Everything you see I owe to spaghetti: Just one of many confidences from Sophia Loren – before she invited him to kiss her – in screenwriter Stanley Price’s celebrity packed, gossipy memoir

BOOK OF THE WEEK

My lunch with Marilyn and other stories

by Stanley Price (Sandycove £14.99, 208pp)

When I used to, at work, encounter Olivia de Havilland in Paris, Barry Humphries in a vintage car museum, or Maureen Lipman on the Amazon, such sacred beasts became my friends, never seeming to take notice of whether I was rude or indiscreet about the printed texts. Barbara Windsor even let me share her foot spa.

There was a time when the appeal of journalism was merely meeting celebrities. Stanley Price, who died in 2019 at the age of 88, was also an old-fashioned hacker who was fortunate to work at a time without the interference or burdens of the minders and lawyers who insisted on signed triplicate confidentiality agreements that today everyone with Z-list status and above make it boringly careful and controlling.

Stars now expect copy approval, headline approval, photo approval. But Stanley, when he worked in the entertainment department of Life magazine and other publications, could just pick up the phone and take everyone out to dinner.

That’s how Mandy Rice-Davies came his way. Mandy, a Welsh model, was the devious girlfriend of Christine Keeler, who played her own part in the Profumo scandal in 1962. When Lord Astor denied having an affair with her, Mandy told the judge: ‘Well, that he would. , not true?’. An answer that can now be found in The Oxford Book Of Quotations.

Stanley accompanied Mandy to a photo shoot, where she would dress up in 18th century maiden clothing. The magazine’s owner was Michael Heseltine, who decided to attend, ‘to keep an eye on his investment’. There were some urgent conversations with the photographer, Terence Donovan, who turned away from Heseltine and said, “Mandy, darling, some more of the knockers!”

Mandy ended up running a nightclub in Tel Aviv and was “directed in a Ray Cooney farce in Hebrew,” according to Stanley, who was himself Jewish and grew up in Dublin.

During military service he was a sergeant in the Army Educational Corp and subsequently studied history at Cambridge. His parents were initially disappointed, hoping that Stanley would have trained as a doctor. “Your son will be an educated man,” one of the dons said to Stanley’s father, who took this as reassurance. (I’m an educated man – it won’t get you anywhere.)

Stanley watched Churchill’s state funeral on television in the company of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, both of whom were crying profusely as they drank champagne. Burton was wearing cufflinks given to him by Churchill – he saw the Welsh actor perform at the Old Vic and came backstage to use the toilet.

In Cuba, Stanley’s lunch with Graham Greene was interrupted by “the strange, accidental burst of machine gun fire.” Greene was “all friendly” and was eager to obtain information about the prostitutes in Havana, using their services.

A better title would have been: I Didn’t Really Have Lunch with Marilyn (pictured in a restaurant in the 1950s)

My Lunch With Marilyn And Other Stories is the gossipy, celebrity-packed memoir from screenwriter Stanley Price

Stanley worked on Arabesque, where Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren (pictured on set) are chased across the Crumlin Viaduct in Wales

Stanley should have introduced the novelist to his friend Lady Jeanne Campbell, once wife of Norman Mailer, and stepdaughter of the Duchess of Argyll, who, rumor had it, slept with three presidents in the space of a few months: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Fidel. Castro (the latter two were vehemently denied by her daughter).

Eventually Stanley moved on, publishing novels, writing plays and hiring himself out as a script doctor for Hollywood, where the ethos was, “If you have money, anything can be bought.”

He worked on Arabesque, where Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren are chased across the Crumlin Viaduct in Wales. Although Stanley wrote the script, he and the crew “never quite understood the plot.” Loren told him, “I owe everything you see to spaghetti.” Stanley was invited to kiss her, but unfortunately her face was covered in latex makeup.

Anthony Quinn, on the other hand, was only armored in his own stupid ego. He wanted everything rewritten into a forgotten epic called Caravans, made in Iran, to inflate his role even further. Quinn slammed his fist on the table, punched the furniture and continued like a madman. ‘Do you think this is an end for me? Die? I never die in my films!’

The elderly Stewart Granger was equally vain and expected the Scotland Yard inspector he played to end up in bed with the young heroine (Susan Hampshire).

It was Stanley’s job to explain to Granger that this was an unsavory suggestion: “I muttered something about the requirements of the plot.”

Stanley lived in Muswell Hill in North London, but even this was not without drama. His neighbor was Dennis Nilsen, who blocked the drain with the remains of his murder victims. Kate Adie was outside giving TV bulletins for weeks. The most significant effect on Stanley was that his house was unsellable for seventeen years.

Offered at a low price, even TV actress Liza Goddard and her (then) husband, pop star Alvin Stardust, were not thrilled. Maureen Lipman says in the foreword that Stanley was ‘erudite, emotional, dry, witty and intellectual’.

Marilyn tries some cake at the Enlisted Men’s Mess Hall of Headquarters Company, 2nd Infantry Division, near Seoul

Loren told him: ‘Everything you see, I owe it to spaghetti’ (file image)

And while these qualities are occasionally reflected in this book, it must be said that Stanley’s lunch with Marilyn was somewhat insignificant. His job was to pick her up at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, and he found her nervous and a mess.

“I don’t know why I agreed to this crazy lunch,” she muttered. Lunch took place at the top of the Time-Life Building on Sixth Avenue. The host was Henry Luce, the billionaire panjandrum whose magazines dominated American popular culture in the days before television.

Marilyn was celebrated with oysters, caviar and champagne; she was a perfect example of Luce’s belief that what readers wanted were “twitching trivialities” about glamorous celebrities. Stanley sat silently on the other side of the table, miles under the salt.

So a better title would have been: I didn’t really have lunch with Marilyn. Stanley had lost her on the way to the elevator. She wandered the halls. Eventually, she was discovered in the Ladies, dropping a mysterious pill.

Pharmaceutically enhanced, she transformed herself into Marilyn. “She almost looked like her publicity photos,” with her scarf and dark glasses. “Thank you for taking care of me,” Marilyn whispered flirtatiously to Stanley, who was weak at the knees.