated with them all!

Daddy Not So Dearest: My Parent From Hell

"Evil, cruel, contrived, nasty, homophobic, slimy, pathetic, puerile, poisonous, loathsome, psychotic, despotic, anti-Semitic, bigoted, adulterous and loud-mouthed. These are just some of the terms-and I'm sure there are more-that applied to George Spurr, my adoptive father. Add to this roster child-beater, rapist and crook, and this just about sums him up. It used to make me angry and confused, as a child, watching fathers hugging their sons, or seeing sons weeping for the fathers they had loved and lost. Mine never once hugged me, or showed the slightest affection towards anyone when he was a part of my life, or even suggested that he cared about anyone but himself. When at family weddings I watched fathers proudly lead their daughters down the aisle to give them away at their wedding, my heartfelt desire was to see mine laid out in a wooden box."
This is how celebrity biographer David Bret describes the man who adopted and raised him, in this harrowing story of his abused childhood and youth.

 

Rudolph Valentino

 Rudolph Valentino: A Dream of Desire

Rudolph Valentino was less ashamed of his sexuality than he was afraid of being trapped by the image of his public persona. In 1920s America, gay and bisexual men were stereotyped as feeble, effeminate degenerates. None of these terms applied to Valentino—a powerfully-built man who excelled at most sports, and boxing in particular. Yet it was his persistent and unnecessary need to prove his “manhood” which may have contributed to his early death. So, who were these men? Claude Rambeau was the chansonnier he met during his first visit to Paris, aged 18. Count Alexander Salm was an Austrian tennis ace, an exponent of the Argentine tango and a hero of World War One. Jules Raucourt was a Belgian stage -actor. Norman Kerry was the matinee idol who appeared in such silent classics as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Emmett J Flynn was the director who, though thrice-married, had a penchant for sporting types and whose career was blighted by alcoholism brought about by trying to hide his sexuality. Dublin-born Douglas Gerrard was a big name in Hollywood when he took Valentino under his wing, but is sadly forgotten today. Paul Ivano was a 19-year-old French cameraman, sent to America by his family to recuperate after being gassed while fighting at the Front, and who went on to much greater things. Frank Mennillo was an Italian businessman and aficionado of “button boys” who met Valentino when he first arrived in New York, and who would be the last of his lovers to see him alive. Thomas Meighan was an actor friend who was always there for Valentino to lean upon in times of trouble and stress. Robert Florey was a French publicist who came to America to work on one film, fell for Valentino, and stayed another 50 years to become one of the country’s most eminent producers. Valentino’s letters to him and Florey’s responses, which form a large and significant part of his story, are in turn touching and humorous. Jacques Hébertot was the French showman and Valentino’s guide during his second visit to Paris, in the summer of 1923. André Daven was the French actor-manager who went on to launch and manage some of the biggest names in French show business, and was unquestionably the great love of Valentino’s life. Luther Mahoney was a former New York cop turned factotum, and who provided Valentino with a shoulder to cry on and became his closest friend. Mario Carillo was a former Italian cavalry officer who achieved some success in Hollywood. Valentino’s partner at the time of his death, he was the only one of his lovers who lived with him. Barclay Warburton was the Philadelphia-born millionaire at whose home Rudy fell ill in August 1926. And the women? Coco was the Parisian music-hall demimondaine who mocked Valentino's performance in the bedroom, making him wary of women for the rest of his life. There were two lesbian wives, Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova, “baritone babe” members of Hollywood’s most notorious sewing circle. The former slammed the door of the bridal-suite in his face, but returned to support him at end of his life. The latter, rapacious and domineering, very quickly became Valentino’s and the studios’ very worst nightmare. Alla Nazimova was the Crimean born actress who ridiculed Valentino when they first met, but subsequently became one of his most cherished allies. Sheila Chisholm, aka Lady Loughborough, was the nymphomaniac Australian socialite who foisted herself on him during the last year of his life. Pola Negri was the quintessential vamp and teller of tall-tales, but who nevertheless cared very much for him towards the end. And finally there was June Mathis, the most important woman in Valentino’s life who became his surrogate mother and the keeper of his soul. With a wealth of documented evidence, rare photographs and previously unpublished recollections and correspondence from his friends and lovers, David Bret presents a unique, unflinching portrait of the real Rudolph Valentino.

Mario Lanza

 Mario Lanza: Sublime Serenade

Maria Callas called him the greatest tenor who ever lived. Vocally and technically, Mario Lanza was a genius. Like Callas, Lanza's was a phenomenal talent complimented by a more than monstrous ego. Suffering from what would today be diagnosed as bi-polar disorder, he lived virtually his whole life with his finger firmly pressed on the self-destruct button. Too undisciplined to remain in opera, Lanza found himself sucked into the Hollywood whirlpool, engulfed by the opulent lifestyle this offered: easy money, good living, and limitless food, sex and drugs, to which he became increasingly addicted. Lanza took his frustration out of others, frequently launching an uncontrollable temper on those around him and earning himself a reputation as one of the movie stars who were most disliked by their peers in the studio system years.

Lanza's scatological pranks were as legendary as his drinking, womanising and gorging sprees, each one followed by crash diets and periods of dark depression and self-loathing which made him virtually impossible to control. Yet he produced arguably the finest tenor recordings of popular music and opera of the last century as well as some classic films, including The Great Caruso and Serenade. 

In Sublime Serenade, David Bret uncompromisingly but lovingly, and in his unique and celebrated style, tells the Lanza story, from his birth in a poor district of Philadelphia, to his death in Rome 38 years later and his involvement with the Mafia. A must for all music and movie fans alike.

Rock Hudson

 Rock Hudson: The Gentle Giant

Introduction

Why didn’t Rock tell me he had the virus? I might have been able to help. Improbable as it seems, right up to the very end he believed he would beat that thing. He wished to remain proud, brave, to hold his head up high for my sake. He did this by appearing in several episodes of Dynasty. I advised him to rest, but he reckoned working enabled him to forget the monster that was slowly devouring him. Rock Hudson was an exceptional man, one to whom I owe the most beautiful moments of my life.

This was Marc Christian (1953-2009), the last of Rock Hudson’s stereotyped lovers—with few exceptions his small army of conquests were big, blond, macho and muscular—addressing a live audience (by then not quite so ignorant of AIDS) on the French television programme Stars a la Barre, four years after the actor’s death from an AIDS-related illness.

At a press conference of 2 November 1985, however, just one month after Rock passed away, Christian’s attitude—and public opinion—had been less sympathetic. Then he had announced that he would be suing the Hudson estate, Rock’s manager and best friend Mark Miller, and two unnamed doctors for a staggering $14 million because, he claimed, they had conspired to endanger his life by keeping the true nature of Rock’s illness from him, whilst he and Rock had continued having unprotected sex.

There was outrage amongst both gay and anti-gay activists across the United States when Christian won his case—though not without a considerable reduction in damages after Rock’s lawyers launched a Pyrrhic appeal.

A surprisingly shy, sensitive and intensely private man, Rock gave but a handful of in-depth interviews, frequently vetted by him before being submitted for publication. I have drawn heavily on the original, unexpurgated conversations for this much-revised edition of Rock Hudson, published to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of his death—namely the ones with David Castell, Joan Mac Trevor, Gordon Gow, Gérard Néves and several others whom Rock was able to trust. These are to be found in the Bibliography. Of equal importance are the stark revelations of Sara Davidson and the now known to be extremely dubious ones of Rock’s “lavender” wife, Phyllis Gates.

On 24 August 1983, two years before his death, Rock came close to baring his soul when granting an unprecedented interview to Professor Ronald L Davis, Director of the Southern Methodist University of Dallas’ Oral History Collection of the Performing Arts. Being permitted to use these tapes freely was an enormous privilege, and large segments of the interviews form the series of statements and confessions accompanying my text. The tapes and transcripts of the interview are currently housed in the archives of the SMU’s DeGolyer Institute.

As an actor, few would deny that Rock Hudson’s abilities were limited in comparison with contemporaries such as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, William Holden and even James Dean. Complex lengths of dialogue are said to have confused him, his emotional approach to a role was considerable but his intellectual standing during his formative years was virtually non-existent, and during his early films he frequently fluffed his lines, requiring many takes for the simplest scene. In addition, his on-screen movements were cumbersome, even wooden at times.

On the other hand, Rock was a consummate professional. There were no on-set tantrums or challenging of directors instructions, never any fights with co-stars making him not only a delight to work with but a joy to be around once the cameras stopped rolling. His most important quality, something that positively lights up the screen even in his most banal pictures, was his absolute, completely natural and limitless charisma.

   Now, as I did back in 2004 when I first published Rock’s exciting but ultimately tragic story, I leave the last word to my late friend Sheridan Morley, a hugely respected literary and theatrical figure who met Rock several times during his later years, and spoke to me of him with the utmost reverence:

 He had been programmed by the studios to be charming, but charm came naturally to          Rock Hudson. He really was the last of the great gentlemen stars, there’s absolutely no      doubting that. Rock Hudson wasn’t just a nice man—he was a very nice man.

This, then, is the story of that charming, very nice man.

With Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean in "Giant"

Jean Harlow

 Jean Harlow: Tarnished Angel

Jean Harlow was an enigma, the original Blonde Bombshell, completely uninhibited. She made no secret of the fact that she never wore underwear, bleached her pubic hair to match that on her head – and was never afraid of showing this to journalists, if they asked. 

On the screen she epitomised the fun-loving, wise-cracking tart-with-a-heart yet away from the spotlight she was nothing like the public perceived her to be.

In this new biography, David Bret uncovers an unhappy upbringing by an unloving mother and sexually abusive step-father, her love of older men and the mistreatment she suffered at their hands, her progression from movie slut to screwball comedy star, her special relationship with William Powell, how she was ripped off by the studios, and more. Jean Harlow: Tarnished Angel is a compelling portrayal of the enigmatic star.