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It was 1991 before I, too, would make my pilgrimage to the coastal town of Montecito, just 20 miles before you reach Santa Barbara itself. David Manners had lived a very full and rich life after leaving the picture business in the 30’s. When his health was better he lived in Pacific Palisades with long-time-companion William Mercer, who was responsible for the screenplay of THE VELVET TOUCH (an enjoyable murder mystery with Sidney Greenstreet). They had a beautiful home filled with Art and antiques from a lifetime together. Mercer died in the summer of 1978, and a devastated David Manners moved to a smaller apt in downtown Santa Barbara. In 1990 David no longer wanted to cook for himself or clean his apt. As he put it, “I’d rather spend my time writing books and living life than being a domestic.” This was when David moved into the very beautifully landscaped Wood Glen Hall for seniors (also in Santa Barbara) where we would meet for the first time.

When his health was up to it, David could become full of salt and vinegar. He loved to be the center of attention, as his still-good looks made him the “darling of the dayroom.” All the old dears wanted him to hold their hands and flirt. It was, however, the rose garden that gave David his real pleasure in living there. He became responsible for suggesting much of the garden… I was warned beforehand that he hated talking about not only his film career but especially the horror films that made him the last link to an era, the only surviving cast member of DRACULA. Moreover he was rapidly becoming the last survivor, period, of all the his early films in Hollywood.

My first visit was tolerated because I had brought with me a tall good looking young man who loved the old horror films but made his living in Hollywood doing soft core gay films. David took one look at my companion and you would have thought he was a matinee idol all over again. “Oh Hello, I’m David. You really are a tall one; you must be an actor.” So our visit was pleasant enough, yet when I dared to bring up the unmentionable, like working on the set of THE BLACK CAT, he said very little until it was obvious my “friend” wanted to know as well. Then David broke his silence long enough to say the following “Karloff was a gentleman, very aloof but nice enough to work with, he always got on with Lugosi in spite of rumors to the contrary. It was Lugosi that seemed dissatisfied with all the attention and success Karloff was attracting at the time. Lugosi was a great star…in his own mind.” David went on the say that he was never directed by Tod Browning on DRACULA; it was Karl Freund that really called the shots. This was very interesting for me because of Zita. Perhaps that was why Universal gave him THE MUMMY to direct in the first place.

There was yet another revelation before we left David’s room, one of the books I brought to donate to the home’s library was one of those “films of’ books on Joan Crawford. Well when David caught sight of that book he looked at my friend and asked if he was a fan of hers. We both said we liked some of her work and at that point, having our full attention, David Manners began to explain the incident that made him decide to leave Hollywood altogether. “I never felt at home working in pictures and more and more I went back to Yucca Loma to recharge my batteries, never wanting to leave the ranch once I got there. Well one afternoon my agent told me to drive over to Metro to take lunch with Miss Joan Crawford and discuss doing a film with her.

“I could really have cared less but my agent seemed overjoyed that she had asked especially for me so I went. Metro was Joan Crawford’s personal play ground, or that is what she was led to believe, so while we were having this lunch in her enormous movie star dressing room she made a pass at me and in no uncertain terms explained that she liked to have her leading men in her bed as well as on the set, and that sometimes included directors. I was as polite as possible and said no. Within minutes her demeanor changed into what she really was all along, a whore, a foul-mouthed tramp who called me every name under the sun, following me out of her trailer as I went to my car, and was still cursing as I drove off the MGM lot and right out of town, never to set foot on a movie lot again. So Thank You Miss Joan Crawford for making my decision so easy.”

David walked us to the main entrance, arm in arm with his new “friend.” As we left, David winked at me and said “Do come back, and bring some more of your friends if they are anything like him.” My next visit would reveal yet another side of David Manners, the golden years from 1936 until the mid-nineteen-fifties when he lived in magic time at a place in the Mojave desert by the Sierra Madre mountains near Victorville called “Rancho Yucca Loma.” David was a partner in the thousand-acre guest ranch, with separate housing for guests to stay, while building a little cabin there just for himself. For a few years men like Einstein and Horowitz made the ranch a retreat, while movie stars like Garbo journeyed there for privacy.

David was a deeply spiritual man, very much like Zita Johann. He knew that love was the most powerful force in the universe, and nothing else was important but shaking off the layers of pretense to embrace just that concept. David had written books with titles like “Under Running Laughter” and “Convenient Season”. He also edited newsletters on the subject of spiritual growth and well-being. David was also an accomplished painter, a true renaissance man if ever there was one.

There was so much I wanted to ask David, yet his condition – that of just being in his late nineties – made the task almost impossible. David would have his “good” days and then the bad days where he could hurt your feelings or just break your heart. By 1994 David had to be moved from Wood Glen to Marge Mason’s senior care home in Montecito, an exceptional facility that allowed the senior as much dignity as possible while looking after those who just couldn’t be left on their own anymore. David was in a wheelchair by this time and, at 97, he would fall asleep in his chair or, as most do as their life slips away, spend more time in the next world than in this one. The death of his lover, Bill Mercer, left a void that only work and writing kept at bay. As he reached the time when these tasks were taken from him he slipped into self-pity and depression. Thankfully there would be several young men who came into his life, taking David out of his loneliness and giving him someone to dream about and love. That experience kept him alive beyond what most people know as a lifetime.

Towards the end, Sir Ian McKellen came to visit David to ask about James Whale, and while David was impossibly rude to him, and remained in bed being less than responsive, at some point the ever-patient Sir Ian asked if David found Whale attractive and David screamed at him “NO!!” Then, as Sir Ian was leaving, David rallied around enough to take his fingers and twists them around, saying to Sir Ian, “Whale and I were like that…”,.ending the conversation with “You are seeing me on my deathbed.” Sir Ian told this story to my friend Curtis Harrington, and Curtis said that it left a profound impression on McKellen.

Not long after that meeting David was wheeled into the dining room at Marge Mason’s and seated at the dinner table, where he quietly passed from this earth after 98 years of intense productivity and spiritual growth. He embraced his ever lasting bliss as he would have wished, quietly, just by going to sleep forever.

SOME CALL IT LOVING

There is a film from the Seventies that has a loyal and devoted fan base, those who were fortunate enough to see it can still remember it some twenty years later. The film is known as SOME CALL IT LOVING, also known as SLEEPING BEAUTY, and finally, DREAM CASTLE. It is based on a short story by John Collier, “Sleeping Beauty.”
The atmosphere for the bizarre fantasy will capture your imagination for its hour-and- forty-three-minute running time, as there was never a film quite like this one before or since the seventies came to an end.

I first saw this film at the Academy of Science Fiction and Fantasy in the mid-eighties and never forgot it. The film works on many levels, as a dream, as a jazz riff, as a baroque modern day retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” using erotic imagery and music to create an alternate universe by which these characters live and breathe and love.

Zalman King is the young lead in the film, and his work was always interesting in projects like BLUE SUNSHINE and THE SKI BUM. He was not conventionally handsome, but edgy and somewhat dangerous. King gave up acting to become the undisputed king of soft-core erotica on cable television, “RED SHOE DIARIES”. His screenplays and directorial projects were always interesting if flawed films like WILD ORCHIDS, and TWO MOON JUNCTION.

The premise, without giving spoilers, is about a wealthy young jazz musician who happens upon a carnival that has, as one of its attractions, the ‘Sleeping Beauty,” a beautiful young woman (Tisa Farrow, Mia’s sister) who has been asleep for eight years. She is being cruelly exploited by a confidence huckster who allows men in the audience to pay a dollar and try their luck at “waking her up”. The young man buys the girl from the carnival for $10.000 and moves her, bed and all, to the baroque mansion he shares with two other young women, one of being Carol White, who frequently dresses as nuns to perform impromptu cabaret. Into this wild mix add Richard Pryor as a drugged-out jazz drummer who speaks in jive talk and plays Zalman King’s best friend in the film.

This is a film to see with a glass of wine and a joint. The great soundtrack is by Richard Hazard with jazz solos by Zalman King. The producer and director was James B. Harris, who had just finished working with Kubrick on LOLITA, and there are many similarities in theme and characterization at work.

This is a true cult film, so without giving up all its mysteries, please try and find a copy on eBay, while we here at Camp David will work on getting a DVD release in the near future.

For those of you who know the name Carol White, she was a promising young actress from the UK who made quite an impression in a BBC television program CAROL COME HOME, and DADDY’S GONE A HUNTING. She also made a Hammer film, PREHISTORIC WOMEN, with my close pal Martine Beswicke. Carol partied like a superstar and knew all the players; sleeping with Oliver Reed, Warren Beatty and Roman Polanski etc…I actually was on a film set with her towards in the end of her life. It was a terrible Lorenzo Lamas flick called BODY ROCK, and there was Carol White playing a bag lady and looking so much older than her years. I did not recognize her at first, but later on we chatted about the UK and Martine. She was very sweet and heart-breaking at the same time. A year or so went by and I heard from a friend that Carol White had gone to Florida and kept on drinking to excess until she was rushed to the emergency room in Miami where she literally exploded on the gurney from a severely swollen liver, just like Oscar Wilde a century ago. There, now have a nice day.

Until next time may all your Cinema dreams are in Blue Ray and Hi Def…unless one wins out and takes over the niche market…

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