The Pig Is In The Parlor—Deborah Kerr

Seated at the baby grand piano, Deborah Kerr was playing a soft accompaniment to her thoughts. She let the music trail off as she turned toward her husband.

“Tony,” she said abruptly, “do you think it’s true that a house reflects the owner’s personality?”

“I suppose so,” Tony answered, ready to agree with whatever his pregnant wife happened to say.

“Then,” said Deborah conclusively, “I must have an awfully muddled personality.”

Anthony C. Bartley III put down the TV script he’d been reading. He got up from his armchair and walked across the sun room to his wife who was studying their home with troubled eyes. He cupped her chin gently in one hand and turned her face towards his. “You’re the most beautiful, muddled personality I know, and I love you.” He underlined his opinion with a kiss.

Deborah placed her hands back on the keyboard to steady herself. “But about the house,” she persisted. “Tell me the truth.”

“I like it muddled, as you call it,” Tony continued loyally. “It wouldn’t seem like our home if it weren’t for these fat old whale-oil lamps and that slightly battered marquetry table. Even the weird African heads seem like part of the family. And how would it look without that silly pig in the parlor? But if it makes you happy, you can turn the wine cellar into a skating rink, and plant cactus on the roof. Only one thing. No changes in my room, please.”

Scotland’s lovely gift to Metro giggled in spite of herself. “I didn’t have anything quite so radical in mind. It’s only my room whose personality I want to change.”

“Go ahead, darling.”

The changes Deborah Kerr outlined that evening were quite ambitious. They involved knocking out the south wall of her upstairs bedroom and replacing it with large picture windows. For a long time, she confided to Tony, she’d wanted to be able to lie in bed and look at the sea. A few interruptions like a trip to England to make Edward, My Son, and a safari into Africa for King Solomon’s Mines, and six months in Italy during the filming of Quo Vadis had postponed her remodeling ideas too long. Now was her chance. She launched into her project with as much enthusiasm as she normally shows for a new part.

New and enlarged windows would mean different draperies. New curtain material meant reupholstering the furniture. Breaking up a wall would lead to a new plastering job. Plastering meant repainting and fresh wallpaper. In other words—a big production.

The prospect of all this clutter and clamor overhead didn’t phase Mrs. Bartley one bit. In fact, it was right in line with her pet theory about expectant motherhood. She believes that waiting mothers should fill their lives with all the things they don’t ordinarily have time for. Deborah gives many more radio performances when she’s pregnant. She works for her favorite charity, the St. Anne’s Foundation, and she paints.

The sunroom’s arches echo the arches in the stucco exterior.

She also thinks that mothers-in-waiting should undertake one large job—preferably one that won’t be finished before the baby arrives. “That way,” she explains, “you’re busy concentrating on your project and hoping the baby won’t come early. The times passes ever so fast, and you accomplish two things at once.”

Deborah’s longish job before Melanie Jane, aged four, arrived was designing and planting her very British rose garden in Santa Monica. She finished it with a few weeks to spare. The current project should be a closer race with the stork who is expected sometime in February.

The fun and excitement that Deborah and Tony seem to get from making improvements in their California home is indicative of how happy they are in America. But they weren’t always this content.

When Metro signed her to a slightly fabulous contract in 1947, Deborah Kerr and her husband of one year came to Hollywood. Fresh from war-time England, they soon filled up on steak, eggs, and orange juice. They liked their work (Tony was studying American methods of movie making for his television production company). They met a lot of amusing people, and they made a few friends. They were talented, popular, and very successful, but they weren’t happy.

“At first, Tony and I thought we were homesick,” recalls Deborah, “so we waited a decent interval for that to wear off. When it didn’t, we looked around for other causes for our moodiness.

Round-the-world furnishings include wooden heads from the Congo, whale-oil lamps from a London antique shop, and Italian plaques.

“The answer was so obvious we didn’t recognize it for months. It turned out to be a kind of homesickness after all, for we finally discovered that it was our rented house that was getting us down. You see, we were living in a small California bungalow in a narrow canyon. Nothing could have been more unlike our previous homes. The place was too new, the ceilings were too low, and the neighbors were too close.

“I stood it as long as I could. Then I tearfully confessed to Tony that we’d have to go home to England if we didn’t move out of that trap.”

Being a man as well as husband, Tony Bartley couldn’t bear the sight of Deborah’s tears. They immediately started the quest for an English-style house. “Only we didn’t tell people we wanted any particular type of architecture,” explains Tony. “We weren’t so foolish as to narrow down the possibilities. We simply said we must have an old house, with a little ground around it to provide privacy, and we must have high ceilings.”

All of the Bartley’s new acquaintances and most of the real estate agents in Southern California offered to help them find a home. In turn, each friend, studio contact, and agent would call to say they knew of an old place, built before the war—six years ago. A few even found some relics dating back 10 years. Finally, Deborah explained as diplomatically as she could what her idea of “old” was. The last house she’d lived in was built a little over 300 years ago. After they heard that whopper, a lot of the agents gave up calling her.

“The dining room was furnished tongue-in-cheek,” Deborah grins. The table, supported by Prince of Wales feathers, was bought at auction. Gaudy blackamoor statues stand in indirectly lighted niches.

Months passed, and she and Tony were despairing of ever finding a home to suit their peculiarities. Then one misty afternoon, they were driving through the Pacific Palisades, a part of Los Angeles which is near the beach and looks very much like the Italian Riviera. When Los Angeles was a small, undeveloped city, wealthy easterners were building winter homes in this part of town. Although most of the estates have been broken up, the old homes still have an established, substantial appearance.

As Deborah drove slowly past the 20room houses with 12-foot walls and imposing wrought iron gates, she knew they were out of their class financially, but they held a fascination for her. They looked so old and venerable—like the country homes she’d known most of her life.

Quite by chance the “homesick” pair noticed one rather modest house that was close to the road. Deborah couldn’t resist asking Tony to stop the car. She just wanted to look through the gates at the beautiful gardens. The two of them got out of the automobile and ran towards the gates. What they saw filled them with longing. The two-story, white stucco house with its rain-washed red tile roof seemed to be waiting for them. (Later they learned that it had eight rooms and a full basement.) The property that went with it was rich in perennial gardens, wide stretches of lawn, and eucalyptus trees. An eight-foot wall on the street front and a steep palisade down to the ocean gave the house the privacy and seclusion all Englishmen seem to require.

The longer they pressed their faces against the barred gate the more beautiful the house looked. There was no sign of anyone living in it, and yet it wasn’t for sale or rent.

Deborah’s bedroom was a complete re-make job. A wail was knocked out for the sea-scape picture window. This led to new draperies, reupholstering, plastering and paper—all in all, a new “personality.”

After careful scrutiny, Tony noticed a small sign near the front entrance. “For information, apply to Santa Monica Land Co.,” he read aloud to Deborah.

“That must mean it’s for sale,” said Deborah happily.

“More likely it’s where you call in case of fire,” Tony said, but he jotted down the telephone number anyway.

The next day he contacted the land company and learned more details about the house. He found out that it was part of a 14-acre estate owned by a wealthy Chicago dowager named Edith Rockefeller McCormick. The house he and Deborah had seen was called the guest cottage, but there was also a main house, servants’ residence, a large garage, and a separate music conservatory on the property. All or nothing was up for sale.

Tony Bartley politely declined to make an offer for this real estate package. Might just as well have made a bid for Buckingham Palace he thought to himself. But he hated disappointing Deborah, so he made a characteristically British move. He hired a legal representative, commissioning him to purchase the guest house at or below a stated figure.

The correspondence that piled up during the negotiations was large enough to fill up a year’s issues of the Congressional Record. In the end the bulldog tenacity of the Bartley’s won out. The house was theirs.

Tony Bartley’s bedroom-study is crammed with RAF souvenirs like the portraits of his squadron. The focal point is a big TV set, viewable from desk or daybed where he can check on his productions.

Deborah had been so certain they would eventually own the lovely 15-year-old house that, long before the deal was concluded, she sent to London for her furniture. It arrived about the time they were ready to move in. Busy as she was at the studio, it never occurred to her to hire a decorator or even a secretary to organize and furnish her home. “Almost no one does in England,” she explains airily. “At home we just take our time and put the heirlooms and antiques where they seem to please us most. Sometimes it takes ages to furnish a home. And I must admit some of them look rather dowdy, but at least they’re a true expression of the home owner’s taste.”

The conclusion that can be drawn about Deborah Kerr’s taste as reflected in her home is that it’s one of quiet refinement touched with the unpredictable. In her living room, for example, the only two colors are grey and pale gold. The furniture consists of fine 18th century antiques. The couch and chairs are upholstered in gold brocade to match the draperies. The effect is restful and unobtrusive. A graceful Queen Anne desk stands at one end of the room and a refectory table at the other. A pair of water color portraits by an English girl, Eileen Chandler, show Melanie at 18 months and Deborah in a pensive mood. They are the only wall decorations except for the mirror over the fireplace. Several of her mother’s Crown Derby cups stand on the mantel and then, quite in contrast with the rest of the room, a fat china pig, covered with painted flowers rests beside the fireplace. If you ask Deborah why Melanie brought the pig into the parlor she smiles and says, “She didn’t. I put it there. I just happen to like it.”

The sun room, which links the dining room with the living room, and the indoors with the garden, is a kind of informal gathering place full of books, record albums, the piano, and art objects picked up from Italy to the Congo. Deborah sensibly furnished the long narrow room in earthy browns and greens. The big easy chairs are covered in a brown nubby fabric and the walls are a cool shade of eucalyptus green. Here the family heirlooms have been converted to practical use. The highboy Tony uses as a compact little bar was a Bartley antique. The old pewter beer tankard on top of it was a wedding present. And the pair of highly polished whale oil lamps beside the couch where Deborah likes to sit and sew, were found in a second-hand shop right after she and Tony were married. The lamps are too squatty for good reading light, but in this case sentiment outweighs practicality.

Furnishing the dining room started as a joke. It all began with Tony’s straying into an auction room on Wilshire Boulevard one evening when Deborah was working late. He was so fascinated by the auctioneer’s spiel that he couldn’t leave. When the oval dining table with a base of three carved feathers came on the block he bid for it. Much to his surprise, he got it at a ridiculously low price. He had it sent home like a comic valentine.

“I laughed, but I loved it,” Deborah says. “It seemed very funny at first to have a table with the traditional Prince of Wales feathers supporting it. But we bought eight chairs to go with it and a small table-for-two where Tony and I eat when we’re alone. That filled up our dining room except for the niches.”

It was during another evening’s aimless wandering that they strolled into a Hollywood antique shop. Deborah spotted a pair of large, gaudy blackamoor figures. Tongue-in-cheek she offered the dealer a price for them, he quickly said, “Sold.”

Home in the maroon, grey and white dining room the figures didn’t look as gaudy—merely gay. Tony put concealed lighting behind a narrow moulding and the blackamoors add a lot of character to the Bartley dinner parties.

In spite of the considerable changes Deborah is making upstairs in her own room, nothing will be touched in Tony’s adjacent study-bedroom. He made that quite clear before she started her redecorating job. Tony recently finished a TV film in Africa called White Hunter, which explains why the only television set in the house is opposite his day bed. He must keep abreast of west coast television.

In the four years that Tony and Deborah have lived in America, neither of their families has been able to visit them. So far they’ve done all the traveling. They’ve always packed up Melanie Jane, her Scotch nurse, tons of luggage and spent their holidays in England. Regretfully, Deborah Kerr admits that none of their immediate family have seen the beautiful Bartley home in Santa Monica. Last Christmas, however, she received the gift that makes her home complete. Her grandmother sent her Mrs. Beetons’ Book of Household Management (circa 1880).

“Without this housewife’s Bible no proper English girl can ever run a home,” explains Deborah. “Grandmother was apparently waiting until I had an established house. After the book came, we knew for sure we were at home in California.”

THE END

—BY MARVA PETERSON

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE JANUARY 1952