From Hollywood with love: The Surrey schoolboys who befriended Ginger Rogers, James Stewart and a galaxy of lonely stars
When two 12-year-old twins started writing fan mail to fading heroes of the silver screen, little did they imagine it would result in a lifetime of handwritten notes, signed photos and friendships
'In the mid-Eighties, we were writing 25-30 letters to film stars from the birth of cinema up to the Fifties - including Ginger Rogers (left) and Gloria Stuart (right),' said Austin and Howard Mutti-Mewse
As children growing up in the Eighties, we’d spend rainy Saturdays with our grandmother watching the matinee on BBC2.
On one of those weekends we saw Lillian Gish in the silent film The Wind (1928) and became fascinated by the idea of a whole film with no dialogue.
The following week Howard was set a school project to write about an iconic figure of the 20th century and, deciding to work together, we chose not only to write about Lillian Gish but to write to her as well.
Finding her address turned out to be easy: we looked it up in Who’s Who in America in our local library in New Malden, Surrey.
Frank Sinatra seemed diminutive, round and quite uninterested but when we began talking about silent-movie stars - actors he'd watched when he was growing up - he warmed to us
She replied with a signed photo and we thanked her, but then she wrote back a second time, this time asking how old we had been when we saw The Wind.
When we explained that we were only 12 years old, she was amazed and put us in touch with her friends from the silent era.
From that, it snowballed as one star recommended we contact another, giving us their addresses and phone numbers.
James Stewart was a complete supernova as a Hollywood legend, but so unassuming
In the mid-Eighties we were writing about 25-30 letters a week to film stars from the birth of cinema up to the Fifties – Bob Hope, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Fay Wray, Fred Astaire, Lana Turner and many more.
We’d chat to Tony Curtis and Marlene Dietrich on the phone and had lunch with Ginger Rogers and James Stewart.
Some of the correspondences lasted for years, only ending when the elderly actors died.
Thirty years on, we have amassed an archive of about 7,000 photographs, publicity portraits, on-set moments and Hollywood nightlife shots.
The actors didn’t always restrict themselves to one photograph – Frances Lee, who made silent comedies, sent us 200 photographs of her.
‘No one else will be interested in them,’ she said, ‘so you have them.’
When we left home to study at Epsom
College of Art we took our fascination for film with us. The stars would
ring us at our college house-share, at times speaking to our
housemates.
Jane Russell couldn’t have cared less if we weren’t at home because she loved to hear the accent of our housemate Barry, who was from Kelso in the Scottish Borders. Being in her 70s didn’t stop her flirting, either.
Similarly, when we were 16 we rang Lana Turner. She had made us pay $15 for a signed photograph but on the phone her voice was like melting chocolate.
Over time, corresponding with most of the female stars became more like writing to an old aunt
‘God,’ we thought, ‘that’s what being seduced sounds like.’
Our obsession didn’t diminish in our 20s and 30s either. Howard’s partner Ferhat and Austin’s wife Joanna came to know the last of our film-star friends.
And when Austin and Joanna’s son Nathan was born, our Hollywood friends sent letters, while Austin and Joanna even lived with Mildred Shay for a while.
Over time, corresponding with most of the female stars became more like writing to an old aunt.
In fact, when we met these people on trips to California in the Nineties, we’d often have to steer the conversation back to their career – we were so young they wanted to talk about us.
‘Why are two guys living in New Malden so interested in us?’ they asked, because in some instances their careers had finished 60 years earlier.
But being interested in their youth and not seeing them as cranky, lonely, old dears had an unforeseen outcome: ‘You’ve brought youth back into my life,’ one of them said to us.
The past, though, wasn’t the only important thing to them.
As actress Beverly Roberts and others said to us: ‘We’re telling you our story because we want you to keep the story going when we’re gone.’
1. Gloria Stuart and that sinking feeling...
We rang Gloria Stuart the day before she met the casting director about the role of old Rose in Titanic.
She was 87 and hadn’t had a significant role in a film in 48 years, but Titanic’s director James Cameron remembered her from old Universal horror movies.
After the casting director had been, she rang us back.
‘The only problem with the part,’ she said, ‘is that he wants me to play a 101-year-old. I can do 100, but I don’t think I can play 101.’
But she was keen on the role. ‘Boys,’ she said. ‘Say Titanic in the morning, say Titanic at lunchtime and say Titanic before you go to bed.’
Well, she got the part. When the film was released, a lot of the posters were printed without her name because she was not a marketable product.
Then when she received the Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, they had to be reprinted. She didn’t win the Oscar, but that didn’t matter to her. What mattered was working.
‘I’ve won my war against ageism in America,’ she told us.
2. A cold call in the night from Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was one of the first people to phone us at home
We were overwhelmed when Marlene Dietrich replied to our letter, recycling our envelope and padding it with old Christian Dior stocking packets so as not to bend the glossy photo she’d sent.
She was also one of the first people to phone us at home. It was three in the morning and I was 16.
The phone was on my mum’s bedside table, so while I was talking to Marlene Dietrich, my mum was beside me and my dad had stuck his head under the pillow.
‘I asked for your phone number and now I’m phoning you,’ Dietrich, then 87 years old, said down the line to us in 1988.
'You’ve sent me a shopping list with people you’ve written to. You write that you hear from Bette Davis. Well, I knew Bette Davis. You say you’ve written to James Stewart. I’ve worked with James Stewart, I’m not impressed by that.’
Having ticked us off she went back to saying that the letter was very nice and we had a chat.
After that, she phoned us about three or four times. Even on New Year’s Eve.
3. Charming Frank Sinatra on a trip to California
We met Sinatra in 1994 at a Palm Springs party. He was 80 but his eyes were still vibrant blue, and he was puffing on a cigarette.
The host, Joy, was standing with Howard and I, holding our hands aloft as she introduced us, as if congratulating champions.
Sinatra laughed, ‘Do these boys minder you, Joy?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Mr Sinatra, I suppose one could say she’s our adoptive granny while we are in California,’ interrupted Howard, nervously. ‘We are from England.’
Sinatra looked at Howard and then at me. ‘Nice.’
He seemed diminutive, round and quite uninterested but when we began talking about silent-movie stars – actors he’d watched when he was growing up – he warmed to us.
‘You’re making me feel so young,’ he said. ‘You keep telling me about old people.’
4. James Stewart, Hollywood’s true gentleman
With James Stewart, the person you saw on the screen was the person you met off screen. When we first wrote as teenagers, he’d reply with questions about our education.
‘What are you doing at school? Do you know the American poets?’
He was like a grandfather figure to us.
When we went to Los Angeles in the Nineties he invited us to his house. We found him working in his vegetable garden. During lunch, he looked out of the window at a tour bus passing.
‘These guys pay the tour bus to go round to see the movie stars’ houses,’ he said, ‘and they never see a movie star, so I make sure I go on the lawn and wave.’
With that, he went out on the grass and people came off the bus to have their photographs taken with him. He was a complete supernova as a Hollywood legend, but so unassuming.
5. Bob Hope: still king of the one-liners
'I don't feel old. I don't feel a thing until noon, when it's time for my nap!' said Bob Hope
‘I don’t feel old,’ said Bob Hope when we met him in Palm Springs.
‘I don’t feel a thing until noon, when it’s time for my nap!’
When Zsa Zsa Gabor arrived, Hope, 91, said: ‘She got married as a one-off and was so successful at it she turned it into a series.’ He was still full of one-liners.
6. Talking toupés with Tony Curtis
'I slept with Marilyn Monroe, but don't believe the whole dumb blonde thing about Monroe. You have to be smart to play dumb and she was really smart,' said Tony Curtis
‘Tell Tony Curtis I wore my hair the same way he wore his,’ Dad said.
When Austin relayed this to the star in a phone call, he said: ‘Tell your dad that I still wear it the same way, but I can now leave it on my dressing table when I take a shower!’
Tony Curtis would tell lots of stories, including ones about his relationship with Marilyn Monroe.
‘I
slept with Marilyn Monroe,’ he said, ‘but don’t believe the whole dumb
blonde thing about Monroe. You have to be smart to play dumb and she was
really smart.’
7. Ginger Rogers on dancing with the master, Fred Astaire
In
a Palm Springs restaurant in 1994 where Jack Lemmon and Loretta Young
were also dining, we had lunch with Ginger Rogers and Joy Hodges.
‘Katharine Hepburn said I did everything that Fred Astaire did but backwards and in high heels,’ said Ginger, then 83.
‘Fred was such a perfectionist. I remember on set one day after
rehearsing for hours someone asked me why I’d changed into pink shoes.
'I hadn’t realised I’d been working so hard that my feet had bled into my white slippers.’
8. Muriel Evans reveals Clark Gable’s dirty secret
'For Howard and Austin. My sincere good wishes. Muriel Evans'
‘Clark Gable was such a dish,’ said Muriel Evans, 82, sitting among the lavenders in the gardens of the Motion Picture and Television Country House & Hospital, a retirement home for the entertainment industry in LA.
‘I worked with him on Manhattan Melodrama in 1934 and asked him: “How does it feel to be God’s gift to women?” He smiled: “Do you wanna see?”
He bit into a piece of candy, then, to my horror, when he withdrew the candy, his false teeth were stuck fast, embedded in the toffee.
What was left in his mouth were brown stumps. It was these that gave him the bad breath Vivien Leigh complained about while filming Gone With The Wind.
‘I Used To Be In Pictures’ by Austin and Howard Mutti-Mewse is published by ACC, priced £35.
To order your copy at the special price of £28 with free p&p, please call The Event Bookstore on 0844 472 4157 or go to mailbookshop.co.uk
