Some of the Worms Are Turning

As every flunking schoolboy knows, runaway film productions have turned Hollywood from a suburb into a synecdoche, and Hollywood's people are living under every other rock from County Galway to the Areopagus hill. Knock on any castle, there's a star inside. Don't stop to photograph that shabby beggar by the European roadside; he's just a scenario writer looking for work.

Once, fame for a foreign star meant an almost automatic move to Hollywood and the purchase of a mansion in Beverly Hills. But more recently the traffic has been the other way. Stars who made their pile more often than not move to Paris, Rome or the Swiss Alps. Their children, who once might have gone to the Bel Air Town and Country School, now go to the International School in Geneva.

The Unbudgeable. There are two famous Williams in the revised history of Switzerland: William Tell and William Holden. Sometimes Holden is away looking after his hotel in Kenya, but more often he is back in the old canton, cruising around Lake Geneva in his $30,000 yacht or resting in his 15-room lake villa. "I love Switzerland," he says. "Even if the taxes here were the same as in the U.S., I would not budge."

Quicker than he might have thought, Holden is going to be challenged to put up or shove off. Under new, tax regulations effective Jan. 1, 1963, U.S. citizens living abroad will no longer be totally exempt from taxation on money earned overseas. Actually a maximum of $35,000 can still be clear, but that's all. Holden will probably stick by his loyalty to Switzerland anyway. Where else could he have George Sanders, Gregory Peck, Charlie Chaplin, Yul Brynner. Mel Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Stewart Granger, Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Ustinov, Noel Coward, David Niven, Jack Palance and James Mason for approximate neighbors?

Bogs & Bourgeoisie. The stars tend to shed their early backgrounds and blend into new surroundings as well in Europe as they once did in Hollywood. East Harlem's Burt Lancaster, a sometime Swiss, settled his family in Palermo's great Villa Scalea during the filming of The Leopard, and there lived the life of an aging nobleman with yacht. A few Hollywood people, mainly writers such as Nunnally Johnson, are hearty enough to have settled comfortably in England, and the Paris group--Ingrid Bergman, Jean

Seberg. Olivia de Havilland, et al.--leads a stuffy, bourgeois life. Fine old Gary Grant is now living in Darryl Zanuck's Left Bank house, where his evening routine is dinner and television.

Missouri's John Huston, of course, is a bit of the old sod if ever there was one. In Galway, he has a 26-room Georgian mansion, a trout stream, and a shooting bog. For some time he has been Joint Master of the Foxhounds of the Galway Blazers, for whom he gave a party one night last week that lasted until break of day, while Huston's fellow huntsmen, 500 strong, milled around under three marquees set up on the master's spacious lawn. "I like horses and deep country and the Irish pleasantries," says Huston. "I like the life in Ireland, there's more variety to it."

Waiting List. Much is written about the responsibility-to-the-stockholders sort of reason why movies are made abroad--the now waning tax advantages, the cheap labor--but those are often just very good excuses for what the stars, producers and directors want to do anyway: get out of decaying Hollywood and go off to foreign playgrounds for a jolly good time. Hollywood historians are left to ponder whether the films have taken the people away or vice versa.

"Look, I bought a car," says young Robert Wagner, "nothing special, just a great car. Well, I love that car. It has taken me all over--France, the Alps, Sicily--and I'd never done any of that before. Now, in Hollywood, someone else would get a new model and maybe I wouldn't--you know. And in the States if you worry about wines, people think you're queer or something." Wagner lives in Rome, which has long since sacked Hollywood. Nearly twice as many films were made in Rome last year as were made in California. It is an O.K. city to work in, but the more or less permanent new Romans seem to give off an odor of being on a waiting list for Geneva: Cameron Mitchell, Guy Madison, Fernando Lamas, John Barrymore Jr., Esther Williams, Steve Reeves, Gordon Scott, Anita Ekberg.

Quo Vadim? Not everyone is giddy with euphoria, however. Many of these Hollywood Romans, for example, spend their time in Jerry's American restaurant, eating hamburgers and French fries, and listening to an American jukebox. A few speak Italian; most of the others don't bother to learn. They seldom mix with their Italian peers. There is a growing wistfulness and nostalgia for the good old gaudy joys of Hollywood.

Thus the worms are slowly turning, facing west again. For every acclimated John Huston, there are at least a hundred Homesick Harrys. Some of them may soon be following French Director Roger Vadim, once the husband of Brigitte Bardot but now somewhat bored with his native playgrounds. Vadim has discovered the way to find action and excitement on his spare weekends. He goes to Los Angeles.

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