Primula Susan Niven

Miss Primula Rollo

She was born Primula Susan Rollo, the only daughter of well-to-do divorce lawyer William Rollo and Lady Kathleen Hill. Her aristocratic roots came from both sides: she was the great-niece of Lord Rollo of Duncrub Castle in Scotland, and grand-daughter of the Marquis of Downshire. As such, she became a regular on the landed gentry social scene.

Primula Rollo, 1936“Miss Primula Rollo, who has been in the wars.” January 1936. From around the age of nine, she was pictured in upper class lifestyle publications such as The Tatler and The Bystander; attending garden parties, balls, hunts, polo matches, more hunts, and horse races. She also made the news in December 1935, following an accident in Munich, when her car was struck by a tram: “The car was wrecked. Miss Rollo received slight injuries.” What was she doing there?… Primmie’s finishing school was in Nazi Germany.

(If you’ve just done a double-take, it’s well worth taking a look at this Spiegel Online article: ‘British girls in the Third Reich‘).

A British publication pictured Primmie back home a month later, all tweeds and crutches, with the caption that she’d “been in the wars”. Five years later she literally was in the war.

By August 1940, when she met David Niven, Primmie was an assistant section officer in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. In 1971’s ‘The Moon’s A Balloon’, David described a first shared glance / stare at the Cafe de Paris in London, and then running into her during a lunch-time concert at a museum.

His December 1945 version, possibly embroidered by Hollywood publicists, involved him diving into a slit trench during an attack on an RAF airfield, and landing on top of Primmie. He even provided dialogue for the scene:

“She squealed and her dog bit me. She said ‘Why the hell did you sit on my dog?’, and I said ‘Why the hell have you got a Pekingese in a trench anyway?’ and that’s how we got acquainted.” The story was rounded off by saying that they were married three weeks after the slit-trench meeting.

The meeting bears resemblance to another of David’s unexpected wartime encounters, with his old friend the theatre critic John McClain. “We were reunited in Normandy shortly after D-Day.” McClain remembered, “We both happened to jump in the same shell-hole when a gun went off in the vicinity of the bridge at Carentan. It was explained later that it was one of our guns, but no matter.”

Another alternative story, which did not emanate from David, was that he met Primmie at a pub frequented by well-heeled personnel from ‘The Millionaires’ Squadron‘ at RAF Tangmere. (Tangmere is on the south coast of England, around 50 miles from Salisbury Plain, where David was training with The Rifle Brigade until August 1940). It is hard to imagine David the storyteller wanting to leave that story as “I met my missus down the pub”.

No matter, love blossomed very quickly. David met Primmie’s parents, and got on especially well with her father, who was serving in the RAF at the Air Ministry and had taken part (as a sailor) in the evacuation from Dunkirk. An impending wedding was announced on Monday 16th September 1940 and took place on Saturday 21st September at St Nicholas Church, Huish, Wiltshire, one mile from Primmie’s childhood home at Cold Blow.

The choir of the City of London School sang during the musical part of the service, and Primmie, dressed in blue, was given away by her father. The reception was held at Cold Blow, attended by various lords, ladies, and gentleman.

The newlyweds settled in a thatched cottage near the village of Dorney, west of London and near the Hawker aircraft factory where Primmie worked as a boiler-suited bench hand until the arrival of the couple’s first son, David, in December 1942.

The perfect English rose

Primula Rollo, 1930sPrimula Rollo. A studio portrait from the mid / late 1930s. “She was an absolute darling, the perfect English rose,” was how David’s best man Michael Trubshawe remembered her. “She was kind, she was fun, and she was to be the most wonderful mother for the short time she was allowed. I didn’t think he’d ever really met anyone like her. She wasn’t at all like an actress, she was just the best sort of English girl of that period and one of the last of them; after the war women stopped being like that. Primmie was England in the 1930s: country cottages and small children and all that gentle, lost world of the upper classes at home.”

Peter Ustinov’s very illustrative impression of Primmie was that, “She was like a minor member of the royal family because she smiled a great deal, very generously, and had that slightly mincing talking, rather like the Queen, ‘My husband and I…‘.”

The actor John Mills recalled: “She was a glorious creature, rather aristocratic, but evidently terribly proud of him, very much in love and always happy to let him be the star turn, which is why I think the first Niven marriage was so much easier than the second. Primmie wanted no part of David’s limelight; and every time he told a story she’d laugh uproariously, even though she must have heard it a dozen times.”

English without tears

It is something of a surprise to discover that Primmie had a credited role in the 1944 movie ‘English Without Tears’ (Re-titled ‘Her Man Gilbey’ in the US). The movie was made by the Two Cities production company, who were also responsible for David’s ‘The Way Ahead’. Both were filmed during the summer of 1943 at Denham studios. Primmie played an ATS sergeant [Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British army]. All six of her words were delivered with absolute authority, as she stepped away from her office desk. And no mincing. Bravo.-

With the UK filling up with American and Canadian troops preparing for D-Day, Primmie soon became accustomed to Hollywood stars in uniform such as Clark Gable, Bob Coote and James Stewart turning up on her doorstep.

Run-down and hit by bombs

David was released from military service on 31st May 1945, anxious to resurrect his career in Hollywood. Firstly though, between September and December he made what became one of his most critically acclaimed movies: ‘A Matter of Life and Death’. He starred alongside young Californian actress Kim Hunter, whose wonderful diary impressions of war-battered England were reproduced by US gossip columnist Hedda Hopper:

“I’m in a poor position to say anything about the food situation. Eating in restaurants makes one more conscious of the monotony of the menu rather than the scarcity of food. The rationing program is marvelous. Everyone gets at least a little of everything: no-one really goes hungry.”

Kim also described the studio at Denham, where Primmie had recently been involved in ‘English Without Tears’: “My studio here must have been lovely at one time. But because of the war it’s quite run-down. Besides normal wear, it was also hit by bombs. There must be something about sound stages, however, that places a common bond on people, no matter what their nationality. If I’d walked into Denham with my ears closed I could just as well have been in RKO or Selznick’s in Hollywood. The technicolor make-up is very grayish, almost ghost-like. The lights too, are more bright and glaring.”

“On location again. This time in Devon. David and Primula Niven made excellent guides as well as charming travel companions on the way down. We strolled through the ruins of 14th Century Farleigh Castle, and stopped again at Wells to see the cathedral and had tea at a hotel across the street. It is much more interesting to follow the lanes and by-ways rather than concentrate on ‘making time’. ”

“We’re shooting at Saunton Sands, which has a great resemblance to the Florida coast. Before we could work here, permission had to be secured from the ministry of war. The territory was heavily mined during the war, and many, having broken their anchorage, drift about aimlessly. David Niven found three on a stroll down the beach. They exploded one after another, uncomfortably close. Perhaps the ministry’s answer to us was correct: ‘It’s alright with us for you to work at Saunton,’ they said, ‘but we think your title ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ most apt.'” Quite.

“These English cars sure show the strain of the war years. On our way back our auto whistled, gagged, then stopped. We hitch-hiked into Salisbury. But half-way there the fellow who picked us up had car trouble too. However, he just raised the hood and gave the engine several whacks with a hammer, and off we went, as good as new. We secured another, but it broke down also. We were stranded for an hour while our driver went off looking for parts.”

Going to California

As soon as filming ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ was completed, and one month after his second son Jamie was born, David was shoe-horned onto the Queen Mary, along with 15,000 homeward bound American GIs. Primmie and the boys stayed with her father in London until she could arrange a crossing. David’s journey began three days after Hjördis Genberg set sail from Gothenburg on 7th December 1945, also solo, on her first trip to America. Their paths may well have unknowingly crossed in New York, where David took some time to unwind before continuing westwards.

Once back in California, David began hunting for a suitable home for his family, and also to hunt for members of the opposite sex. Graham Lord spoke to David and Primmie’s friend Pat Medina about the three months David spent in Hollywood ahead of Primmie’s arrival:

“His infidelity was constant and compulsive, even though he loved Primmie so much. ‘It was innate in him,’ I was told by Patricia Medina. ‘Before she arrived in Hollywood Niv was quite busy with the ladies! He wasn’t anybody’s angel. He would have been a Romeo whoever he was married to. It was just in him to be unfaithful.'” Primmie remained unaware.

(It was during this time that Hjördis and Carl-Gustaf Tersmeden visited Hollywood and ended up at a party in Gary Cooper’s house. David had been invited but was unable to attend).

David and Primmie Niven, 1946 Primmie Niven and David Jr arrive in America. March 1946 Primmie and the boys were originally scheduled to sail for the US on 3rd February aboard the Queen Mary, packed in with several thousand GI brides and their children. When that didn’t work out, they finally arrived on 22nd March 1946, on an old freighter that encountered such bad storms it was re-routed from New York to Portland, Maine. The journey took eighteen days instead of seven.

The experience was very different from Primmie’s previous trip to America. She visited New York with her father in 1938, arriving on the Queen Mary and returning three weeks later in equal comfort on the SS Bremen, which had recently held ‘the blue riband’ speed record for crossing the Atlantic.

After a stop-over in New York, David brought his family to California for the first time. Primmie started her life there with a busy calendar of social events, due to run until David began work on a new movie at the end of May 1946.

“David says she can’t stop eating this wonderful food and she never wants to leave a party,” Hedda Hopper reported in April. “Recently they stayed at Anatole Litvak’s until 5am. When they were almost home, she said ‘Let’s go back’. They did, and stayed until 7.”

“Primmie was unique,” Pat Medina remembered. “And she said she’d never been so happy in her life.” Very sadly it was not to last.

On the evening of Sunday 19th May 1946, David and Primmie were invited to a social gathering at the house of actor Tyrone Power and his wife. Hollywood gatherings had gone through various after-dinner fads for entertaining guests, the latest a variation of the children’s game ‘hide-and-seek ‘called ‘sardines’.

“That’s where the lights are turned out while everybody squeezed together in a corner or closet,” the actress Lili Palmer explained through her tears. “Mrs Niven was ‘it’. She was groping around for a closet door in the dark. Apparently she found the door leading to the basement and crashed down the steps.”

As well as Lili Palmer ther guests at the party included her husband Rex Harrison, Gene Tierney and her husband Oleg Cassini, Richard Greene and his wife, Cesar Romero, Pat Medina, and US marine Major Arthur Little. (Tyrone Power served during the war as a US marines pilot, and was only released from active duty in January 1946).

A doctor was called, and Primmie was taken to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica at 9pm. By the evening of Monday 20th she seemed to be on the road to recovery, but instead took a turn for the worse, and died following surgery at 1.30am on Tuesday 21st. (The surgeon was Dr Raymond Brandsma, who ten years later diagnosed Humphrey Bogart’s cancer of the oesophagus).

At her funeral service on 23rd, the minister read out a message thoughtfully written by David to comfort his friends in Hollywood.

“Primmie and I were married six years ago. She has given me two little boys and complete happiness. I am infinitely lucky. She always longed to come to California after the war and share my life here. They were the six happiest weeks of her life.”

“I am quite certain that she would like you to know that the main reason for her happiness was the great sweetness and kindness of all of you, my friends, towards her.”

In England, The Times printed a touching obituary, written by “a correspondent” who had obviously known Primmie (referred to as ‘Prim’) for many years:

“The death of ‘Prim’ Niven came as a great sorrow to her many friends, for she was one of the gentlest and sweetest of characters. She had a great sense of humour and rare capacity for enjoying life., but wherever she might be seen – in the hunting field, in the ballroom, in the WAAF during the war – she always had a sweet, rather shy smile in her blue eyes which seemed to be watching some vision that only she could see. It was, perhaps, her quiet thoughtfulness which gave that impression. She seemed so at peace with the world and everyone, appearing at the same time to be amused by it all. Her delicate beauty brought joy to all who knew her and wherever she went she radiated happiness.” Still enough to bring a lump to the throat.