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A Rolls Royce Silver Cloud drove him to airports; the British film industry kowtowed to his power; the great Hollywood studios fawned at his feet.Sir Alexander Korda, one of the world's most flamboyant movie tycoons, rose from obscurity in rural Hungary to become a legendary filmmaker. With him were his brothers, Zoltan and Vincent, all living charmed lives in circles that included H. G. Wells, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Marlena Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, and Merle Oberon, who was soon to be Alex's wife. But along with Alex's flair for success was an equally powerful impulse for destruction. Now, Vincent's son, Michael Korda, in the first book of his memoirs, recalls the enchanted figures of his childhood...the glory days of the Korda brothers' great films...and then their heartbreaking, tragic end.
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MICHAEL KORDA CHARMED LIVES A Family Romance In loving memory of my father, Vincent Korda, and for Margaret, with love TO HAVE ENOUGH IS GOOD LUCK, TO HAVE MORE THAN ENOUGH IS HARMFUL CHANG-TSE CONTENTS Epigraph iii Part One LONG SHOT 1 CHAPTER 1 IT SEEMED to me when I was young that the… 3 CHAPTER 2 IN 1961 I FLEW to Los Angeles for Zoli’s funeral… 32 CHAPTER 3 THE VIENNA to which Alex came was not the dreamy… 70 CHAPTER 4 I WAS BORN on the opening night of The Private… 91 CHAPTER 5 MY FIRST MEMORY of Los Angeles is that of an… 143 Part Two CLOSE-UP 185 CHAPTER 6 EVERY MORNING at ten Benjamin saw Alex to the door… 187 CHAPTER 7 WHAT THE HELL do they know?” I was to ask… 233 CHAPTER 8 IT IS STILL dark when the Train Bleu reaches the… 272 CHAPTER 9 ALEX DID NOT spend as much time on the yacht… 315 CHAPTER 10 I WAS BACK with my squadron when British Lion finally… 359 CHAPTER 11 THE SUMMER of 1955, however, was not like old times… 404 CHAPTER 12 I NEVER saw him again. We had said goodbye in… 433 Part Three FINAL CUT 439 CHAPTER 13 ALEX’S WILL was not probated until a few months after… 441 Acknowledgments 487 Index 489 About the Author Praise Cover Copyright About the Publisher PART ONE LONG SHOT CHAPTER 1 I T SEEMED to me when I was young that the three Korda brothers led charmed lives. When my uncle Alex traveled, he was driven straight to the steps of the airplane in his black Rolls Royce Silver Shadow after all the other passengers had boarded. If he was late the airplane was held until he arrived; ships and trains waited for him, customs and passport formalities were arranged to suit his convenience, officials rushed to make his arrivals and departures effortless and pleasant, swiftly chalking a customs mark on his white calfskin Revelation luggage and on the brassbound morocco traveling humidor with a dovetailed sliding lid and his initials, “A.K.,” stamped in the fragrant leather. As a child, I kept pencils, rubber bands and toy soldiers in his cigar boxes, and there was always a faint aroma of cigars and cedar wood in the nursery, like a lingering presence of Alex, though it was not in fact a place he ever visited. My uncle Zoltán traveled in lesser state, but at great inconvenience to himself and everyone else, for his health required him to move with a variety of private stores and equipment—an oxygen inhaler, plastic bags of fresh and dried California seaweed (“Vair is my kelp?” he was once heard to ask a bewildered porter), a sling so that he could hang 4 / Charmed Lives himself from hotel doors to stretch his spine, and a suitcase full of medicines. It could not be said that Zol