The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [1]
Everyone gets lucky now and then, and I’ve had some lucky breaks. I’ve been lucky, too, with friends and agents and supporters who have all looked out for me. But if there’s one person I feel I owe for the way the last eighteen years have gone, it’s Jack Nicholson. In fact if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be writing this book now. I have Jack to thank for the resurrection of my movie career. I know he’s not everyone’s idea of a fairy godmother but he did it for me. I’ll explain how, later – but it could all have been so very different . . .
This is not a serious tome by a pompous old actor – above all, I’m an entertainer, so please feel free to laugh. I want to share the joy and the fun and the good fortune I have had with friends, to tell you about the things I’ve done and the places I’ve been and about how when I got there it was never the way I thought it would be. In many ways this is an innocent’s venture into the unknown, so I’m pleased you want to come along for the ride. To you and me – bon voyage.
1
The Twilight Zone
When I finished my first autobiography What’s It All About? 1992 seemed like a good place to stop. I had a great film career, a worldwide bestseller, some restaurants, a beautiful house and most importantly of all, a loving family. Christmas and New Year’s Eve 1991 had been spent in Aspen, Colorado, as guests of Marvin and Barbara Davis, the Texan oil billionaires and socialites. We stayed at the Little Nell Inn (which Marvin happened to own) and we were surrounded by friends including Lenny and Wendy Goldberg, Sean Connery and his wife Michelene and Sidney and Joanna Poitier.
It was a fabulous group to spend a holiday with. I don’t ski but I have really worked hard at developing my après ski skills and that is what Aspen is all about. As we sat around, enjoying the sunshine, gossiping about old times and eating fabulous food with this great group of people, I felt pretty happy with my lot. Everyone there had been part of my life since I first got to Hollywood – although in fact I’d met Sean in London back in the late fifties at what was then called a ‘bottle party’. If someone was giving a party in those days and couldn’t quite afford it, the invitation would be to ‘bring a bottle and a bird’. I was so broke that I couldn’t afford to bring a bottle, so I brought two birds. And they were both very beautiful girls. I walked into this party and there was Sean, who seemed enormous compared with the rest of us weedy actor types, and he saw me with those two girls and I became his instant new best friend. That period, back in the 1950s, was a tough time for me – perhaps the toughest I’ve ever known – and I was living hand to mouth through much of it, owing small sums of money to people all over London and often having to cross the road to avoid creditors. Of course, what I couldn’t have foreseen was that not so many years later, Shirley Maclaine would choose me to play opposite her in Gambit and give me a welcome to LA party, and in would walk Sidney Poitier. And that Sidney would become my instant new best friend.
Aspen with old friends was followed by a period back in Hollywood. I felt on top of the world. Things could only get better. I was completely oblivious to the downturn in store for me. My wife Shakira and I had bought a small house with a fantastic view, not on a Beverly Hill but in the more modest district of Trousdale. It was a holiday home, really – our main base was back in England – but we wanted to be close to our dear friend Swifty Lazar whose wife, Mary, was very sick.
Apart from Mary’s illness, there were no signs of impending doom. Nothing seemed to have changed. Our old friends were all in town. As with our New Year at Aspen, the dinner we had one night at Chasen’s restaurant in Hollywood with Frank and Barbara Sinatra, Greg and Veronique Peck and George and